.... Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. HE ALONE REALIZES THE SELF, WHO IS FREE FROM THE CLUTCHES OF EGOISM, AND SPOTLESS LIKE THE MOON; HE REMAINS EVER-BLISSFUL AND SELF-ILLUMINED. CESSATION OF ACTION LEADS TO THE CESSATION OF ANXIETY, AND CESSATION OF ANXIETY LEADS TO THE ENDING OF DESIRE. THE ENDING OF DESIRE IS FREEDOM, AND THIS IS WHAT IS CALLED JIVAN MUKTI, OR FREEDOM IN LIFE...

... FAITH IN THE SUPREME REALITY. The ending of desire is freedom. Freedom is not something that you can achieve from without. You are not imprisoned by someone else, by others, by the world; you are imprisoned by your own desiring mind. Desiring is the slavery. The more we desire, the more we become slaves - by why? Why is desire a slavery? Because the moment one desires, one has become dependent. If the...

... desire is fulfilled, only then you can be happy; if the desire is frustrated, you will become a victim of suffering. And no desire is ever fulfilled. Desire as such, leads into frustration. That's why, the more one desires, the more suffering one creates around himself - not only suffering, but dependence also. If I desire someone, something, now my attention, my being, everything depends on that. If I...

... get - it is okay; if I cannot get... now I am always secondary; the primary thing has become the object of my desire. This primariness of the object of desire creates dependence, and we are all dependent. And there are so many masters, so many desires. We live in a flux of desires. Every desire creates dependence - this is way is meant by spiritual slavery. And the Eastern mind, particularly, has...

... been searching for freedom through religion - not heaven, not happiness, not bliss, but freedom. The search of religion is for freedom, and freedom means freedom from desire. If I am in a state of mind where no desire arises, where I can say, "I am desireless," then slavery becomes impossible. Then for the first time I am in myself - rooted, centered in myself; I am not moving. Desire is...

... movement. Then for the first time I am here and now, in the present; because desire is the future. Then for the first time I become existential, because desire is postponement. You desire - and you can desire only if you desire the future. Desire needs time, desire needs space to move; some day there will be the fulfillment, but it can never be here and now. So you cannot desire in the present. Really...

... future is CREATED by desire; it is not part of time. Future is not time; times is always the present. We go on dividing time into three categories: past, future, present. That division is false, existentially false. Future is desire and past is memory. Time is always present. There is no future time and there is no past time. Time is always now. Past means memories, and future means desires. You need...

... future to move, and when you move into the future you miss the present. And missing the present is missing everything. Missing the present you miss existence. Missing the present you miss your being. Take it from another direction: desire is becoming; it is to become something. A wants to become B; the poor man wants to become a rich man; the ugly face wants to become a beautiful face; the stupid mind...

... want to be intelligent. Desire is from A to B, from here to there. It is goal-oriented. Somewhere in the future, there will be fulfillment - but now there can be only discontent; now there can be only frustration. Now there can be only suffering, but you can deceive yourself: You can forget this suffering by moving into desire, by moving away from it. By moving into the future, you can forget the...

... present. So desire is really a drug. Desire is alcoholic, desire is like an intoxicant. It makes you postpone, it helps you; it creates the situation in which you can forget the situation - THAT WHICH IS - and can concentrate somewhere on some heaven, on some fulfillment in the future, in the future life. Desire moves in the form of becoming, and your existence is in the form of being. You ARE. Desire...

... that which is - you can never desire it. You cannot desire it, it is here and now. You can move into it immediately. Desire creates becoming; becoming becomes your slavery. You go on missing yourself, you go on missing your being. And that being is SATCHIDANDA; that being is existence, consciousness, bliss. Be desireless, and you will attain everything that can be attained. But how to be desireless...

...? How to go beyond desire? It creates a vicious circle: when we ask how to go beyond desire, we are creating a new desire - to go beyond. You cannot create a desire against desire; that's not possible, because the second desire will be as much a desire as the first. So what to do? Understand desire, analyze desire, penetrate desire, and see how suffering is created, how slavery is created, how you...

... create your own hells out of your own desires. Dig deep into desiring. Don't ask how to go beyond; rather, ask how to go more into the desire, to know and to understand. If you can understand that your suffering is created by your desire, that very understanding will become your transcendence. Because no one asks for suffering, but everyone desires, and suffering comes through desire. No one wants to...

... be dependent, in slavery, but everyone desires, and slavery comes through desire. If you go deep into desire, then you will become aware of the whole of the desiring mind, what it is. It is suffering, it is dependence, it is hell. But don't believe me, because by believing me - or by believing the UPANISHAD - you will be escaping your own effort to understand. Believers are always deceivers; they...

... go on deceiving themselves. But they don't want to understand desire, so they say, "If you say that desire is suffering, we will believe it. But belief will not be of any help. You can believe it, but you will go on desiring. Belief will not destroy your desiring. You will have to understand; and no one else can understand for you. It is like death: I cannot die for you; you will have to die...

... to know it. Understanding is like love: I cannot love for you; you will have to love, you yourself will have to love - servants cannot do it for you. Howsoever rich you are, you cannot engage servants for your love. Love, death, understanding, freedom - These are the three deepest possibilities of the human being. They cannot be transferred to anyone. So don't BELIEVE that desire is suffering; try...

... to know, try to understand your own desires. And if you understand your own desire, you will see that suffering follows as a shadow. And if you want that suffering to go, then desire must go. But I say desire must go, I don't mean that you have to force it to go. I mean you have to understand it. The moment you understand your desire and the hell that is hidden in it, you have transcended it, you...

... have gone beyond it. THE ENDING OF DESIRE IS FREEDOM. AND THIS IS WHAT IS CALLED JIVAN MUKTI, OR FREEDOM IN LIFE ITSELF. And remember this: Don't wait for death to come and make you free. Death will not help you. Unless you become free in life, death is not going to help. But there are many who go on postponing.... Someone was asking me, "Why do you give sannyas to young people? Sannyas is for...

... old men." Sannyas is NOT for old men, I don't mean that if you are old, don't take sannyas. It is late, but never too late. Why do we think that religion is not for young people? - because we think religion is something related with death, something to do with old age when one becomes impotent, when one becomes powerless. When one cannot move in desire, then it is good to be desireless, then it...

... is good to renounce. When you cannot do anything, renounce the world. But remember well: When the world has renounced you, you cannot renounce it, mm? That's a deception. While you are young, full of desire, that is the right moment to understand desire. Because when desire is young, when desire is powerful, you can understand it in a very clear perspective. When desire has become dull, muddled...

..., muddied, dead, you cannot understand. When desire is fresh, understand it - this is the moment. And a fresh desire understood, releases much energy; and that energy become freedom. When desire is already dead, you are not free from it. When desire is alive, that is the right moment, because desire is filled with energy, If you understand it and desire disappears, the energy will remain there. Desire...

... will disappear, but the energy? - the energy will be left behind. That energy can become a medium to go beyond. Without energy, no inner movement is possible. Desire is wasting your energy in downward movement. When desire disappears through understanding, energy remains, and energy goes on accumulating. You become a reservoir; and when you are a reservoir of energy, you can move now, inwards. It...

... would be better to say you need not move really; the energy itself begins to move - because energy IS movement. Energy needs movement; if it is not moving downward, it will move upward; energy WILL move! Energy cannot be static. Energy means dynamism; energy is dynamic. Energy needs movement. If there is no desire, then energy cannot move downward - desire is the downward movement. Then energy cannot...

... move outward - desire is the outward movement for something which is there in the future, for something which is outside, for something which you don't have, so energy moves outward. When there is no desire and you have energy, the energy itself begins to move inward and upward, and you are carried by that energy to newer realms, to a transformed being. Do it in life. Do it while you are young. DO...

... in the same circle. But this is what happens. A person who has become frustrated in life begins to desire death. It again becomes a desire. He is not desiring death; he is desiring something else other than his life. So even a person who is filled with a lust for life can commit suicide, but this suicide is not nondesiring; it is really desiring something else. This is a very interesting point, one...

...Total Desire: The Path to Desirelessness...

... Osho Meditation The Art of Ecstasy: Total Desire: The Path to Desirelessness Main Books Headers Help Your browser does not support iframes. < Prev  Osho Meditation The Art of Ecstasy   Next > Total Desire: The Path to Desirelessness From: Osho Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT Book Title: Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy Chapter #: 11 Location: India Archive Code: N.A. Short...

... is right here and now, by the corner - present every moment. Once you begin to look for it, you become aware of it. It is here, you were just overlooking the fact; not even overlooking the fact, escaping it. So enter into death, jump into it. This is the arduousness of meditation, this is the austerity of it: one has to jump into death. To go on loving life is a deep lust, and to be ready to die...

... somehow looks unnatural. Of course, death is one of the most natural things, but it looks unnatural to be ready to die. This is how the paradox, how the dialectics of existence works: if you are ready to die, this very readiness makes you undying; but if you are not ready to die, this very unreadiness, this overattachment and lust for living, makes you a dying phenomenon. When we assume any attitude, we...

... always reach the opposite. This is the deep dialectics of existence. The expected never comes; the longed-for is never achieved; the desire is never fulfilled. The more you desire it, the more you lose it. Whatever the dimension may be, it makes no difference; the law remains the same. If you ask too much of anything, by the very asking you lose it. If someone asks for love he will not get love...

... being lost. The more I close in, the more I lose. Only with an open hand can love be possessed; only with an open hand, only with a nonclosing mind, can love become a flowering. And this happens with everything. If you love life too much, you become closed; you become like a dead person even while you are alive. So a person who is filled with lust for life is a dead person; he is already dead, just a...

... corpse. The more he feels to be just a corpse, the more he yearns to be alive - but he does not know the dialectics. The very longing is poisonous. A person who does not long for life at all - a person like Buddha, with no lust for life - lives ardently. He flowers into aliveness perfectly, totally. The day Buddha died someone said to him, "Now you are dying. We will be missing you so much, for...

... eternal continuity, a timeless continuity. So do not be concerned with life at all, not even your own life. And if you are not interested in life, then you cannot desire even death, because desire is life. If you become interested in, and desirous of, death, you are again desiring life - because you cannot desire death really. To desire death is an impossibility. How can you desire death? Desire itself...

... means life. So when I say, "Do not be interested in life too much," I do not mean, "Be interested in death." When I say, "Do not be interested in life," then you become aware of a fact... which is death. But you cannot desire it; it is not a desire really. When I talk about an open fist, it will be good to understand: you have to close your fist, but you do not have to...

... begun to desire again. Rather, nondesiring is just the absence of desiring. You must feel the distinction. When we say "nondesiring" in words, it becomes the opposite. But nondesiring is not the opposite of desiring; it is simply the absence of desiring, not the opposite. If you make it the opposite, you begin to desire again - you are desiring nondesire - and when this happens, you are back...

... of the ultimate points of the whole search. If you turn to the opposite thing, then you are in the wheel again, in the vicious circle again. And you will never be out of it. But this happens. A person renounces life, goes to the forest, or in search of the divine, or in search of liberation or whatever. But now again desire is there. He has simply changed the object of desire, not desire itself...

