Are Desires the Root Cause of All Evils?

The wise, the sages, the realized and the spiritually evolved souls, all live their lives. When asked about desires or ambitions, they don't have any. Having desires or planning things, is something that they never indulge themselves in because they know that the universe is being run by some other force and that they don't have control over it. Thus situations are never in our hands but how we live with those situations, is something that we can take efforts for. This is where Purushartha comes in.

- Dr. Hansaji J. Yogendra

We all have desires and ambitions in our life. We have already thought about the results that we should be getting. When the results align with our thoughts, we become happy, otherwise, unhappy. Now, this is something that a wise person would never do. Arjuna the main hero of the Mahabharata war, is sad and depressed because he is disturbed about the outcome of the war, which is yet to begin. In the Bhagavad Gita, in the 2nd chapter, is a Shloka which is also the main Shloka, where Lord Krishna asks Arjuna, “Do you think you are very intelligent, very wise?” In the first place, to think that we are intelligent/wise is wrong. We do not know what wisdom we have in us. If we take up even a single subject we will not be able to know everything about it in our entire life.

Therefore Krishna is asking Arjuna, “Do you think you are very wise?”