By Elizabeth Herman | Posted: December 16, 2019
Do your eyes, like mine, get bigger than your stomach at holiday feasts? When we bombard the senses with so much pleasure, it can result in overeating and imbalances in our health. But at some point we must rest from the senses and replenish our sources of real energy. Understanding this process can help us overcome extreme desires for sensual gratification. For our own sake in the long run, we should listen to such wisdom.
“Sometimes an imbalance occurs between the desire to enjoy and the capacity to enjoy,” says Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, spiritual master and founder of the Art of Living Foundation. “And desire indicates lack. If we have a desire, it means we lack something. Even hankering after enlightenment can be an obstruction to complete fulfillment.”
At one of his talks, an audience member asked, “Guruji, why did God give us the five senses and the sense objects? All the wise people ask us to control the senses. Why?”
He gives his answer in this short talk on video:
The senses are limited
Gurudev recounts and illustrates the purpose for controlling the senses, saying, “So that you can express something even better than that. You know, cotton candies are given to children. Cotton candy, ice cream candy. But when they grow a little older, they look for some higher joy, higher experience.
See the ability to enjoy with our senses is limited. Our ability to enjoy sense objects is limited. But desire, when it becomes unlimited, creates an imbalance. That’s when you say ‘Watch out.’
For example, bulimia. How much food can you eat? This much (holding his 2 hands in the shape of a bowl). But bulimia is what? You eat that much but then also you don’t feel satisfied. Then you say, ‘Come on, have control over yourselves.’ Because it’s going to harm your own body.”
In addition to controlling appetite, Gurudev advises meditators to realize how energy spent on experiencing the senses can be replenished by taking the attention inward.
Sense objects: a drain on your energy
He continues, “Similarly, experiencing all sense objects is draining. If you eat a little food it gives you energy. If you eat more, it tires you. How many of you have had this experience? Instead of giving you energy, it has made you so tired.
So, they say, experience it but go beyond it also. Let go. You can breathe in, but you can’t only keep breathing in. You have to breathe out also. Otherwise, you can’t live. You’ll die. Right?
So when you turn inward, when you go to yoga, then you’re able to experience greater joy. It’s energy conservation. Otherwise, it’s energy spending.”
Control energy spending: earn by meditating
The explanation of growth into mature sense experience also reveals how energy can be used like money, differently for kids than adults. “So if kids spend, nobody bothers them. The parents say, ‘Okay spend.’ But if a teenager spends, or one who has grown beyond teenagerhood, then they say ‘Careful in spending. You can’t only spend. You should earn also.’
In the same way, you enjoy sense objects. Good taste, good sight, good sound, everything, all the sense objects. Then, conserve your energy, go deep in meditation and realize there’s a bigger joy, greater happiness there. Look at that also,” reveals Gurudev.
By replenishing reserves of energy through yoga and meditation, the spending of energy through our senses can become more balanced. Just as you balance your checkbook every month, you can balance your energy every day, with some enjoyment through the senses and equivalent spiritual practices of release and rest.
Learn more about how meditation, pranayama, and yoga help you control your senses by finding an Art of Living Happiness Program or Sahaj Samadhi meditation course near you. Take the next step towards balancing your energy today!
Elizabeth Herman writes, offers writing support to clients, teaches, and volunteers for a better world. She has a PhD in Rhetoric, Composition and Literature. Find her on Facebook or Twitter.