.... The object now is not wealth; it has become God. The object is not this world; it has become that world. But the object remains; the desiring is the same, the thirst is the same - and the tension and the anguish will be the same. The whole process will simply be repeated again with a new object. You can go on changing the objects of your desire for lives and lives, but you will remain the same...

... because the desiring will be the same. So when I say "nondesiring," I mean the absence of desiring: not the futility of the object, but the futility of desiring itself. It is not the realization that this world is nonsense, because then you will desire the other world. It is not that life is useless so now you must desire death, annihilation, cessation, nirvana. No, I mean the futility of...

... desiring itself. The very desiring drops. No object is replaced, substituted; desire just becomes absent. And this absence, this very absence, becomes life eternal. But that is a happening: it is not because of your desire. It is a spontaneous outcome of nondesiring, it is not a consequential result. This happens... but you cannot make this happening your desire. If you do, you miss the point. When the...

... be there. You will not be just sitting; you cannot just sit if there are any desires. The desire will be a subtle movement in you, and the movement will continue. You may be sitting like a stone or like a buddha, but still within the stone will be moving. Desire is movement." You cannot remain just sitting if there is a desire. It may appear as if you are, everyone may say that you are just...

... sitting, but you cannot be just sitting; you can just sit only when desiring is absent. To "just sit" is not a new desire, just an absence; all desiring has become a futility. You are not frustrated with life because of objects. Religious people go on telling others that there is nothing in women, there is nothing in the world, there is nothing in sex, there is nothing in power. But these are...

... all objects. They are still saying there is nothing in these objects: they are not saying there is nothing in desiring itself. You can change objects and you can create new objects of desire. Even eternal life can become an object; again, the circle sets in - the fact of desiring. You have desired everything, you have desired too much. If you can feel this very fact of desiring - that desiring is...

... futile, meaningless - then you will not create another object to desire; then desiring ceases. Become aware of it and it ceases. Then there is an absence, and this absence is silent because there is no desire. With desire you cannot be silent; desire is the real noise. Even if you have no thoughts - if you have a controlled mind and you can stop thinking - a deeper desire will continue, because you are...

... you always become aware that some object has become futile. Then you change the object, and in changing the object the desire continues to take hold of your consciousness. It always happens that when this house becomes useless then another house becomes attractive; when this man becomes unattractive, repulsive, then another man becomes attractive. This goes on; and the moment you become aware of the...

... futility of what you are desiring, the mind goes on to some other objects. When this happens, the gap is lost. When something becomes futile, useless, unattractive, remain in the gap.... Be aware of whether the object has become futile or whether it is desiring itself that is futile. And if you can feel the very futility of desire, suddenly something drops in you. Suddenly you are transformed to a new...

... level of consciousness. This is a nothingness, an absence, a negativity; no new circle begins. In this moment, you are out of the wheel of samsara, the world. But you cannot make it an object of your desire to be out of the wheel. Do you feel the distinction? You cannot make desirelessness an object. Question 1: WASN'T BUDDHA'S DESIRE FOR REALIZATION A DESIRE? Yes, it was a desire; Buddha had the...

... desire. When Buddha said, "I will not leave this place. I am not going to leave unless I achieve enlightenment," it was a desire. And with this desire, a vicious circle set in. Even for Buddha it set in. Buddha could not achieve enlightenment for a long time because of this desire. Because of it, he searched and searched for six years. He did everything that was possible to be done, that...

... of so much fasting that he could not come out of the river. He just remained there by the root of a tree. He was so weak that he could not step out of the river. The thought came to his mind that if he had become so weak that he could not even cross a small river, then how could he cross the greater ocean of existence? So on that particular day, even the desire to achieve realization became futile...

... deeper nightmare. He was completely frustrated; there was nothing left to desire. He had known the world very well - he had known it very well - and he could not go back to it; there was nothing for him there. He had known the effort of so-called religions, of all the religions that were prominent in India; he had practiced all of their techniques, and nothing had come of it. There was nothing else to...

... try now, no motivation remained, so he just dropped down on the ground near the bodhi tree and for the whole night he remained there - without any desire. There was nothing left to desire; desiring itself had become futile. In the morning, when he awakened, the last star was setting. He looked at the star and for the first time in his life his eyes were without any mist, because he was without any...

... desire. The last star was setting, and as the star set, something in him withered with it: the self, because the self cannot exist without desiring. And he became enlightened. This enlightenment came at a moment when there was no desire. And it had been prevented by six years of desiring. Really, the phenomenon happens only when you are out of the circle. So even Buddha, because of desiring...

... enlightenment, had to wander uselessly for six years. This moment of transformation - this jumping out of the circle, out of the wheel of life - only comes, only happens, when there is no desire. Buddha said, "I achieved it when there was no achieving mind; I found it when there was no search. This happened only when there was no effort." This, again, becomes a very difficult thing to understand...

... desire. Just as it is impossible to hear with the eyes or to see with the hands, it is impossible for the mind to conceive or to feel that which happens when you are not doing anything. The mind has no memory of such a thing. It knows only things that can be done and that cannot be done; it knows only things in which it succeeds and in which it fails. But it has not known anything which happens when...

... nothing is done. So what to do? Start with a desire. That desire is not going to lead you to the point of the happening, but that desire can lead you to the futility of that desire. One has to begin with desire; it is impossible to begin with no desire. If you could begin with no desire, then the happening would happen this very moment; then no technique, no method, would be needed. If you could begin...

... with no desire, this very moment it happens. But that is impossible. You cannot begin with no desiring. The mind will make this nondesiring also a desired object. The mind will say, "Okay, I will try not to desire." It will say, "Really, it looks fascinating. I will try to do something so that this no desiring happens." But the mind is bound to have some desire. It can begin only...

... with desire, but it may not end in desire. One has to begin with desiring something that cannot be achieved by desiring. But if you are aware of this fact - if you are aware of the fact that you are desiring something that cannot be desired - it helps. This awareness of the fact helps; now, any moment, you can take the jump. And when you take the jump, there will be no desiring. You have desired the...

... world; now desire the divine. That is how one has to begin. The beginning is wrong, but you have to begin that way because of this built-in process of the mind. This is the only way to change it. For example, I tell you that you cannot go through the wall to get to the outside; you have to go through the door. And when I say, through the door, "door" means only the place where there is no...

... door becomes more of a possibility, more of a potential. Your search becomes deeper through this. Mind is desiring. The mind cannot do anything without desire. You cannot transcend the mind through desiring, because the mind is the desiring. So the mind has to desire even that which is found only when there is no desire. But begin with the wall. Know desire, and you will stumble upon the door. Even...

... Buddha had to begin with a desire, but no one told him - the fact was not known to him - that the door opens only when there is no desire. As I understand it, struggling with desire is the disease. Giving up the struggle is the freedom. That is the only real death: when you just give up. If you can just lie down and die with no struggle to live, without even an indication of struggle, that death can...

... become a realization. If you just lie down and accept - with no movement inside, with no desire, with no help to be found, with no way to be sought - if you just lie down and accept, that acceptance will be a great thing. It is not so easy. Even if you are lying down, the struggle is still there. You may be exhausted: that is another thing. That is not acceptance, that is not readiness; somewhere in...

... the mind you are still struggling. But, really, to lie down and die with no struggle makes death become ecstasy. Death becomes samadhi; death becomes realization. And then you say, "Of course!" You may not have the desire to go out of this room. The desire to come out can come only in two ways. The first is that somehow you have had a glimpse of something of the outside from a hole in the...

... wall or from the window - somewhere you have had a glimpse; or, somehow, in some mysterious way, in some moment, the door opened and you had a glimpse. This happens and goes on happening: in some mysterious moment the door opens for just a single moment like a flash of light and then closes again. You have tasted something of the outside; now the desire comes. The desire comes: you are in the dark...

... door suddenly opens and you have a taste. These things cannot be arranged; they are accidents. They cannot be arranged. When someone is in love, a door opens for a moment; this opening is really a happening. In deep love, somehow your desire ceases. The very moment is enough; there is no desire for the future. If I love someone, then in that very moment of love the mind is not. This moment is...

... remain just in the moment, then it sometimes happens; then you can glimpse something of the beyond. In some accident, it can happen. In a motor accident, it can happen. Things stop suddenly. Time stops. You cannot desire because there is no time/space to desire in. Your car is falling from a height; as it falls, you cannot remember the past, you cannot desire for the future. The moment has become all...

.... In this moment, it can happen. So there are two ways through which the desire to go beyond is created. The first is that somehow you have had a taste of the beyond. But this cannot be planned: you have it or you don't have it. Still, once you have had this taste you begin to desire it. The desire can become a hindrance - it becomes a hindrance - but still, that is how things begin; first you have...

... to desire nondesiring. Or it happens in another way. The other way is that you have no taste of the beyond - none! You have not known the beyond at all, but this room has become a suffering; you cannot tolerate it anymore. You do not know the beyond at all, but whatever it may be, you are ready to choose it, even though it is unknown, because this room, this very room, has become a misery, a hell...

.... You do not know what is beyond - whether there is anything or not, whether the beyond exists or not - but you cannot remain in this room anymore; this room has become a suffering, a hell. Then you try - then you begin to desire the unknown, the beyond. Then again there is desire: the desire to escape from here. But you have to begin with a desire for that which cannot be desired, for that which...

... the grace, that's all; but it is not as a direct result of your efforts that grace descends upon you. This is how religious people have been trying to express this same phenomenon. A Buddha, or a type with a mind like Buddha's, will express it more scientifically. Buddha would not have used the word grace, because he would have said that you will even long for grace, desire grace. One can even...

... desire grace, and go to the temple and cry and weep and ask for divine grace. So Buddha said, "It will not work. There is no such thing as grace. When you are in a nondesiring state of mind, it happens." So it depends. It depends! It may be meaningful for someone as long as he understands that grace cannot be asked for, cannot be requested, cannot be demanded, cannot be persuaded - because if...

... Length: 94 mins The first question: BELOVED OSHO, YOU MUST HAVE TOLD US SO MANY TIMES ALREADY, BUT I STILL DON'T GET IT: WHAT IS THE SEED OF DESIRE? IS IT ONLY IN THE EXISTENCE OF MIND? AND HOW IS THE DESIRE OF THE BODY FOR SEX RELATED TO THE MIND? Anurag, the energy called desire has been condemned for centuries. Almost all the so- called saints have been against it, because desire is life and they...

... were all life-negative. Desire is the very source of all that you see, and they were against all that which is visible. They wanted to sacrifice the visible at the feet of the invisible; they wanted to cut the roots of desire so there would no longer be any possibility of life. A tremendously great urge to commit total suicide has dominated humanity down the ages. I have a totally different concept...

