Vaasana, Sadvaasana, Durvaasana

Vaasana, Sadvaasana, Durvaasana

Vaasana means that which exists and lives in the subconscious that drives our mental and physical actions.  Vaas means staying.  When we say there is 'Vaas' of this in here it means that thing is situated in here.  Word Niwaas which literally means home denotes where people live or  where people have their Vaas.   It is a common saying " This guy has the Vaas of Saraswati on his tongue"  meaning Saraswati lives on his tongue and  what he says, materializes. 

 

 Everything that is in the subconscious, is what has it's Vaas inside us.   Which really means all the past memories and impressions of past actions. This is easy to understand, even an illiterate person would say yes to that.

 

 How did Vaasana come to be used in a negative sensual sense ?  Because as human beings are mostly driven by the desires for  sense pleasures and because our  actions are driven by hidden tendancies, it came to be said that these sensual desires were a form of Vaasana.  The truly correct way to describe such drive for sensual pleasure should be termed " Durvaasana".  'Dur' means impure, non spiritual, wrong, sinful etc.  ( Durvaasa muni, had Vaas of lot of Dur-vaasanas in his psyche, such as getting really angry at trivial matters and giving Shraap or curses to people, he was angry at )

 

Vaasana is closely related to Samskaraas.  Samskaaras are cumulative effect of all the past experiences and actions of body, speech and mind, that we have engaged in, up until any given moment and those reside (have their  Vaas ) in our subconscious forever and they determine how we act in any given situation and moment.  so one could say that Samskaaras form the root and Vaasanas are  the offshoot from those Samskaaras resulting into actions of mind, speech and body.  

 

Sadvaasna is there:  when we are driven to perform  actions which are pure, charitable, Saatvic and  working towards God realization.

 

Durvaasana is there;   When we are driven to perform  actions which lead to  sensual pleasure, greed,are  hurtful to others and take one away from the path of God realization.

 

Because both of these are dependent on the samsaakas from previous and this life, to some extent we have limited control on these Vaasanas.  But one benefit of human life is that we do have some control on our actions ( Not 100% ), therefore we have the opportunity to input good Samsaakaras in our subconscious and with constant effort we can gradually increase the proportion of good Samsaakaras that have a Vaas in our subconscious, which in turn either later in this life or in the next life will give rise to more Sadvaasanas than Durvaasanas.