General On A Scale Of Most Severe, Which Vice Affects You The Most?

Gurfatehji

In a recent thread, the concept arose of facets of the Creator that had always been inside us, from birth to present day.

By the same token, I think one or more of the five thieves have also been inside us, from birth to present day, I think we all got something good and something not so good.

I got lust, what did you get?

Re: I got lust, what did you get?

I got pride.

Re: I got lust, what did you get?

I got lust and moh. Lust diminished over time but moh (attachment) is incredibly strong.

Example (moh): I don't want to see my mom or our dog die before I do. I want to go first.

Sat Sri Akal.

Re: I got lust, what did you get?

Kam, Krodh, Lobh, Moh, Ahankar, Ninda

At times they would be so quiet, you would forget about them. But thats their deception, for when they attack unexpectedly, damage is usually big and irreversible!

Re: I got lust, what did you get?

Good point Kanwaljit ji. Harry ji may have been thinking about which one of the vices is most prominent in one's life, rather than asking which vices one has (since most of us probably have all of them to some degree, as you pointed out).

Re: I got lust, what did you get?

Ishna said:

Good point Kanwaljit ji. Harry ji may have been thinking about which one of the vices is most prominent in one's life, rather than asking which vices one has (since most of us probably have all of them to some degree, as you pointed out).

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Ishna ji I second that. It goes without saying everyone has all five. Not all are prominent to same degree in most or most of the stages of life.

A baby crying versus an adult crying when pinched perhaps activate different levels of thieves in addition to sensory stimuli.

Sat Sri Akal.

Re: I got lust, what did you get?

I thought it was mostly Kam and Krodh, but all other are equally prominent. And like I said, sometimes all would go dormant and suddenly one of them would take off like a rocket!

Re: I got lust, what did you get?

So on a scale of 1 to 10, with the dominating ones marked with an x




1. Kam (Lust) 10 (but only towards my wife) X
2. Krodh (Rage) 2 ( I do not get angry, just very quiet, more sad)
3. Lobh (Greed) 2 (not really a problem, have had it all, lost it all, happy now
4. Moh (Attachment) 2 Largely due to events in the past
5. Ahankar (Ego) 8 I sufferer from anti ego, I am averse to it, in my dress and
attitude, which is just as bad X

Re: On a Scale of Dominating Ones, Which Vices do you Think Affect you the Most?

Added a poll! :grinningsingh:

Let's see:

Lust - quite impossible because of my medical condition now. In the past, not really a big problem.

Rage - this is a big one for me. I used to have everything, then some bad men took it all away. They are not the biggest problem, though. The biggest problem is not letting the rage bleed into my other relationships. I have made some progress and will continue working on it.

Greed - If greed is wanting stuff, this is not a big problem right now. I am pretty low maintenance. If it is wanting time and attention, it is a problem, although not my biggest one.

Attachment - Life has really forced me to work on this. First, my family was killed off and I could clearly see how attachment to them was and is a problem. Then we lost all our stuff in Alaska. That was a whole lot easier, in fact, the ease of it surprised me. Now, again a husband has died. It is too soon really to comment on that. I am still a bit disoriented and unclear about my feelings.

Ego - This is the biggie for me. I have no idea how to gauge my own ego. I know that believing it is under control is very dangerous. I fight it constantly. Sometimes it is necessary to take drastic action. I closed my Facebook account because I was beginning to believe some of the [flattering] things people were saying about me and feeling a lot of pride about the number of "friends" I had accumulated. I resigned as a moderator of another online group. I turned my beloved Khaliblog, The Road To Khalistan, over to a friend who will probably act mostly as a caretaker, which is OK. SPN may well be next. We'll see.

Lust. I don't know if it is the good part or the bad part that since i started to read about Sikhism in SGGS and in various forums my moments of vice do not pass without actually thinking about what i am doing is wrong or should be avoided but still I am not able to avoid it. But due to the conflicting idea of it being a vice not able to enjoy like before.

With very little of reading of SGGS I have realised that the Guru puts a lot of emphasis on "naam japna". Maybe this can be the key to overcome our addictions (vices) along with will power. After all overcoming vices is an effort to strive towards Sikhi then why not club it with the core of it.

I have a question for the knowledgeable and learned members here. Why should one get rid of attachments. Is it not a duty of a mother to love her children? How can I be a good son without loving my mother?

Searching ji,

I am not really knowledgeable or learned, but I think I do have an answer for you.

Detached love does not mean not loving and caring. I think it means not permitting yourself to become enmeshed in the beloved, whether parent or child or friend or lover. It means you are able to lose the beloved, whether by death or desertion or some other cause, without losing yourself in the process.

I think detached love is a possibility, but only for those soul who are more advanced than us common folk. It is something we can work on, though. The perfect example that I can think of is Guru Gobind Singh ji and the Sahibzahde. No doubt he loved them dearly, as a good and caring parent. He was Guru, after all! Still when it was time for him to release them, he was able to do so. They say the hardest thing for a parent is to have a child die, yet many parents are called upon to do this. We can all learn from Guru ji's example.