... of desire. First, desire itself is God. Desire without any object, desire without being goal-oriented, unmotivated desire, pure desire, is God. The energy called desire is the same energy as God. Desire has not to be destroyed, it has to be purified. Desire has not to be dropped, it has to be transformed. Your very being is desire; to be against it is to be against yourself and against all. To be...

... against it is to be against the flowers and the birds and the sun and the moon. To be against it is against all creativity. Desire is creativity. The Eastern scriptures are perfectly right when they say that God created the world because a great desire arose in him -- a desire to create, a desire to manifest, a desire to make many from one, a desire to expand. But these are only metaphors; God is not...

... separate from desire. Desire means a longing, a great longing, to expand, to become huge, to be enormous -- as huge as the sky. Just watch people, watch desires, and you will understand what I mean. Even in your ordinary desires, the basic thing is present. In fact what the man who wants to have more and more money really wants is not money but expansion, because money can help you expand. You can have a...

... unconscious, help him to meditate, and you will be surprised and he will be surprised to find that the desire for money is not really the desire for money, it is the desire to expand. And the same is the case with all other desires. Men want more power, more fame, longer life, better health, but what are they desiring in these different things? The same, exactly the same: they want to be more. They don't...

... want to remain confined, they don't want to be limited. It hurts to feel that you are definable, because if you are definable then you are just an object, a thing, a commodity. It hurts that you have limitations, because to have limitations means to be imprisoned. But all these objects of desire, sooner or later, disappoint. Money becomes possible one day, and yet expansion has not happened; you may...

... have a little more freedom of choice, but that does not satisfy. The desire was for the infinite, and money cannot purchase the infinite. Yes, you have more power, you are more well-known, but that doesn't really matter in the long run. Millions of people have lived on this earth and were very famous, and now nobody even knows their names. Everything has disappeared into dust -- dust into dust, not...

... poor man can have. The rich man becomes hopeless. He knows now the money will go on increasing and nothing is going to happen -- just death, only death. He has tasted all kinds of things; now he only feels a tastelessness. A kind of death has already happened, because he cannot conceive of how to fulfill that desire for expansion. But desire in itself is not wrong. The desire for money, the desire...

... for power, the desire for prestige, are wrong objects for desire -- let it be very clear. By having wrong objects of desire, desire itself does not become wrong. You can have a sword and you can kill somebody -- that does not make the sword something wrong. You can also save somebody with the same sword. Poison can kill and poison can become medicine too. In the right hands, poison is nectar; in the...

... wrong hands, nectar is poison. This is the essential wisdom of all the buddhas of all the ages. What the priests say is one thing; what the buddhas have brought to the world is totally different, it is diametrically opposite. Desire has to be purified and transformed, because it is your energy -- you don't have any other energy. How to transform desire? One way, the ordinary way, the mediocre way, is...

... to change the object. Don't go after money, start going after God. You are frustrated with money -- become religious, go to the church, to the temple, to the mosque. Let your desire have a new object called God, which is as illusory as the object called money, even more illusory, because what do you know about God? Money at least is something visible, objective; you have known it, you have seen it...

.... What do you know of God? You have only heard the word. God remains a word unless experienced. God remains an empty word unless you pour some content into it through your own existential experience. People, when they are frustrated with worldly desires, start changing the object: they start making otherworldly objects of desire -- heaven, paradise, and all the joys of heaven. But it is the same trick...

..., the mind is again befooling you. This is not the way of the intelligent person, this is the way of the stupid. What is intelligence? Intelligence means the insight that no object can fulfill your desire. No object, I say, and I say it categorically, no object can ever fulfill your desire. Your desire is divine. Your desire is as big as the sky -- even the sky is not a limit to it. No object can fill...

... it. Then what is to be done? The intelligent person stops desiring objects. He makes his desire pure of all objects -- worldly, otherworldly. He starts living his desire in its purity, moment to moment. He is full of desire, full of overflowing energy. His ordinary life becomes so intense, so passionate, that whatsoever he touches will be transformed. The baser metal will become gold, and the dead...

... tree will come to bloom again. It is said of Buddha that wherever he moved, dead trees would start growing leaves; out of season, trees would bloom. These are beautiful poetic expressions of a certain metaphysical truth. Buddha is pure desire, just desire. Not a desire for anything; he has abandoned all objects. Let me remind you, first he abandoned the world. He was a prince, he was born to be a...

... exactly twenty-nine -- because the more you become experienced in worldly ways, the more cowardly you become. Religion is for the courageous, religion is for the brave, religion is for the young, those who are still able to take the risk, those who are still able to gamble. Buddha escaped. Seeing the futility, he escaped in search of God, in search of truth. He replaced his desire for the world with the...

... desire for God, truth, nirvana. For six years he worked hard. By the time he was thirty-five he was utterly spent. He had done all that was possible, humanly possible, to do. He fasted for months, meditated, practiced yoga. And in those days there were different kinds of schools. He went from one teacher to another, from one school to another, he practiced all possible methods. And one day it suddenly...

... it very wrongly. They say that in that moment he became desireless. But try to understand what I am trying to convey to you. He became objectless, not desireless. You cannot become desireless. Desire is your very life, your breath, your heartbeat; desire is your being. But certainly a transformation happened; he became objectless. This-worldly, otherworldly, all desires in toto disappeared as...

... objects, not desire as energy. There was no object; pure energy was felt, a desiring for nothing, a pure desire moving nowhere, a pure desire herenow. That very night he attained enlightenment. Having nothing to desire, he rested under a tree and fell asleep. For the first time he really slept. When there is nothing to desire, there is nothing to dream about either, because dreams are reflections of...

..., and all that. Today there was nothing left! Utter emptiness. But do you think he died? No, he was born. Objects were not there. Now the desire was pure -- just a throb, a pulsation, just a passion for nothing in particular. Resting under the tree with open eyes, he must have been seeing the sky in the east becoming red, and then the sunrise. And with the rising sun and with the sky turning red, and...

... with the last star of the night disappearing, he became enlightened. What does this word enlightenment mean? It simply means desire was freed from all objects. He became pure love, compassion, pure life. And this pure life has tremendous beauty and ecstasy; with this pure life you have attained the infinite. Desire remains small because you confine it to small objects, desire remains small because...

... you desire small things. Seeing it, people start desiring big things -- but big things are also small things; howsoever big they are, they have limitations. Just think of your God. How big is he? Egyptians used to say he is seven feet tall -- nothing much. There are many Dutch sannyasins here. Whenever I see a Dutch sannyasin, I remember the Egyptians and the Egyptian gods. Indians say he has three...

... him! "Nothing can be said about him" is a statement, and all statements define. You can move from small objects to bigger and bigger objects, but still your desire, your life, will not feel fulfilled. It cannot feel fulfilled unless it is really infinite, not in conceptions but in experience, and unless you taste the infinity of existence. Desire is beautiful, there is nothing wrong in it...

... -- only free it from objects. With freedom from objects, desire is divine. Anurag, you say, "You must have told us so many times already, but I still don't get it...." Just by my saying it, you are not going to get it. You will have to move into experience. It is not a philosophical system of thought that I am conveying to you. I am only pointing towards a path; the path has to be followed...

... it. It is so simple; to have understood it would have been simple. But it is a question of an energy communication. And, slowly slowly, I will turn the commune into an energy communication. Words can take you only so far, then it has to become a meeting of energies. You have to be electrified by me. You have to allow my pure desiring, my pure energy. It is objectless; I don't desire a thing, I am...

... simply desire. If you allow yourself to come in contact with this energy, there will be a transformation, a turning point, a conversion. You say, "What is the seed of desire?" There is no seed of desire. Desire is the seed of all. Desire is the ultimate seed. God desired to be man, God desired to expand, God desired to create. Desire is the seed of everything! If you ask me, I will say God is...

... desire -- that's why he could desire. Only desire can desire. You ask, "Is it only in the existence of mind?" No. The mind has only a very tunnel vision. The mind is as if you are hiding behind a door and looking through the keyhole. Yes, sometimes you can see a bird on the wing, but for only a split second, and then it is gone. You see somebody passing by -- a beautiful woman, a beautiful...

... the other is gone also. You ask me, "What is the seed of desire?" Anurag, there is no seed of desire. Desire is the ultimate seed of all other seeds. And you ask, "Is it only in the existence of mind?" No. The mind has only a little glimpse of desire, just a flickering glimpse of desire. Mind knows nothing of desire; mind only knows about desiring this and desiring that. Desiring...

... money, desiring power, desiring prestige -- mind knows about desires for objects. When the objects are no more there, desire is no more part of the mind. Then desire is beyond mind; then desire is simply an overflowing energy. William Blake says desire is energy and energy is delight. I have heard a rumor that Sargama, one of our sannyasins, is a direct descendant of William Blake. We have beautiful...

... true. Desire is energy, energy is delight. Contemplate over it. Just pure desire, just overflowing energy, for no particular object, for no destination. That's what you have to remember when you come to me for an energy darshan, for a "close-up." Just become pure desire, just an overflowing desire, for nothing in particular. Don't wait for any experience. Experiences will come, but don't...

... wait for them. If you wait, you will miss, because when you are waiting for an experience you are no more in the herenow. You have already missed the point; the mind has come in. The object has obstructed the purity of desire. When you are in an energy darshan with me, when you are partaking of something of my energy, just be pure desire -- going nowhere, moving nowhere, just thrilled for no reason...

... kundalini to rise, you may have a certain sensation rising in your spine, but what is it? It is pointless. It may give you a kick, a spiritual kick, but then it is gone. With me, just be pure desire -- swaying with me, moving with me, dancing with me, allowing me to penetrate you to your deepest core, to the deepest core of your desire, to the very seed. And then something immense, something incredible...

..., something you cannot imagine, is possible -- an entry of the beyond into you, the meeting of the earth and sky. You say, "Is it only in the existence of mind?" No, the mind is a barrier. It allows desire only little outlets -- and desire is an ocean. The mind has to be dropped, not desire; the mind has to be dropped so that you can have total desire. And you ask, "And how is the desire in...

... time when you are creative, sex disappears. If you are painting and totally absorbed in it, you don't have any sexual desire. Sex simply does not cross the threshold of your mind; it is simply not there. Only in deep creativity are people celibate, in no other way. Your saints, so-called saints, are not celibate -- because they are so uncreative, they cannot be. It is impossible; it is just against...

... trying to convey to you, but whenever a poet is a poet, he is celibate. Sexuality simply disappears, evaporates. And whenever a poem is born in a poet he is part of God, he is a creator. In that moment it is impossible to give any object to your desire. Sex gives an object to your desire. Sex is not pure, cannot be, because the object is always there. The moment sex becomes pure, it is samadhi. The...

... a totally different feel to it, and constantly you will remain aware that you are separate, that you are a pure witness. And that pure witness is pure desire and nothing else. I am not against desire. I am all for desire, but I am not for desires with objects. Let objects disappear, and then you will have a desire like a flame without any smoke. It brings great liberation. The second question...

