If you know that you aren't your senses, you won't automatically conclude that what your senses want is what you want. You'll know that what your senses may want may not be good for you.

(On the other hand,) for a person who cultivates wisdom or true knowledge, the results are inner peace, satisfaction, patience, respect for others, freedom from duplicity, compassion, joyfulness, remembrance of his spiritual identity, freedom from the fear of death, freedom from anxiety and depression, and so on.

In Calcutta, India, for example, we can see the ridiculous sight of a starving, sore-infested man meditating on the side of the road: “I am God. I am God.” In America and Europe, you'll find many so-called yogis and gurus who are di

"There is more than enough food, water, fuel and so on to satisfy the actual needs of everyone on the planet. But there is not enough to satisfy everyone's greed. Even if it were physically possible for you to consume all the food water and fuel in the world, you still would not be satisfied " "material food" cannot satisfy spiritual craving. Since the materialist is never satisfied, he never feels that he has had enough."

Often people try so hard to find happiness through sense pleasure that they may attempt to gratify several or all of their senses at the same time. For example, you may simultaneously be watching TV, listening to the radio, munching potato chips, sipping beer, and smoking a cigarette. Perhaps you may have your arm around the shoulders of your girlfriend or boyfriend. You may also have a magazine at your side, which you look at during commercials. You try to fill up every sense; yet still you’re not satisfied; still you want something more.

The body is yours — but it is not you. The body is a garment that you are wearing, a machine that you are using, a vehicle that you are driving. The body is your possession. Just as a person does not identify himself as being the shirt he is wearing, he also should not identify himself with the body that he is wearing.

Racism is the identification of a person/self according to the race of the body that self is in. This is like identifying people with their shirts. If you walk along the street, you will see many different-colored shirts. If one of those shirts is purple, you don’t see the person wearing that shirt as a purple person; you see him as someone who merely is wearing a purple shirt. Racism is based on the inability to see that different-colored bodies are just like different-colored shirts.

We may think we are attracted to the beautiful body of a woman, but actually it is the spark of life which attracts us. When Marilyn Monroe “died”, when the life force left the material body, the body was no longer attractive. All that was left was a lump of unattractive matter that was thrown in the dirt. So is it logical to think that material energy is all-attractive? No. Life force or spirit is the attractive element.

(On the other hand,) the positive results of a society populated mostly by people who are serious about cultivating wisdom and spiritual understanding should be clear. If the citizens are peaceful, satisfied, respectful of others, compassionate, selfless, and so on, then society will be progressive both materially and spiritually.

THE SEARCH FOR WISDOM
The search for wisdom is a great challenge; to act on wisdom is an even greater challenge.