Passion in the simplest sense means 'Likes' and 'Dislikes'.
This is counter intuitive that we need to reduce passions in life i.e. we need to reduce the 'likes' and 'dislikes'. This is a necessary condition for progress in spirituality. Even if you are not interested in making progress to attain Moksha/Nirvana, still it's very important to understand the need to reduce passions to lead a healthy life. Some of us may have an immediate counter question - 'If there is no likes and dislikes in life, then what's the use of such a life?' It’s a fair question. Right from our childhood, we are used to following our 'likes' and 'dislikes'. As we grow, We get addicted to this way of life (i.e. a life of only likes and dislikes) and it firmly gets entrenched or registered in our sub conscious mind as a bias. This bias if in excess leads to craving/aversions, creates negative emotions constantly and manifests as physical diseases. Hence, EVERY RELIGION/SPIRITUAL PATH worth its name starts with the mandatory condition of reducing passions in our mind.
Example of dislike/aversions:
To understand how dislikes become Aversions in sub conscious mind, think of a child who in his young days saw an air bombing of his own house. Over time, he has this mental image of the air plane, its sound etc. finally leading to the bombing of his house. It creates a record in his sub conscious mind and the 'mind' categorizes this as a 'dislike'. Repeated feeding of this visualization in one's own mind creates an 'aversion'.
This leads to a situation where, much later in life, even if the person sees an air plane which is a passenger plane or even if he hears the air plane sound, then it will create the same negative feelings (of hatred, anger, depression) as the mind associates this passenger plane or sound (which is harmless) to a 'Dislike'/'Aversion' category and hence produces the negative feelings.
While the example is one particular use case, our mind tends to form these kinds of dislikes all the time. Hence, it could be a small thing also – for example, a person's mind has a bias towards dogs, or even more ordinary thing like Potato etc. Depending on the intensity of the bias, even a simple thing can cause huge irritation, discomfort feeling in the person based on the triggers in daily life.
Example of like/cravings:
To illustrate this, think of a child who likes chocolate. Initially its intensity is less and even if the child does not get it, it forgets after a while. But, if the child's mind is continuously fed this thought that chocolates are so delicious, the best thing in the world etc., then child will not let go until the 'craving' is met. Say, he will not have any other food unless a chocolate is given to him.
You can see that 'chocolate' has been registered in his sub conscious mind as a deep bias/Craving. He cannot let go of it easily and any trigger in daily life reminds him of 'chocolate', associates it with pleasant feelings and if the craving is not met, it immediately creates feelings of irritation, anger, displeasure etc.
Thus life is full of such events where mind is continuously registering 'likes'/'dislikes' and it soon becomes 'cravings'/'aversions' . As we age, this starts playing on us big time and leads to stress, tensions and mental imbalances.
Yet another example of such a bias is that an Indian 'automatically' thinks that a Pakistani is his enemy and vice versa as this biased info has been continuously fed to his mind by the Governments.
Hope you are getting the idea that passions has to be reduced, we will further substantiate this by going into the science of it.
Science behind the statement 'Passions or Desire is the chief cause of misery and diseases':
The credit for discovering this at a scientific level goes to an enlightened person named Siddharta Gauthama Buddha who lived in the 6th Century BC.
I am over simplifying this and writing it and will update the complete picture once I myself have understood from authentic books of Gauthama Buddha. He wrote all of this in Pali, a language prevalent in North India during those times. The surprising part is that he discovered these by merely observing himself and not with any external tools or technology.
At the most granular level of human body is the Kalapa. Kalapa can be considered as either atomic or even a sub atomic particle (Need to validate the exact definition).
Kalapa (kalaapa/Kalpa) is made of 4 earth materials and 4 mind materials.
Ultimately, these atomic/sub atomic particles or matter themselves are just a continuous series of vibrations (analogous to a particle and wave in quantum physics). The only reason we see things in gross form (i.e. materialistic/matter form) is that the waves are generated continuously which arises and passes away just like a candle flame or the light from a light bulb.
This means neither your body (material physical body) nor your mind is permanent - in fact, they change a trillion times every second just like waves arising and passing away. Hence, it's important to let go the 'I' ness or the EGO. Letting go the EGO is the very foundation of spirituality and also helps one understand the temporary nature of following passions and its outcomes.
Further, There are 4 stages in the way our mind and body reacts to external events (through the 6 senses – hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, touching or mind sense).
1) Stage 1 is that that particular sense conscience/sense receptor (i.e. say hear/sound conscience) senses the 'sound' event.
2) Stage 2 is a processing/analyzing system which identifies the pattern and classifies it as different categories of 'pleasure' or 'pain'. 'Pleasurable' (likable) or 'Painful' (dislikable) is only a high level category and the mind has the ability to sub categorize this.
3) stage 3 is that each cell in the body produces a sensation in accordance to the pleasure or pain classification and sub classification. So, it can generate the various 'pleasurable' sensations or 'painful'/discomfort sensations.
4) Stage 4 is the interesting one. A new 'Sankhara' ('Sankaara' or 'Sankara') is produced which is the energy needed to produce the same sensation for the next moment. This 'Sankhara' if used in the next moment will produce the same sensation and as the mind keeps feeding this thought, more such 'Sankharas' are generated. This can manifest as an intense sensation for the next few moments (seconds, minutes, hours etc.) and pass away. It can also get stored in our sub conscious mind which is referred as the bias in the sub conscious mind. This will manifest as the same sensations or feeling whenever the situation is right in the future or sometimes even in the next births.
What is important to understand is that the 'feeling' or 'emotion' at any point of time is real but its temporary. But, we keep feeding these instead of just letting them go. Sankharas are getting created and multiplied in large numbers as we keep feeding the 'likes' and 'dislikes' in our mind and it gets stored in our sub conscious minds as 'Cravings' and 'Aversions'. These cravings and aversions not only affect our mental health all the time but too much cravings and aversions will manifest as physical diseases.
It should now be clear why passions/desires are the root cause of all misery and diseases.
Let us see an interesting example of how these concepts can be applied to our life specially our 'fear of death' scenarios.
Death and Disease are not related, they are independent:
Note that the 'feelings' of pain/discomfort/disease is not at all related to the event of 'death'. Same is true for 'feelings' of excitement/pleasure and 'birth'. 'Feelings' of pleasure/pain are just independent of birth/death.
How does this understanding help?
If this is understood, you can observe the pain anywhere in your body without getting into a fear of death - say your heart, brain, kidney is paining, you will be able to 'bear' the pain by observing it and remaining aware that the pain is temporary and will pass away. In usual life, the biggest mistake we make is that we feed the fear that comes with pain and hence, we substantially increase the pain and the fear emotions associated which leads to multiplying the pain. Many a times, it blocks physical function needed for your wellbeing like breathing, blood circulation, circulation of lymph system, etc. This leads to untimely deaths and not the initial physical pain itself.
Hence, by the above realization, you can start observing the pain/disease and accept the fact its temporary and will go away (Anicha). It takes some time to practice this, but regular practice will help you be courageous in times of difficulty.
Finally, when your battery is over (i.e. natural death which happens to all human beings), you will be able to observe your death and be equanimous about it thus leading to a very peaceful and painless death. This has an added advantage that even if you do not reach Nirvana/Moksha, your next birth as a child will be with a calmer and peaceful mind.
Youtube video - See how this Buddhist monk peacefully leaves his body without any pain or fuss.
To summarize this section, reducing passions is the first step in the path to spirituality and its a necessity and not just an optional step. Next, we will see how law of Nature or Dharma works and how this step will help us follow Dharma.