... Archive Code: N.A. Short Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. The first question: Question 1: "YOU SAID YESTERDAY THAT THE MOTIVATION TOWARDS LIBERATION OR SAMADHI IS ALSO A TENSION AND A BARRIER. BUT IS IT NOT CORRECT THAT IT IS NOT A DESIRE BUT AN ASPIRATION - THE INTRINSIC THIRST OF THE HUMAN BEING?" You must understand what desire means, and religions have...

... confused you much about it. If you desire something of the world, they call it desire. If you desire something of the other world, they call it by a different name. This is absurd. Desire is desire! It makes no difference what the object of desire is. The object may be anything - of this world, material, or of another world, spiritual - but desiring remains the same. Every desire is a bondage. Even if...

... you desire God, it is a bondage; even if you desire liberation it is a bondage. And liberation cannot happen unless this desiring goes away totally. So remember, you cannot desire liberation, that is impossible; that is contradictory. You can become desireless, and then liberation happens. But that is not a result of your desire. Rather, it is a consequence of no-desire. So try to understand what...

... desire is. Desire means that right now you are not okay, you are not at ease. This very moment you are not at ease with yourself, and something else in the future, if fulfilled, will bring you peace. The fulfillment is always in the future; it is never here and now. This tension of the mind for the future is desire. Desire means you are not in the present moment, and all that is there is only the...

... present moment. You are somewhere in the future, and the future is not. It never has been, it will never be. All that is, is always the present - this moment. This projection of your fulfillment somewhere in the future is desire. So what that future fulfillment is, is irrelevant. It may be the kingdom of God, heaven, NIRVANA, it may be anything, but if it is in the future, it is desire. And you cannot...

... desire in the present, remember; that is not possible. In the present you can only be, you cannot desire. How can you desire in the present? Desire leads into the future, into fantasy, dreaming. That is why so much insistence by Buddha for no-desire - because only in no-desire do you move into reality. With desire you move into dreams. The future is a dream, and when you project into the future you are...

... divine, you will have moved away into the future. Your mind is always moving into the future. This movement of the mind in the future is desire. Desire is not concerned with any object, with whether you desire sex or you desire meditation - it makes no difference. Desiring is the thing - that you desire. It means you are not here. It means you are not in the real moment, and the present moment is the...

... only door into existence. The past and future are not doors, they are walls. So I cannot call any desire spiritual. Desire as such is worldly. Desire is the world. There is no spiritual desire; there cannot be. That is a trick of the mind, a deception. You don't want to leave desiring, so you change the objects. First you were desiring wealth, prestige, power. Now you say you don't desire and that...

... these are worldly things. You condemn them, and those who desire them are condemned in your eyes. Now you desire God, the kingdom of God, NIRVANA, MOKSHA, the eternal, SATCHITANANDA, the brahman. Now you desire these, and you feel very good. You think you are transformed, but you have not done anything. You remain the same. You are just playing tricks with yourself, and now you are in a greater mess...

... because you think that this is not desiring. You remain the same. The mind remains the same; the functioning of the mind remains the same. You are not yet here. The objects of desire have changed, but the running, the dreaming, remains, and the dreaming is the desire - not the object. So try to understand me. I say that every desire is worldly because desire is the world. So it is not a question of...

... changing the desire, it is not a question of changing objects. It is a question of a mutation, of a revolution from desire to no-desire; from desire to no-desire, not from old desires to new desires, from worldly desire to otherworldly desires, from material desires to spiritual desires - no! From desire to no-desire is the revolution! But how to move from desire to no-desire? You can move only if there...

... is some desire. If some profit motive, some greed, some gain is there, only then can you move from desire to no-desire. But then you are not moving at all. I say that with no-desire you will attain eternal bliss. This is right - that with no-desire eternal bliss happens - but if I say to you that with no-desire you will gain eternal happiness, you will make it an object of the desire and then you...

... will have missed the point completely. It is not a result, it is a consequence of deep understanding. So try to understand that with desire there is misery, and don't think that you know it already. You don't know; otherwise how can you move into desire? You have not yet become aware that desire is misery, desire is hell. Be aware When you desire something be aware. Then move with the desire in full...

... alertness, and then you will reach hell. Every desire leads to misery, whether fulfilled or not. If fulfilled, it leads sooner; unfulfilled it takes time - but every desire leads to misery. Be alert of the whole process, and move with it. There is no hurry because nothing can be done in a hurry, and spiritual growth is not possible in a hurry. Move slowly, patiently. Watch every desire and then watch how...

... every desire becomes a door to hell. If you are watchful, sooner or later you will realize that desiring is hell. The moment that realization happens, there will be no desire. Suddenly desires will disappear, and you will be in a state of no-desire. I don't say desirelessness, I simply say "no-desire." You cannot practice it, remember; only desires can be practiced. How can you practice no...

...-desire? You cannot practice it, you can only practice desires. But if you are alert, you will become aware that they lead to misery. And when each desire leads to misery, when this becomes a realization to you - not mere opinion and knowledge, but a realized fact - desiring disappears, it becomes impossible. How can you lead yourself into misery? You are always "leading yourself to happiness"...

...; - thinking that you are - and always moving into misery. This has been happening for lives and lives. You always think this or that is the door of heaven, and when you have entered you always realize that this is hell. And this has been without any exception; it is always the case. Move with mindfulness in every desire, and allow every desire to lead you to misery. Then, suddenly, one day the maturity will...

... happen to you, this ripeness will happen to you: you will realize that every desire is misery. The moment you realize it, desiring disappears. There is no need to do anything now; desiring simply falls away, withers away, and you are in a state of no-desire. In that no-desire NIRVANA is, the perfect, the absolute bliss is. You may call it God, the kingdom of God or whatsoever you choose to call it, but...

... hankering after God, the peace that will happen, the bliss that is waiting for them somewhere in the future beyond death. They are desiring, and they call only their desiring "spiritual desire." You can deceive yourself very easily. Words are very deceptive and you can rationalize. You call a poison "ambrosia," and when you call it ambrosia it appears as ambrosia. Words hypnotize; that...

... is one thing. But this feeling, this realization that desire is misery, must be yours. Mary Stevens has written somewhere that she was visiting a friend's home, and her friend's daughter was blind. Mary Stevens was very puzzled because the girl would say, "He is ugly, I don't like him"; and "The color of this dress is beautiful." As she was blind, Mary Stevens asked, "How...

... do you feel that someone is ugly and that a color is beautiful?" The girl said, "My sisters say this to me." This is knowledge. Buddha has said that desire is misery and you go on repeating. This is knowledge. You are desiring, and you have never seen that desire is misery. You have simply heard Buddha. This will not do. You are simply wasting your life and opportunity. Your own...

... experience can change you; nothing else changes. Knowledge cannot be borrowed. If borrowed, it is just a fake. It looks like knowledge, but it is not. But why do we follow a Buddha or a Jesus - why? Because of our greed. We look at Buddha's eyes, and they are so peaceful that greed arises, desire arises for how to attain this. Buddha is so blissful - every moment in ecstasy. A desire arises for how to be...

... Buddhalike. We also desire such states. Then we go on asking how Buddha achieved this, how it happens. The "how" creates many problems because then Buddha will say that in "no-desire" it happens. And he is right, it HAS happened in no-desire. But when we hear that in no-desire it happens, we start practicing no-desire, we start leaving desires, and the whole effort is a desire to be...

... Buddha-like. Buddha was not trying to be like someone else; he was not asking to be a buddha. He was simply trying to understand his own misery - and the more understanding dawned upon him, the more misery disappeared. Then one day he came to understand that desire is poison. If you have desire you have fallen a victim; now there is no possibility of your ever being happy. You can only hope - have hope...

..., eternally. Then you will never become authentic. It is good to suffer because only through suffering will you become authentic and real. So the first thing: move with your desires so that you can understand what they really are. Experience whatever suffering is hidden there. Let it be revealed to you. Only that is austerity - only that is TAPASCHARYA. Naropa has said that if you can be alert every desire...

... leads you to NIRVANA, and this is the meaning, because if you are alert, you know that every desire is misery. And when you have searched every nook and corner of desiring, suddenly you stop. In that stopping is the happening, and it is always there. That happening is always waiting for you, just waiting to meet you in the present. But you are never in the present, you are always dreaming. Reality...

... reality is where you are grounded; your dreams are not your ground. They are false. Come to terms with your reality in the present moment. Encounter it, face it whatsoever it is, and don't allow the mind to move into the future. The future is desire. If you can be here and now, you are a buddha. If you cannot be here and now, then everything is just dream stuff. And you will have to come back because...

... dreams cannot lead you anywhere. They can only lead you to hope and frustration, but nothing real happens through them. But remember my point that you cannot imitate. You will have to pass through suffering. Suffering is the path. It purifies you, it makes you alert, it makes you aware. The more you are aware, the less you are desire-filled. If you are perfectly aware, no-desire happens, and meditation...

... your senses, you lose your intelligence, you become stupid. The more you are full of desire and lust, the more stupid you are. Murphy's maxim.... Murphy says: I believe in love at first sight because it saves time. When you are going to fall, then why wait? Fall at the first sight. At least time is saved if nothing else. When a person is in love with someone - and by love I don't mean the love of the...

... longer than before, but that simply means a little longer: the same misery, the same desire, the same lust, the same bondage. Medical science may be able.... It seems very possible now that man may start living more than one hundred years. There are people who think that man can live at least three hundred years very easily. But what is the point? Whether you live seventy years or seven hundred years...

... Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. WHILE A MAN DESIRES A WOMAN, HIS MIND IS BOUND AS CLOSELY AS A CALF TO ITS MOTHER. AS YOU WOULD PLUCK AN AUTUMN LILY, PLUCK THE ARROW OF DESIRE. FOR HE WHO IS AWAKE HAS SHOWN YOU THE WAY OF PEACE. GIVE YOURSELF TO THE JOURNEY. "HERE SHALL I MAKE MY DWELLING, IN THE SUMMER AND THE WINTER, AND IN THE RAINY SEASON." SO THE FOOL MAKES HIS PLANS...

... miracle will happen and everything will be good. These hopes are not going to help you, these hopes are deceptive, dangerous, suicidal. In the first sutra, Buddha says: WHILE A MAN DESIRES A WOMAN, HIS MIND IS BOUND AS CLOSELY AS A CALF TO ITS MOTHER. One thing very significant has to be understood before we enter into this sutra. In Sanskrit we use the word KAMA both for desire as such, and for sexual...

... desire. The same word is used for both, and there is a reason why the same word is used for both. To desire a woman or a man, or desire at all, both are expressed by the same word, kama. The reason is very psychological, profound. Sanskrit is one of the most profound languages of the earth, very deliberately evolved. That is exactly the meaning of the word 'sanskrit'; SANSKRIT means consciously refined...

... same word being used for both desire as such, and for sexual desire, has a tremendously important message in it. All desire is basically sexual desire; that is the message in it. Desire as such has the flavor of sexuality in it, and you can observe it. This understanding is based, rooted in great observation. A man who is mad after money - watch his behavior, his being, look into his eyes, and you...

