#shraddha

“There is a haunting verse in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad which says:

You are what your deep, driving desire is.

As your deep, driving desire is, so is your will;

As your will is, so is your deed;

As your deed is, so is your destiny.

The key word here is one of the most important terms in the Gita: shraddha. Shraddha has a wealth of meanings; it may be a deep desire, or strong conditioning, or the underlying assumptions which shape our thoughts and actions. The basic meaning is faith – not just intellectual adherence to something, but what we believe in, what we trust in, in our heart of hearts. Shraddha is the key to life. It

is our shraddha, our conditioned assumptions, that shapes our thoughts and actions, and it is our shraddha, our faith, that shapes our will and our destiny. We become what our shraddha is, because all of us live out what we believe and desire in the deepest recesses of our consciousness.”