I find romantic love much more problematic. To me, it seems founded on attachment. Maybe someone would like to address this.

Searching said:

Lust. I don't know if it is the good part or the bad part that since i started to read about Sikhism in Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji and in various forums my moments of vice do not pass without actually thinking about what i am doing is wrong or should be avoided but still I am not able to avoid it. But due to the conflicting idea of it being a vice not able to enjoy like before.

With very little of reading of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji I have realised that the Guru puts a lot of emphasis on "naam japna". Maybe this can be the key to overcome our addictions (vices) along with will power. After all overcoming vices is an effort to strive towards Sikhi then why not club it with the core of it.

I have a question for the knowledgeable and learned members here. Why should one get rid of attachments. Is it not a duty of a mother to love her children? How can I be a good son without loving my mother?

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Searching ji I believe it is futile to gofor eradication of the five. I believe reasonable control and balance is necessary. Otherwise there are unlimited number of scenarios including illusions, delusions, and many things in between where one would be lost and one would become a hermit which is lifestyle spoken against in Sikhism.

It is like who is in the driver's seat of the five.

Sat Sri Akal.

Ambersariaji

like Plato's Chariot !

following gleaned from the internet


The body is not the essence of the human person. Plato proves this through the process of elimination. There are three possibilities, one is that the human person is essentially a soul or a body or a combination of body and soul. The body does not rule itself, therefore it cannot be a body. And if the body does not rule itself it cannot be in combination of the body and soul ruling, therefore the soul rules over the body, and the soul is the essence of the human person.

If the soul is the essence of the body, one must understand what makes up the soul. The soul has an independent, substantial reality, rather than being dependent. Plato argues that the soul is composed of three separate parts, reason, spirit, and appetites.

Plato's Allegory of the Chariot is a symbolic depiction of the tripartite analysis of the soul. Two horses draw the chariot (of the personality). One of the horses is good and the other one is not. The good horse represents spirit, is noble, well formed, handsome, and tending to behave magnificently. The other horse, representing the appetites, is crooked, lumbering, ill made, stiff-necked, short-throated, with bloodshot eyes. The charioteer, whose job is to determine the direction and speed, to drive the chariot, and to coordinate the activities of both his horses is symbolic of reason.

We can see through the Allegory of the Chariot that Plato's philosophy of human nature involves not only external conflicts, but internal as well. All such conflict is a distraction from the soul's proper activity, which includes the pursuit of knowledge. If reason is to rule wisely, its command must be informed by knowledge.

Veer Ji quoting Plato, well I never,and not even a mention of Range Rovers ,Excellent
I don't think anyone is born with pride etc, I take a literal view,in that a thief breaks in when we are out, and is not part of the home to begin with.

Spji,

I disagree (I mean it wouldn't be the same if I didn't now would it), I was born with the same sexual fetish as my brother, now seeing that we are 5 years apart, how do you explain that, it is impossible that we were exposed to the same scenario at the same age, so my guess is that we were born with it.

My brother also has similar thieves to my mothers younger brother, and I have similar thieves to my mothers elder brother, my fathers elder brother, and one of my cousins

harry haller said:

Spji,

I disagree (I mean it wouldn't be the same if I didn't now would it), I was born with the same sexual fetish as my brother, now seeing that we are 5 years apart, how do you explain that, it is impossible that we were exposed to the same scenario at the same age, so my guess is that we were born with it.

My brother also has similar thieves to my mothers younger brother, and I have similar thieves to my mothers elder brother, my fathers elder brother, and one of my cousins

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Harry Veer ji I think it as follows,

We are all thieves in the garden of plenty, that is creation. We judge ourselves and we never recognize the dangers of being both "judge and jury". We pat our ego and we pat others back on how good they are. A thief patting another thief. Wonderful!

How much thievery is in consonance with creation? That is more fundamental question in my mind. This all goes back to balance of needs versus deeds.

Humbly submitted.

Sat Sri Akal.

We are all thieves in the garden of plenty, that is creation. We judge ourselves and we never recognize the dangers of being both "judge and jury". We pat our ego and we pat others back on how good they are. A thief patting another thief. Wonderful

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The Musketeers are becoming poets,I think ego pats us on the back finally when we conquer the other four ,as it did with Mahatma Budda.

Submitted egotistically

Egotism definitely. If I don't keep that in check then everything else starts going haywire. It's a daily battle for.swordfight

Definitely there at birth. Its part of the package of a human body. Humans left to their own devices would be nasty pieces of work - just look at children in the schoolyard and how vicious they are to each other. The cultivation of and adherence to our higher selves (Guruji) is what helps us subdue our primitive urges. Some do it better than others.

The corporation of the self needs to be run by a top-down governance model, not bottoms up.