... MIND IS BOUND AS CLOSELY AS A CALF TO ITS MOTHER. In fact, Buddha does not mention women. What he is trying to say is: WHILE A MAN desires, HIS MIND IS BOUND AS CLOSELY AS A CALF TO ITS MOTHER. Any desire is a bondage. Desire AS SUCH is a bondage, because when you desire, you become dependent on the other, on the desired object. Whether it is a woman, money, a man, power, prestige, it does not matter...

... - it is desire, and desire brings bondage. Why? It is simple. When you desire something, your joy depends on that something. If it is taken away, you are miserable; if it is given to you, you are happy, but only for the moment. That too has to be understood. Whenever your desire is fulfilled it is only for the moment that you feel joy. It is fleeting, because once you have got it, again the mind...

... starts desiring for more, for something else. Mind exists in desiring; hence mind can never leave you without desire. If you are without desire mind dies immediately. That's the whole secret of meditation. Create desirelessness and mind is gone, gone forever, never to return back. If desire is there, mind will come. Desire is the root from where the mind comes in. Desire is its nourishment, its food...

..., its very life, its breath. So mind cannot leave you without desire. If you desire God - even God - and you meet God, it will be only for a moment that you will be ecstatic. Then suddenly the mind will say, "Now what? Now this goal is achieved. Project future goals. You are finished with God, now there is no more in it." Desire fulfilled only for a moment gives you a relief, and that relief...

... has also to be understood. In the moment of a fulfilled desire there is relief. There is relief because in that small moment you are desireless. Desirelessness is joy. When one desire is fulfilled and before the mind projects another desire, between the two there is a small interval when there is no desire. That moment is of meditation. That's how meditation has been discovered. It has not been...

... speculated upon, it is not given by philosophers, by great thinkers. It is a simple observation, a scientific observation, that whenever desire is not there.... You wanted a beautiful house and you have got it. When you open the door of the new house, for a moment you are transported into another world, for a moment there is no desire. A long, long-cherished desire has been fulfilled. It will take a little...

... time for the mind.... Mind needs time, remember. Mind cannot function without time; hence mind creates time. Without time there is no space for the mind to function. Mind will take a little time. In fact, mind is shocked. It was not hoping that the desire was going to be fulfilled. The goal was so far away, the house was so big, and it was almost impossible, but now that it is fulfilled mind is in...

... shock. The mind is collecting itself again while you are opening the door of the new house, and you enter in the new house and a deep joy arises in you. You say, "Aha!" The time that passes while you say "Aha!" is enough, and mind has projected another desire. The mind says, "The house is beautiful, but where is the swimming pool? The house is beautiful, but the garden is not...

... looked after." You will have to create a new garden, a beautiful swimming pool, and again the whole process sets in, again you are in the wheel of the mind. But for a moment when there was no desire, there was joy. Joy is always when there is no desire. Whenever there is desire, joy disappears. Desire keeps you a prisoner. Hence Buddha says: WHILE A MAN DESIRES HIS MIND IS BOUND - and there is not...

... much difference between one desire and another desire. So mind is not much worried what you desire. Mind's worry is only one: that you MUST desire. Desire anything! You can start collecting postal stamps, that will do - but desire. Now, postal stamps are useless, but there are many people who go on collecting them. I know one man who collects cigarette boxes. He has such a collection... he is ready...

... his bow and arrow, so you cannot escape." He was shocked. He said, "What are you saying? Are you joking? I have been doing a religious act. Everybody has praised it, great saints have come and praised it." I said, "Those people must have been fools just like you." Mind can desire anything. Now, he is not collecting money, but more and more names of Rama.... It is the same...

... me he has been out with my wife and her sister, too, and there ain't a nickel's worth of difference between them." Every desire is the same. The objects differ, but not the quality of desiring. You desire money, somebody else desires God; you desire power, somebody else desires paradise. It is all the same. Hence there are no religious desires, remember. Nondesiring is religious. Desiring is...

... worldly, desire is the world. Nondesire is transcendence. But when one is under the impact of a desire, the impact is hypnotic. Every desire hypnotizes you. It makes you blind, that's why we say... we use phrases like falling in love. That is significant. The love that you know is certainly a fall - a fall from consciousness, a fall from understanding. You start crawling on the earth; you are no more in...

... buddhas; their love is totally different. They are talking about prayer, they are talking about compassion, they are talking about a desireless expression of their being. They are sharing their bliss. I am talking about YOUR love. It is lust, it is the lowest energy phenomenon possible. You are almost in a hypnotic state. A man in love with a woman, or a woman in love with a man is no longer able to see...

... clearly. The mind becomes clouded, the desire creates so much smoke, it raises so much dust that you can't see clearly. And whatsoever you see is your own projection. A young army sergeant was posted to the deserts of Arabia by the French Foreign Legion. After a few days he became restless and asked his officer what form of entertainment took place in the camp - where were all the women and bars and so...

... blind you become. So remember, Buddha is not saying to starve your desires. He has been misunderstood by people, by his own followers as much as by his enemies. That is the fate of the buddhas: to be misunderstood by the friends and the enemies both. When he is saying that desire makes you blind, he is not saying to repress desire, because a repressed desire is far more dangerous. He is saying, "...

...;Understand desire, meditate over the whole phenomenon of it, and through understanding go beyond it, not through repression. Through meditation, transcend desire. Seeing that desire is misery, seeing that desire is bondage, seeing that desire drags you downwards into hell, one simply is released without any repression." And to be released from desire is to be a buddha, is to be a christ. The greatest...

... mystery is that those who have desires live like beggars. They live in bondage, are bound to live like beggars. And those who have transcended desire live like emperors. It seems existence follows a very paradoxical law. Old Murphy says: In order to get a loan you must first prove you don't need it. If you want a loan from a bank, prove that you don't need it. If the bank suspects you need it, you won't...

... get it. Exactly that is the case with dhamma, with the eternal law of existence. When you don't need anything, the whole existence is yours, the whole kingdom of God is yours. And when you need anything, nothing is yours - only the need and the wound and the desire and the bondage. And desires are jumping upon you from every direction, there are desires and desires. It is not a question of one...

... desire; desiring is the same, but there are millions of desires. So you live simultaneously in millions of prisons, and they go on destroying you, they go on forcing things upon you which you would not have accepted if there had been a moment of insight, of clarity. You would not have accepted such humiliation as you accept because of desires. You would not have accepted this crawling state. You are...

... meant to fly into the sky. You have wings - wings which can take you to the ultimate. But desires are heavy like rocks; they are crushing you. And how many desires do you have? One day simply write them down and count them, and you will be surprised: they go on sprouting one after the other. And each desire fulfilled brings ten more desires in. Desires don't believe in birth control; each desire gives...

... desireless. That's what Buddha is pointing out: AS YOU WOULD PLUCK AN AUTUMN LILY, PLUCK THE ARROW OF DESIRE. It is an arrow, it is hurting you, it is wounding you, it is great pain, it is nothing but misery. But then why do people go on desiring? Why don't they listen to the buddhas? - - for the simple reason that desires are very cunning. They go on promising you. Desires are politicians; they promise...

... your past lives, but you can remember your past in this life at least. This has been the case always. The desire goes on telling you, "Tomorrow, tomorrow, wait, be patient." And all promises are just toys to keep you occupied; the goods are never delivered. The day you become aware of this cunning game that is being played upon you by your own mind, you throw all those toys. You stop...

... listening to the continuous promises. You start laughing at your own stupidity, at your own ridiculousness, how you have been such a fool for so long. And the desire starts disappearing, it can't befool you anymore. It is an arrow, it hurts, but you are ready to suffer the pain in the hope that tomorrow you will be repaid, rewarded. And of course one has to pay for everything. The desire is very logical...

..., it tries to convince you. FOR HE WHO IS AWAKE HAS SHOWN YOU THE WAY OF PEACE. GIVE YOURSELF TO THE JOURNEY. Buddha says: Enough is enough. You have listened to desire for thousands of lives and you have been moving in circles, suffering. You have not tasted anything of joy, you have not tasted anything of the beyond. Your mouths are full of dirt. You have not tasted real nourishment, because only...

..., suppose I just mix up a couple of cocktails, then you and I sit down, nice and relaxed, and discuss this compulsive neurosis of yours." Listen to the awakened; otherwise there is no way for you. Buddha says: FOR HE WHO IS AWAKE HAS SHOWN YOU THE WAY OF PEACE. What is the way of peace? Understanding desire and transcending desire through understanding, great peace descends - because desire is...

... turmoil. Desire is maddening, desire keeps you neurotic. Murphy's definition of a neurotic: A person who worries about things that didn't happen in the past, instead of worrying about something that won't happen in the future, like normal people. So there are two types of neurotic people: those who worry about the past and those who worry about the future. The world consists of these two types of...

... neurotics, and your desire is the cause of all this neurosis. It is desire that keeps you still engaged with the past, which is no more. It is utterly foolish to waste time for that which is no more. To look backwards is absolutely meaningless. You can't go back, you can't step backwards in time; then what is the point of wasting your present for that which cannot be recovered? And then there are people...

... who are too much concerned about the future, which is not yet. Future means that which is not. Remaining concerned with that which is not whether it is past or future is utterly ridiculous. But desire keeps you - unfulfilled desire in the past keeps you engaged there; hopes of fulfilling desire tomorrow keep you engaged in the future. Only a desireless person lives in the present, and only those who...

... THE WINTER, AND IN THE RAINY SEASON." SO THE FOOL MAKES HIS PLANS, SPARING NOT A THOUGHT FOR HIS DEATH. It is desire that keeps you clouded and does not allow you to see death, which is approaching every moment closer and closer. Buddha says: The fool goes on thinking, "HERE I SHALL MAKE MY DWELLING, IN THE SUMMER AND THE WINTER, AND IN THE RAINY SEASON." And he is not aware that...

... rainy season. He must have remembered that, but he renounced all that for the search for that which is deathless. Wasting your time in these palaces... and death is coming closer, and death will take you away. Even if you can manage to have all you can desire, mind will not be satisfied. In the first place you will not be able to manage it, because mind desires impossible things. But even if you can...

... misery if you remain with the mind. And the way to remain with the mind is desire. Desire is the glue that keeps you with the mind. Unglue yourself from the mind, become desireless. But when I say, "Become desireless," I am not saying to let this become your goal. I am not saying that now you have to make efforts to become desireless; I am not saying to make this your desire - becoming a...

... desireless person. No, not at all; otherwise you would have misunderstood the whole point. Try to understand the desire and all its miseries and all its futilities, and in that very understanding is transcendence. DEATH OVERTAKES THE MAN WHO, GIDDY AND DISTRACTED BY THE WORLD, CARES ONLY FOR HIS FLOCK AND HIS CHILDREN. DEATH FETCHES HIM AWAY AS A FLOOD CARRIES OFF A SLEEPING VILLAGE. Remember death...

... to save his head - but there was nothing else he could do. He had to put the cup full of oil on his head and go round the court seven times. And the dance continued, and the beautiful women continued, and of course he was an old type of sannyasin, deep down very much interested in women. Many times the desire came just to have a look, but the fear of death and those naked swords.... He managed...

