Table of Contents
6 Vices: What Are They?
The need to become someone or something only arises when you are externally driven. When you associate with the world you are stuck with the six vices namely:
Lust, Anger, Greed, Pride, Jealousy, and Attachment.
The 6 vices together entangle the living entity to the material planet. Devoid of ignorance is the State of Awareness. Lust is the first vice in the list of the 6 enemies of a living entity.
Lust is at the root of all these vices as it hijacks a person at the hormonal level. Its effect is first felt when we attain our teens. Under the influence of Lust, we end up labeling “Lust” as “Love”.
This is the first illusion that we come across.
6 Vices: Influence of Lust
In this state, you are incapable of analysis. Yet when someone studies the mundane that functions unconsciously within an individual, he observes that every activity is a result of the following condition.
Having thought about it and where thought forms the basis of any activity. When random throughts become the basis of an activity, it becomes Ignorance.
This is because thought first occurs and then comes action as a follow-up.
Any system that follows such a pattern is fundamentally a dead system. The other fueling agents are the six vices, which rudimentarily prosper in the thought world. In other words, any of the six vices fuel every material activity we perform.
However, in the initial stages, we consider them as just harmless thoughts. However, with time the living being realizes the toxicity of the activities. Symptoms like depression, loneliness, uncontrolled anger and passion, etc are results of untrained thoughts which give rise to unmindful activities.
Let us understand this with respect to ‘becoming better’ or ‘Working towards Improvement‘.
False Identity:Becoming Better
When we try to become better, there are many thoughts in relation to it.
The constant chattering of the mind, compels us to convert our thoughts into actions.
This action leads one to create a false identity. ‘When we become’, it means adopting something from the external plane and which is not our original self. It is apart from ourselves, usually picked up from our environment or our own dead programming that functions within us even during sleep.
Everything around us, is a combination of negative tendencies
The false identity, accepted by the world now becomes an extension of your ‘self’, thereby increasing the ‘volume of ignorance’.
Unconsciously, one continues this cycle of layering oneself with fancied identities.
Its propeller is our Attachment. We are immensely attached to our existence and identity. Our unconscious feelings of recognition, name, fame, etc tempt our mind and these emotions reflect in our actions.
Due to strong identification with the mind, one feels insecure if one does not abide by it. Thus, attachment to our existence leads us to commit repeated ignorant activities. ‘When all emotions evaporate’, this phrase refers to a state of vacuum in the heart.
It has no possession or preference. No prevalent emotion drives your life.
6 Vices: Effects of Vices in Daily Life
For Example Today, lust drives love and Greed drives possessiveness. Precisely, vices form the foundation of one’s existence.
But, when the dirt of the mind vanishes, leaving no impact on the heart, there appears a place for the stream of purity to flow within.
Only then can one experience love. Other than this state all so-called love is a farce. It is selfish.
6 Vices: Is it Lust or Love?
Nothing other than a state of emptiness is love.
Because emptiness is synonymous to love. Love is nothing other than selflessness and sacrifice. Sacrifice means considering not oneself but the other.
This love is not blind. It does not accept negative characteristics or untruth in the other. Reprimanding the other for siding untruth is love. Because love is caring for the other in the truest form. True love is considering the spiritual well being of another individual.
Material love does not follow any of these attributes of love and hence is not love at all. In the name of knowledge what perpetrates in the world is just a huge mass of ignorant mind-block.
When the heart is left spotlessly clean and thought sublimates, love remains. In such a state there is no thought that is restrictive or a thought that gives you a separate name or existence.
In love, there is no other. Also, there is no “mine” or “your” or “others”. Love is all inclusive and does not need knowledge to help spread fragrance.
6 Vices: Is Anger Really Toxic?
Anger is an expression, a release of emotions, experienced by almost every person on the planet. It is not always toxic. However, the nature of Anger is extremely subtle and important to understand, so that we can draw the right conclusion.
Anger when born out of attachment, falls under the category of a vice.
When you get angry at somebody to harm or cause pain, you are under the influence of ignorance. In this case, anger shall only cause problems, misconceptions and internal conflict.
However, there is a rare case of anger, which is called grace in many spiritual contexts.
This is not a vice and is thus extremely rare to find in the current age.
Today, this category of anger is extremely rare. People craving for sense enjoyment and pleasure cannot experience this type of anger. However, the anger of the ancient sages, like Sage Durvasa was born out of compassion.
It was their concern that took the form of anger, to instil seriousness in the living beings. Their anger was aiming at others’ welfare and it was a mark of their concern for society.
Only a person devoid of selfishness can display this type of anger.
Test your Alignment with the Spiritual Subject Matter (only 7 Questions)
The scores generated in this Quiz are relative. There are no right or wrong answers. A percentage towards 100 indicates that you are more aligned to the overall subject matter.
6 Vices: Greed, Pride, Attachment And Envy
These 4 vices work together to increase each other’s effect on the living entity.
Greed is wanting more than what is required. It is the tendency of hankering and satiating the stray desires that crops up in our mind. Desires have no end and so greed only increases unabatedly.
Satisfying greed is not possible. Hence, detestment and anger also set in as and when we encounter failure.
If greed is met up with one of its desires, Pride sets in. A sense of possession invites pride. Pride invites destruction. There are many references in our Puranas. The was of Mahabharatha is a living example of all the vices at play.
We must learn our lessons from each and every character of the Mahabharath. Because of Pride, the living entity becomes envious. This is an automatic, unconscious process that the mind churns out. To protect our name, fame and pride we tend to become individualistic.
This automatically brings forth envy wherein the individual does not want the others to do well.
This tendency is a result of deep attachment.
The root cause of Lust, Anger greed, pride and Envy is attachment. Attachment is the root of ignorance.
Our attachment to ourselves, our desires, etc is the root of all problems. If we become detached from our desires through the means of surrender, all other vices start losing its grip.
Attachment is the strongest of all vices.
