The Cause of Unhappiness : 3.

A third difficulty is that this experience of pleasure produces an impression in the mind; it creates a groove. A vasana is produced, and these vasanas, these grooves formed in the mind, will remain there latent for all time to come. They are permanent copperplates produced in the mind, and we can manufacture any number of gramophone records so that there is an urge for repetition of these experiences, manifest or unmanifest. If the conditions are favourable, they will manifest immediately.


If conditions are not favourable, they will keep quiet, and when conditions become favourable – even after years, even after births – they will again motivate the mind towards that enjoyment. Thus, the samskaras produced by a particular experience of pleasure are going to be sorrows in the future.
There is another danger about this: if the samskaras are very strong, if the impressions or grooves formed are very marked, then what will happen is that they may take effect even in future lives.


And, when these impressions take effect in a future life and direct the mind towards the very same type of objects with which they are connected, as it happened in an earlier life at the originating time, the desire of the mind might have changed. So, when we come in contact with a particular condition on account of the motivation of these impressions, we do not want that experience any more. Then it comes as a pain, and we wonder why we experience pain. What has happened to us? Why is nature punishing us? Nature is not punishing us; it is only giving what we asked for.


But, unfortunately, time has elapsed to such an extent that we have completely forgotten that we wanted those things, and now when those things are given to us, they are not the wanted ones. The needs of the mind change according to the vehicle which it enlivens – the body-mind complex. The body which the mind enters in a new birth is constituted in a fashion which conforms to the type of desires which are going to be fulfilled in that particular life according to the prarabdha karma. So, naturally, it does not mean that the desires of this life will be the same as the desires of the next life. They will be changing in their form and shape.

To be continued  ...