... existence. Whatsoever you are, you are. Accept it; don't desire it to be otherwise. This is what nonambition means. Nonambitiousness is basic to all spiritual transformation, because once you accept yourself, many things start happening. But the first thing.... If you accept yourself totally, the first thing that happens to you is a nontense life. There is no tension. You don't want to be anything else...

... rebirth, reincarnation, is not because it is a fact. It is because of ambition and desire. Reincarnation may be a fact, but for you it is just a fiction. For you it is just a matter of the future, of more space to move in. Remember, you cannot be ambitious in the present moment. It is impossible. There is no space. The present moment is so atomic, so small, that you cannot move in it. You can be in it...

..., but you cannot desire in it. It is long enough to be, but it is not long enough for desiring. To desire you need future, time. Really, time exists because of desire. For the trees here, there is no time. For the birds singing here, there is no time. For the stars and for the sun and for the earth, there is no time. Time exists because of human desire. If humanity was not on this earth, there would...

... be no time; there would be no past and no future. Your desire creates the future. Your memory creates the past. They are both parts of your mind. Don't desire, and the future disappears. And when there is no future, how can you be tense? How? There is no possibility of being tense if there is no future And if there is no past - if you know that it is simply memory, the dust collected on the way...

... that should be. It is not interested in the 'is'; it is always interested in the 'ought', in the 'should'. That interest is nonreligious. A religious mind, a religious consciousness, is interested in existence as it is. The first sutra is KILL OUT ambition totally so that you can be here and now, so that you can enter the eternal. KILL OUT DESIRE OF LIFE - the second sutra. KILL OUT DESIRE OF LIFE...

.... Life's laws are very paradoxical. If you desire life, you will miss it. That is the surest way to miss it. If you desire life, you will miss it; but if you don't desire it, abundant life will happen to you. Through desire, you move against life. It looks paradoxical. It is. This paradoxical law has to be understood deeply. Why is it that when you desire life you miss it? Why? It should not be so...

.... Logically, mathematically, it should not be so. If someone desires life, why should he miss it? The mechanism is such that when you desire, you have again moved into the future. And life is here! Life is already the case - how can you desire it? Only that which is not can be desired. And life is. How can you desire it? It already is; it is already happening. You are life. If you desire life, you will miss...

... it. Through desire, you are moving away from life. Every desire leads you further and further away. That's why there is so much insistence on desirelessness. It is not that Buddha or all those who talk about desirelessness are against life. Really, on the contrary, they are for life. But they say, "Don't desire," and to us U looks as though they are against life, life-negative. They are...

... not. We are missing life through desire. That is why Buddha says, "Don't desire." What happens if you don't desire? Life will happen to you. It is already happening, but you cannot look at it because your eyes are fixed on the future. You are somewhere else; your mind is not here. Life is here and you are not here, so the meeting has become impossible. Then you will hanker for life, you...

... will desire life, but you will go on missing it. Allow life to happen to you. How can that be done? By being attentive here. By not being desirous of being somewhere else. The moment you start desiring life, you become afraid of death. It is bound to be so, because the desire for life creates the fear of death. There is no death. In reality, nothing dies; nothing can. It is impossible. Death never...

... happens; death is not. Then why do we feel death so much, and why are we so afraid of it? Why are we afraid of something that is not? We are afraid of death because of our desire for life. The desire for life creates a counter fear: the fear of death. We don't know life, but we desire life. Then the fear comes in that life is going to be destroyed. We see death happening... someone dies. Have you ever...

..., because death is possible only if something is born. Birth and death are two fallacies. You existed before your birth - otherwise birth would not have been possible - and you will exist after your death - otherwise it would not be possible for you to be here and now. But the desire to cling to life creates the fear of death. If you stop desiring life, the fear of death immediately disappears. And when...

... the fear of death disappears, you can know what life is. A mind that is trembling with fear and anguish cannot know. Knowing needs a very calm, unafraid, fearless consciousness. Desire for life means fear of death. The sutra says KILL OUT DESIRE OF LIFE so that the fear of death disappears. And when there is no death, and no clinging to life, you will know what life is, because it has already...

... happened to you. You are it! It is not something extrinsic; it is something intrinsic. It is happening already. You are breathing in it. You are just like a fish in the ocean of life, but you are not aware of it because your attention is obsessed with the future. Desire means obsession with the future. No desire means living here and now. And the third sutra: KILL OUT DESIRE OF COMFORT, desire for...

... happiness. Kill it out. It appears very gloomy, sad, life-negating. It is not. The more you desire comfort, the more discomfort will be felt. The more you desire comfort, the more discomfort you are creating for yourself, because discomfort is relative to the desire for comfort. The more you ask for happiness, the more you will be in suffering. The suffering is a shadow. The greater the desire for...

... happiness, the greater will be the shadow. Ask for happiness and you will never get it. You will only suffer frustration. Why? Because there is only one way to be happy, and that is to be happy here, now. Happiness is not a result. It is a way of life. Happiness is not the end result of desire. It is an attitude, not a desire. You can be happy here and now if you know how to be, but you will never be...

... existence. Don't move into the future. Existence never moves into the future; only mind does. This is what I call meditation: to be here, to not move into the future. Be nonambitious, kill all desire for life, don't desire happiness and then you will be happy and no one can destroy your happiness. Then it will be impossible for you to be unhappy. And then you will be deathless and eternal life will have...

... a person who is invoking a deity is invoking him because of some desire. He wants something - money, prestige, victory, anything. He is invoking the deity, praying, for something. So Buddha says, "You are just running from one desire to another, and this running after desires is the DUKKHA - is the misery. And no one can help you unless you become desireless." "Cessation of the...

... cause of all actions" means to be desireless. What is the cause of action? Why are you involved in so much action? Why this constant running? What is the cause? Desire is the cause. So in a very poetic way the Upanishad denies the ritual and yet not the term; denies the ritual, yet not the spirit. Buddha failed because a negative mind cannot really succeed for long. He can be very appealing...

... this purity be achieved and why are we impure? What is the reason? The Indian genius has always been thinking in terms of desire and desirelessness. Really, everything that we are can be reduced to desire; whatsoever we are is because of our desire. If we are miserable, if we are in bondage, if we are ignorant, if we are in darkness, if life is just a long death, it is because of desire. Why is there...

... misery? Because your desire is frustrated. Unless you have a desire, how can it be frustrated? So if you want to be frustrated, desire more; then you will be more frustrated. If you want to be in misery, then expect more, desire more, be ambitious for more, and you will get more misery. If you don't want to be miserable, then don't desire. So this is the mathematics of inner workings: desire creates...

... misery. If desire fails, it necessarily creates misery. But even if desire succeeds, it again creates misery - because the moment you succeed, your desire has gone ahead, it is asking for more. Really, the desire is always ahead of you. Wherever you reach, it will be ahead of you. And you will never reach the point where you and your desire can meet; that is impossible. Desire means something always in...

... the future, never in the present. You are always in the present and desire is always in the future. And wherever you are, you will be in the present and desire will always be in the future. It is just like the horizon. You see just a few miles to where the sky is touching the earth, and it looks so real. But go ahead and find the place where the sky touches the earth, and the more you go ahead, the...

... the whole earth and come back to your home never meeting the horizon anywhere, but the illusion can continue. Desire is just like the horizon. It seems as if it can be fulfilled soon. The distance is not much: "Just a little more effort, just a bit of fast running, and it is just near!" But you never reach it. It is always just near and the distance remains the same. Howsoever you run, the...

... distance remains the same! Has any desire been fulfilled ever? Don't ask others, ask yourself. Have you realized any desire ever? But we don't even wait to think about it. We have no time to think about the past; the future obsesses us. We are in such a hurry to reach the horizon, who will think that we have missed this horizon so many times? There is no time to think. The hurry is such, and life is so...

... short, and one has to run and go on running! Have you achieved anything through any desire or does frustration always come? Aren't ashes always in the hand and nothing else? But one never sees the ashes in the hand, one never sees the frustration. The eyes are always again fixed on the far-off horizon. This fixation with the horizon is the cause of all actions. And no action reaches a fulfillment...

... - because our actions are just mad! If the horizon itself is not there, then your running is mad. So desire is the cause of all actions and of all misery, of all impurity and of all ignorance. Cessation of the cause - cessation of desiring - is the invocation. If you cease to desire, then there will be no running - no running after anything, no movement inside, no ripples - just a silent pool of...

... consciousness, a silent pool without waves, without ripples. No movement! The Upanishads say this state of consciousness is the invocation. But does it mean that all actions cease when desire ceases?because we have seen a Krishna moving, doing many things. We have seen a Buddha doing many things even after the Enlightenment. So what does cessation of the cause of all actions mean? It doesn't mean cessation of...

... all actions. It means cessation of the cause. The desire ceases. And when there is no desire, actions begin to take an altogether different quality. When there is no desire, then action becomes just a play - with no madness in it, with no insanity behind it, with no obsession. It becomes just a play - a playfulness. Really, the modern psychiatrists say that this is a criterion as to whether someone...

... is insane or sane. An insane person cannot play. Even if he plays, he will become so serious about it that the play will become a work. And real sanity consists in transforming even work into play. When there is no desire you can play - and if nothing comes out of it, there is no frustration because nothing was expected. The play in itself was enough. That is the difference between work and play...

... as an end to be achieved. So, really, grown-ups never play; only children play - with nothing beyond. That's why the play of children has an innocence and a beauty: the thing is enough unto itself! When a child is playing, he is absorbed totally in it - not a single desire out of it, running and going somewhere; not a bit of consciousness beyond it; everything is in it. The child has become just...

... the play, totally involved, committed to this moment here and now. Nothing exists beyond it. This is action, but without the cause. without desire. That's why we have called this world not really a creation of the Divine, but a leela, a play of the Divine, because "creation" is not a good word, it is ugly. It is ugly because you create something for something. No, the Divine is only...

... playing - just playing like a child with no result in the mind. The play itself is blissful. So to say: "Cessation of the cause of all actions is invocation," means to be just like a child - innocent, pure, without any desire. Then you have invoked the Divine. Then you have called, invited. Now your invocation cannot be denied: it is so authentic and so sincere. Really, now you need not even...

... invoke and the Divine will be there, you need not even call and the Divine will be there - because you have created the situation! The Divine will flow, come down. You have created the situation - the purity of the heart. This is the only invocation. All else is, again, just desire, action. Jesus says that unless you are like a child you cannot enter into the Kingdom of the Divine. "Like a child...

...": what does it mean? It means that you are capable of playing, that you are capable of action without desire. For us it is inconceivable. How can we act without desire? Take the opposite case: can you desire without action? You can desire! You can desire without action, so desire can exist alone without action. Mm? - everyone is desiring, there are many, many desires without any actions. So...

