 indicates that these distracting desires that prevent us from acting in our best interests fall into three broad categories: lust, anger, and greed.
Lust (the desire to satisfy one's senses) and greed often fuel our desires for the many worldly objects that enter our vision and imagination, be they glitzy forms or gaudy products. These desires are innumerable and most of them are practically unfulfillable in real life. Consequently, a conscious or subconscious irritation builds up within us. When this irritation becomes intolerable, we succumb to anger, which perverts us into becoming sulky (mental) or snappy (verbal) or even beastly (physical). In this way, lust, greed, and anger cumulatively divert our mental focus away from the main goals of our life, both material and spiritual. The resulting inattentiveness makes us falter and blunder while pursuing those goals. As our plans misfire and backfire and nothing seems to be working in our lives, we get mentally exhausted and exasperated.)
Based on Bhagavad Gita Chapter 16, Text 21
We may sometimes feel fed up of the way things are going in our life; at such times, we feel mentally tired even when we are not physically tired. What causes this mental tiredness? Among its various causes, a common, major, and avoidable cause is the indiscriminate over-exertion of our power to desire. This over-exertion results from our unwittingly welcoming too many superfluous desires in our minds. The Bhagavad-gita (16.21) indicates that these distracting desires that prevent us from acting in our best interests fall into three broad categories: lust, anger, and greed.
Lust (the desire to satisfy one’s senses) and greed often fuel our desires for the many worldly objects that enter our vision and imagination, be they glitzy forms or gaudy products. These desires are innumerable and most of them are practically unfulfillable in real life. Consequently, a conscious or subconscious irritation builds up within us. When this irritation becomes intolerable, we succumb to anger, which perverts us into becoming sulky (mental) or snappy (verbal) or even beastly (physical). In this way, lust, greed, and anger cumulatively divert our mental focus away from the main goals of our life, both material and spiritual. The resulting inattentiveness makes us falter and blunder while pursuing those goals. As our plans misfire and backfire and nothing seems to be working in our lives, we get mentally exhausted and exasperated.
