Knots of life

Vedanta speaks in length about the common man and his problems in life. This is not to despise him or condemn him. Unless we understand the root cause of the problems we experience we wont be able to come out of it.

Panchadasi speaks about the three main problems that makes a man of this world . They are ignorance , desire and action. This is repeated many times in many commentaries by Acharya Sankara also.

The absolute reality or Brahman is reflected in the pure consciousness of every being. However instead of understanding this , we are under the influence of the ego which looks at the outside world and treats it as a real thing. 

This is the ignorance part of it. Non perception of reality and acceptance of an illusion is the ignorance. As a result of this we are conscious of the worldly things of  objects and our mind is engrossed in thoughts for achieving various objects. 

If you look at most part of your life, you can see you have been constantly worried about many objects like money security etc which are the objects which satisfy the self as a body or ego. 

So we can see from where desires come. Desires are a natural outcome of accepting the illusory world of objects as real and also accepting that the self is an object namely the body. 

The desire therefore comes from two things our identity as an object and the external world of objects as real. 

Now look at your actions in life. The desires drive the actions. We go on running around to make sure that the objects of our life becomes mine. If we get them we are supposedly happy otherwise sad. 

It is said that the mind takes shape of whatever it is thinking about all the time. Since we go on thinking about the narrow world of objects including our own identity it becomes limited in extent , narrow and unable to see the true reality.

Therefore the three knots of life are avidya- kama- karma. 

You can take two approaches here. One is to just do right actions and leave the rest to destiny. In order to do that you need to know the right actions or dharma.This is what religion culture etc tell you. However we would never come out of our miseries even if we do this since we dont understand the true cause of our worries. The true cause is mistaken identity.

Vedanta tells you , you dont have to worry about the dharma etc provided you realize your true identity. Then you have the situation where the miseries no longer trouble you since you are above them and also the right actions appear in you. You become fearless, free and calm. This is why it takes the self enquiry as the most important part of our life.