... desire can be without action: this is our experience. Why not the opposite? Why can't actions be without desire? If desire can be severed from action, why not action from desire? That too is possible. And when desire is not there, action doesn't cease: it becomes different. The flavour is different; the intrinsic quality is different. The madness is not there; and this very moment, the present, has...

... become meaningful - not the future. So take this to heart: if the future is very meaningful to you, you cannot invoke. If the present is the only significance and the future doesn't exist at all, then you have invoked. The future is the bondage because without the future you cannot desire. Desire needs space in which to move. It cannot move just in the present; the present has no space. It cannot move...

...! How can you desire for just now? You can desire only in the tomorrow. Really, the future is created because of our desiring - there is no future, the future doesn't exist. Ordinarily, we say that time has three divisions - past, present and future. Really, time has only one, and that is the present. The past is that which is not; the future is that which is not yet. They both are not. Past only...

... the present; time is always here and now. It has always been here and now; it will always be here and now. We go on moving. We move from past to future, and for us time is just a bridge to move from the past into the future - from one desire to another desire, time is just a passage. For us, time is just a passage to move from one desire to another. If desires cease, then your movement will cease...

.... And if your movement ceases, you will meet with time here and now - and that meeting is the door. That meeting is the door; that meeting is the invocation. But when the Upanishad says, "Cessation of the cause..." does it mean to say, "Do not desire"? It is very natural for our minds to translate things like that. If the Upanishad says, "Cessation of the cause of all actions...

...... " it means a state of desirelessness. Remember it: a state of desirelessness! But our minds will translate it as: "Do not desire!" You have missed the point if you translate it as "Do not desire!" because even if you do not desire, you will desire. Your "Do not desire" will imply desire. You may desire to invoke the Divine, you may desire to be purified, to be pure...

..., to be innocent, childlike, to reach that realm of play. So your mind can say to you, "If you want to enter the Kingdom of God, do not desire!" This is a desire. This is how desire works: "If you want to get into the Kingdom of God, if you want Enlightenment, if you want a meeting with the Divine - do not desire!" So this is the logic of desire. "Do not do this if you want...

... that; do this if you want that." So when I say "a state of desirelessness", I don't mean a commandment which says, "Do not desire!" Then what do I mean? It becomes difficult, complex to understand. Then what do I mean when I say "a state of desirelessness"? It means: understand desire, understand the fallaciousness of desire, understand the absurdity of desire, the...

... futility of it, the nonsense of it. Just understand what desire has done, what desire can do, what desire is doing. Just understand desire! And if you understand it totally, you will be desireless. That desirelessness will be just an outcome of your understanding. It cannot be anything out of your action. That "do not" is again an action. This translation of things creates many unnecessary...

... problems. So I have seen people who say, "Do not be greedy if you want to achieve the Divine," but they never feel that this is greed - and a greater one. This is a most extraordinary greed, rare. One wants to achieve the Divine, so one must not be greedy. What does greed mean? Not to be greedy means not to desire, not to want. But you are wanting the Divine, moksha, so: "Don't be greedy...

... child, the immature mind, is always concerned with getting. A Buddha, a Jesus, is always giving. That is the other extreme giving not to get something, but giving because giving is a play, a bliss in itself. When I say understand desire, I mean understand getting, understand giving. Understand that your state is just of getting, getting and getting, and you will never be fulfilled - mm? - because...

... there is no end. Understand this: what have you got through this constant, eternal getting? What have you got? You are as poor as ever, as much a beggar as ever - rather, more. The more you get. the more you become a greater beggar, the more is the desire to get. So you only learn by getting, more getting. Where have you reached? What have you found? What is there which you can say is the achievement...

... achievement, a deep fulfillment. But when I am saying this, I am afraid you may again translate it. You may say, "Okay! So to achieve that fulfillment, we must leave this constant desire to get." Understand this; don't translate it. Your mind can distort anything. It has distorted everything. It distorts a Buddha, it distorts a Krishna, it distorts a Jesus, it distorts a Zarathustra - it goes on...

... distorting. They say something, you translate it, and then it is something else altogether different - diametrically opposite even. The understanding of desire becomes desirelessness; the knowing of desire is the cessation of desire. So know deeply, understand deeply. Don't take any hurried step, and then a purity is discovered which is always there, which has always been there. The heart is pure already...

..., and this is a very tough competition. So you have to be violent, cunning, closed, defensive. Then you cannot be flooded by the Divine. You are so narrow, so closed, that the flood cannot come to you. A pure heart, a desireless heart, is not competitive, not concerned for the future, not against anybody, not for anybody, with no calculations, with no desire to get, with no achieving mind. A pure...

... open; he can play with the Divine. Death and the Divine are, in a subtle way, one. If you are not open to death you will never be open for the Divine, and a person who is concerned with desires is always afraid of death. You must see the relationship: a person who is concerned with desires - is desirous, is out to get something - is always afraid of death. Why? Because desire is in the future and...

... death is also in the future, and it may be that death comes first and desire is not fulfilled. Remember this: desire is never in the present; death is also never in the present. No one has died in the present. Can you be fearful of death here and now? No, because either you are alive or dead. If you are alive here and now, there is no death; and if you are already dead, there is no fear. So you can...

... Hotel Archive Code: N.A. Short Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. DESIRE POWER ARDENTLY. ... AND THAT POWER WHICH THE DISCIPLE SHALL COVET IS THAT WHICH SHALL MAKE HIM APPEAR AS NOTHING IN THE EYES OF MEN. WE WILL BE MOVING more and more in contradictions. The language of religion is bound to be contradictory. On the face, it looks irrational. In a way it is, because...

... it goes beyond reason, it transcends reason. This sutra says DESIRE POWER ARDENTLY - but that power which makes you nothing. You become a non-being. We desire power in order to become something. The power that wealth can give, the power that politics can give, the power that prestige can give. We desire power to be something, and this sutra says DESIRE POWER ARDENTLY - but that power which makes...

... meant by the ego. And ego is the barrier. Desire that power - the second type - that allows you to feel that you are nobody. It is difficult to feel that "I am nobody." Everyone thinks that he is somebody, whether others agree or not. Everyone thinks that he is somebody! This is ordinariness; every ordinary mind thinks that he is somebody. The moment you come to realize that you are nobody...

... God." That which is power in the world is powerlessness in the divine journey, and that which is powerlessness in the world is power in the divine journey. This sutra says Desire POWER ARDENTLY but remember the meaning of 'power'. It is powerlessness. It is a feeling of nobodyness, nothingness, of emptiness. AND THAT POWER WHICH THE DISCIPLE SHALL COVET IS THAT WHICH SHALL APPEAR AS NOTHING IN...

... THE EYES OF MEN. DESIRE PEACE FERVENTLY. THE PEACE YOU SHALL DESIRE IS THAT SACRED PEACE WHICH NOTHING CAN DISTURB AND IN WHICH THE SOUL GROWS AS DOES THE HOLY FLOWER UPON THE STILL LAGOONS. DESIRE PEACE FERVENTLY. No one desires peace. You go on talking about it, and go on deceiving yourself that you desire peace but no one desires it - because once it is desired, peace happens. and it has not...

... happened to you. No one desires peace. Even if you say that you desire peace you don't desire it. because this is one of the ultimate laws: if you DESIRE PEACE it happens. Then where have things gone wrong? Many people come to me. One student came to me - he was just going to appear in his final M.A. examination. He asked me, "How can I be peaceful? How can I be silent? Help me. I desire peace. I am...

... so disturbed, so tense." I asked him, "Why do you desire peace?" He said, "I want to achieve the gold medal. The examination is about to happen. I am a first class student but this is going to be my last examination and I desire the gold medal. And if my mind is so tense, how can I achieve it? So help me to be peaceful." Look at the contradiction! And this is happening to...

... everyone. I told him, "If there was to be no examination, if you had no desire to achieve the gold medal, if you had no ambition to be first class first, would there be any disturbance within you? Would your peace be disturbed?" He said, "No. Why should it be? Then there would be no problem. I would be at peace. But right now the examination is there and I desire the gold medal. So help me...

... to be peaceful." Ambition is destroying his peace. He goes on clinging to his ambition and still he desires peace. Peace in the service of ambition is impossible; it is contradictory. Ambition cannot be peaceful. The greed to succeed cannot be peaceful. If you desire peace, desire peace for itself. Don't make it a means to something else. It cannot be made a means. When this sutra says DESIRE...

... PEACE FERVENTLY, it means peace as an end not as a means. No one desires means. Ends are desired and, because of the ends. means are desired. But peace can never be made a means. All that is beautiful, all that is true, all that is good, all that is deep in existence cannot be made into a means. It is always the end. But we desire even God as a means. No one desires God for his own sake; we desire God...

... for some other purpose. Then, the desire is false. That's what I mean when I say that no one desires peace unless he desires it for its own sake. You can attain it easily if you desire it as an end. Desire it for itself and it happens, because in the very desire for peace, ambition falls; in the very desire for peace, anxiety disappears; in the very desire for peace, anguish disappears. If you go on...

... being ambitious - desiring success. desiring to be this or that, to be somebody - then peace will not hap-pen to you. Then you will remain anxious, anxiety-ridden, tense. You will remain in anguish and whatever you do will not be of any help. So be clear about it. If you want peace, desire it directly as an end. Then the very desire for peace transforms you. Really, peace is natural. It is not...

... something that has to be desired. You, yourself, disturb it. It is already there. Peace is natural to you; it is your very being. You disturb it by ambition, you disturb it by greed, you disturb it by anger, you disturb it by violence. It is already there, but you have disturbed it. Don't disturb it! If you really desire it, you will not disturb it. Then you will begin to feel it. To attain peace, one has...

... for a single moment does one have to wait. DESIRE POSSESSIONS ABOVE ALL. This sutra seems very dangerous: Desire possessions ABOVE ALL. Possessions? The very word will create a disturbance in your mind because all the great teachers have taught: don't desire possessions Buddha says. "Be nonpossessive." Mahavir says. "Aparigraha: nonpossession." Jesus says, "Leave all riches...

..., all possessions." Jesus says, "Even a camel can pass through the eye of a needle but a rich man cannot pass through the gate of the kingdom of my God." and this sutra says DESIRE POSSESSIONS ABOVE ALL. But the sutra is beautiful. It means the same thing that Mahavir and Buddha and Jesus are saying but it says it in a very contradictory way. It says that all the things that you think...

... poisoned Life becomes a misery. DESIRE POSSESSIONS ABOVE ALL. BUT THOSE POSSESSIONS MUST BELONG TO THE PURE SOUL ONLY, AND BE POSSESSED THEREFORE BY ALL PURE SOULS EQUALLY. AND THUS BE THE ESPECIAL PROPERTY OF THE WHOLE ONLY WHEN UNITED. HUNGER FOR SUCH POSSESSIONS AS CAN BE HELD BY THE PURE SOUL, THAT YOU MAY ACCUMULATE WEALTH FOR THAT UNITED SPIRIT OF LIFE WHICH IS YOUR ONLY TRUE SELF. Generated by...

