Question:

In spite of my readings and video watching, I am still trying to understand the concept of dispassion. My friends tell me that when I talk about certain things, they can see how passionate I am. This can be motivating to people. So is to have dispassion, the opposite of that? Or is more like not having attachment to the passion?…meaning being neutral. I am not quite grasping the fact that “dispassion connects me to the present moment so totally that I can be 100% in what I am doing”… how does not being passionate make me that much more present?

Answer:

Let us dissect ‘passion’. What is Passion?

1. Passion begins with an impression …… an impression of pleasure stored in your memory from a past experience. This is called a notion. This notion may be related to a past person, situation, thing that gave you pleasure.
2. The notion ignites a spark of desire to experience the same pleasure from the past.
3. The spark says ” I want”. ” I want”, ” I want”, ” I want”…… This repetition of ” I want” again and again causes feverishness.
4. This feverishness expresses itself in various forms of speech, action and emotion. That expression of feverishness is called ‘passion’.

In Sanskrit, it is called ‘Vasana’. The Hindi word Vasana is taken from Sanskrit. This passion need not be just for ‘sex’ as it is mis-understood widely. Vasana means to ‘feverishly make home in the mind’ and any object can make home there and live rent free 😉

There are two types of Vasana.

1. Impure Vasana: It is a thirst for material objects – money, power, name, fame, sex, politics, position, relationships/family, face book, twitter, new gadgets, clothes, houses, cars, etc
2. Pure Vasana: It is a thirst for spirituality – feverish about the scriptural knowledge [memorizing verses like a parrot but lack of application in life], objects like beads/yantras/idols, aversion towards non-meditators, craving for becoming a spiritual teacher/swami, craving for being with the Guru physically, aversion towards things that are obstacles on your spiritual path, etc.

Passion is always related to an ‘object of vasana’. Dispassion is dropping the feverishness towards that object. Actually, you don’t need to drop the feverishness, it drops automatically with the maturity that flowers in you with spiritual wisdom. So keep walking this spiritual path, apply the ancient wisdom, work on your mind and emotions, meditate everyday and one day you will certainly experience true dispassion.