Krodha, Mana, Maya, Lobha

There are different aspects of a human behavior. They can be characterized in many ways and often it is the perception that divides the behavior as good and bad. Jainism describes the human behaviors in a way we, the humans do not perceive it and those are:

Krodha (anger)

Mana (ego)

Maya (deceit)

Lobha (greed)

Krodha or anger is an issue with everybody unless you are a cognoscente of a religion or attained the highest level of discipline in your life. People like them do conquer over their anger with all the preaching and practice. On the other hand, for a common man like us, it becomes hard to control this with the advent of all the luxury and the need to lead a luxurious life. This need can be referred as the ‘lobha’ or the greed to get all the enhancements of human existence. And this leads to different passions called ‘mana’ or deceit and ‘maya’ or greed. Yes, we all are very familiar with this and while you read it you can think of many situations where you have demonstrated either of those.

The human ‘animal’ is designed in a way that always wants to go 2 steps ahead of the animals around. In doing so he gets inured to the distress. The distress is nothing but a non required, useless and illogical result of combination of the above mentioned behaviors.

You can lose a lot if you have those ‘qualities’ but there is no harm in losing these ‘qualities’ in order to gain a lot. It needs a lot of effort and dedication to find out where you stand in terms of anger, how often and to what extent you get angry; ego, what are the situations in life and materialistic things that enhances your ego or adds to it; deceit, what and/or who will make you deceit others and last but not the least greed, to what extent can you go to satisfy your greed.

We need to ask these questions to ourselves from time to time in order to keep a check. A check that can save us anywhere from a minor loss to a huge loss, the loss of a value, money, people or life. Few things that one can do to get over these negativities would be:

a) Say to yourself when you are angry: “My anger will not let me resolve this issue or will not let the other person get on track”. Everybody makes mistake and if someone had made mistake there is no need for you to get angry, patience is the KEY. You could do the same mistake at some point.

b) Say to yourself when you have an ego problem: “Putting someone down will just put me down in front of others”. You can and you will need people around you some or the other day. Why not be nice to all. Just think how you would feel if someone mistreated you.

c) Say to yourself when you want others to believe what is false: “Am I doing it right by giving the wrong information? What and how much will I gain by giving this false information?” Truth will come out someday then why not now. It’s always better to speak the truth now then later and bear the consequences than breaking someone’s trust.

d) Say to yourself when you have greed for something: “All the things that I can get by my greed with not make it with me to heaven/hell. They will remain in this world and will be possessed by someone else”. Whatever you greed for means that does not belong to you. If something is supposed to or belongs to you, you will get it someday.

Let’s just summarize the intent behind writing this article in one word, BELIVE IN HIM. He has given the powers for you to NOT misuse them. Make the right use of your existence. As a self exercise, find out how and in how many ways you can make use of what you are and improve yourself so society can benefit from it.