... SENSE OF UNFULFILLMENT. PLEASE EXPLAIN WHETHER THIS TOO IS A PART OF DESIRING. Yes, this too is a part of desiring - the negative part. Everything has two parts, the positive and the negative. The positive part of desiring is to desire something, to be ambitious. To be aware of the object of desire is a positive desire. The negative desire is: one is not aware of the object of desire, but one is aware...

... only of the thirst of desire - of the yearning. These are the two parts. The subjective feeling of unfulfillment is the negative part of ambition and being obsessed with an object of desire is the positive part of ambition. Both are ambition. And if you intellectually understand that desire is futile, the negative part will remain with you - if you INTELLECTUALLY understand that desire is futile and...

... this is not an existential experience. You have been hearing things, you have been listening and you have been reading. And Buddhas and Christs have been talking to the world and they have been saying that you are in misery because of desire, that you are in suffering because of desire - and they say they are in bliss because of desirelessness. And you have seen them: you have seen their eyes, you...

... have seen their faces, you have seen the grace, the bliss, the ecstasy that just moves around them. Even in their shadow the ecstasy, the dance is there. You have seen them and you have heard them and they say if you desire you will be in suffering, if you do not desire you will be in ecstasy and bliss. Now intellectually you can understand this, because desire creates tension, because desire creates...

... the future, because desire creates expectations, and when it is not fulfilled you are in misery. Or even when it is fulfilled you are not in bliss. When it is fulfilled you feel that this is nothing - that this is nothing compared to the dream, compared to the hope. You fall in love with a person, a girl or a boy, you fall in love with a house, you fall in love with a car, and you think, "If...

.... Intellectually you can understand and then you can come to conclude that it is futile to desire - to be ambitious is futile; it leads to misery and hell. But this will stop only the positive desiring; the negative will remain. Really, you are still desiring - now desirelessness. You are now desiring a state of NON-DESIRE. Now desirelessness has become the object of desire. You will feel a yearning, a search, a...

... thirst and an unfulfillment. What is to be done now? What can be done? Intellectually nothing will happen to you: you will go on changing the object of desire and the negative part will go on pushing you into new desires. Live it. Do not believe in Buddha, do not believe in Jesus, do not believe in me. Live it. Desire and live, and experience desire in its totality. And do not hurry, do not make any...

... haste to conclude. Your misery is because you make such hurried conclusions. You are so susceptible to believing in anything because you do not want to go through experience. Experience may be painful - let it be. But only experience can help you. Premature conclusions, premature beliefs, will be of no help. You are simply wasting opportunities. Desire and desire intensely, I tell you: desire...

... intensely and suffer! Buddha comes to his conclusion not because of previous buddhas. Upani-shads were in existence; he could have read them. He was well educated, well cultured, he knew all the scriptures, but they didn't help him. He moved through desire, he moved through experience; he suffered, he went through the fire. And only through his own experience did he come to conclude that desire is futile...

... - but unless you move through the process, the answer will not be a lived answer. Unless lived, it is futile. You know desire is futile, you know anger is poison, you know greed leads to misery - you know everything. But that knowledge is of no use. Throw it! It is rubbish. Just be aware of your state of mind: the yearning is there, the thirst is there, the unfulfillment is there. That means you are...

... ready to desire. Now desire, and do not listen to buddhas: they are dangerous. Desire! Move! You will have to move your own way; you will have to suffer your own way. Nobody can escape suffering. The law is universal. Nobody can come to shortcuts; there are none. You will have to move your own way, you will have to pass through your own hells. When you have passed through them, transcended them, have...

... become richer, experienced them and a maturity has happened to you - only then will desire fall. Desire will disappear and then there will be no negative part to it. Then the total desire will disappear because you will come to realize this is nonsense. "I have been creating my own hell." And this is not intellectual, this is not in the mind. Your total being, your whole being, will come to...

... conclude and this conclusion will be through your experience, not through anybody else's. Then desire disappears without giving birth to another desire in a different guise. Otherwise you will go on changing the objects. Sometimes you desire wealth and then you feel misery. And then you conclude that this desire is misery, so you start desiring God or you start desiring heaven or you start desiring...

... liberation or you start desiring meditation, ecstasy - but you go on desiring. And if you go on desiring, you are simply changing the shape of the desire, the object of the desire. But DESIRE remains the same: YOU are not changing, you remain the same. You are moving in a pattern, in a circle. You are not moving anywhere. Hence, I go on saying again and again, be aware - beware of Buddhas, Christs...

... all. First you start believing in a thing and then problems start to arise out of that belief. This is a borrowed problem which arises because you have believed, because you have concluded intellectually, rationally, that desire is futile. If this is really your conclusion, then how can unfulfillment still exist there? Unfulfillment is the seed of desire. When you are unfulfilled it means desire...

...: you want to seek fulfillment somewhere. When you are unfulfilled it means you are not that which you would like to be, you are not there where you would like to be. So desire, find, seek, move! Unfulfillment means discontentment with yourself. Fulfillment means: I am what I am; I am where I should be. Or wherever I am, I am absolutely content with me - fulfilled. Then there is no movement of desire...

.... Movement is there but that movement is of life, not of desire. I will go on moving and each movement will happen through my life energy, not through desire. Desire is through mind. Life goes on moving but I will move like a river. The very energy will create a movement but the movement will not be according to desire. I will not desire first and then move. Try to understand this distinction. I am...

... speaking to you. This speaking can be of two types: it can be a sheer movement of life energy, or it can be part of a desire. If I desire it, then I will have to rehearse it. Then before coming to you, in my mind I will desire you to be present. Then in my mind I will think what to say, what not to say, how to say it and how not to say it. Then I will plan it; then I have moved into the future. Then I...

... deliver and was delivering instead in the car while coming back?" If I think about it beforehand it is desire. If I simply come to you and it is a response, not planned, not thought about, it is a sheer movement of life energy, there has been no planning for it, then it is life moving. If it has been planned then it is mind desiring. Movement will be there but it will be unplanned, spontaneous...

.... Desire cripples movement. It doesn't allow life energy itself to move. It plans, it chooses, it decides beforehand. Before the actual situation you have already decided. You will always be in difficulty because it is never going to be exactly the right response - because you cannot conceive of the situation beforehand. It always remains unknown. You will feel frustrated. A mind which desires will...

... always feel frustrated. Only a mind which doesn't desire, which simply moves wheresoever life, the Brahman, leads it to - whether right or wrong, whether to hell or heaven, wheresoever the life energy leads, the one who is desireless moves within. Nothing can frustrate such a being. How? How can you frustrate him? And nothing can make YOU fulfilled. How can anyone make you fulfilled? With desire there...

... is no meeting with fulfillment. With nondesire there is no meeting with frustration. Be true and authentic to yourself and if you have not overcome desire do not believe that you have overcome it; that is not going to help. Know that you have not overcome. Know that ambition is there; know that as you are you are unfulfilled. You need something else. That need for something else... whether vague or...

... not, whether you know what it is or not, makes no difference; you are not at this moment whole and total, at ease with yourself. You are not at home. Your home is somewhere else; you are searching for it. Know it because this knowing will be good and helpful. Know it and move into desire. Suffer it! Feel the pain of it, the frustration of it, and allow life itself to come to a conclusion. Please...

... don't you conclude; allow life itself to come to its conclusion. And when life comes to its conclusion, desire falls without any substitute desire being created there. It simply falls down. Just like dead leaves fall from a tree, desire falls from you - total desire. Then there is no negative part hidden behind it. And when you are in the state of nondesiring, all that is blissful happens to you, all...

... MEANS SUFFICIENT TO APPEASE HIS APPETITE, BUT HE RUNS THE RISK OF WOUNDING HIS TONGUE." THE BUDDHA SAID: "MEN ARE TIED UP TO THEIR FAMILIES AND POSSESSIONS MORE HELPLESSLY THAN IN A PRISON. THERE IS AN OCCASION FOR THE PRISONER TO BE RELEASED, BUT HOUSEHOLDERS ENTERTAIN NO DESIRE TO BE RELIEVED FROM THE TIES OF FAMILY. WHEN A MAN'S PASSION IS AROUSED NOTHING PREVENTS HIM FROM RUINING HIMSELF...

... one day and you will be left alone, and you will be an orphan. And from the very childhood you have been accustomed to having a father to protect you, a mother to love you. Now that childish desire will again assert itself: you will need a father-figure. If you cannot find it in the sky, then you will find it in some politician. Stalin became the father of Soviet Russia; they had dropped the idea of...

... been dropped and the mind has come to a state of maturity, understanding, acceptance that "Whatsoever is is, and we don't desire otherwise. If there is no God, there is no God, and we don't have any desire to project a God. If there is no God, then we accept it." This is what maturity is: to accept the fact and not to create a fiction around it; to accept the reality as it is, without...

..., what he is saying. Whatsoever remains unfulfilled here you go on projecting in the hereafter. But the desire seems to be the same! Hindus say there are trees they call KALPVRAKSHA - you sit under them and whatsoever you desire, without any lapse of time, it is fulfilled. You desire a beautiful woman, she is there - immediately, instantly. In the West you have invented instant coffee and things like...

... that just now. India discovered a wish- fulfilling tree - down the centuries it has believed in that. That is REALLY instantly fulfilling - really instantly, without any time lapse. Here the idea arises, there it is fulfilled; not even a single second passes between the two. The idea is its fulfillment! You desire a beautiful woman, she is there. You desire delicious food, it is there. You desire a...

... beautiful bed to rest on, it is there. Now, this is simple psychological analysis - that man is unfulfilled in life. And he goes on. His whole life he goes on trying to fulfil it, still he finds it cannot be fulfilled, so he has to project in the future. Not that in the future it can be fulfilled - desire as such is unfulfillable. Buddha has said: The very nature of desire is that it remains unfulfilled...

.... Whatsoever you do, regardless of what you do about it, it remains unfulfilled - that is the very intrinsic nature of desire. Desire as such remains unfulfilled. So you can sit under a wish-fulfilling tree - it doesn't make any difference. You can feel many times it is being fulfilled, and again it arises. Ad infinitum it will go on arising again and again and again. The Christian, the Muslim, the Jewish...

... deceive. They know desire remains unfulfilled, so they have to invent an after-life. Nobody has known the afterlife; people can be deceived very easily. If somebody comes and says to you, "God can fulfil your desire here and now," it will be difficult to prove it - because nobody's desire has ever been fulfilled herenow. Then their God will be at stake. They have tried a very cunning device...

...; they say, "After this life." Is not your God potent enough to fulfil here? Is not your God potent enough to create wish-fulfilment trees on the earth? Is not your God powerful enough to do something while people are alive? If He cannot fulfil here, what is the proof that He is going to fulfil hereafter? Buddha says: Look into the nature of desire. Watch the movement of desire - it is very...

... subtle. And you will be able to see two things: one, that desire by its very nature is unfulfillable; and second, the MOMENT you understand that desire is unfulfillable, desire disappears - and you are left desireless. That is the state of peace, silence, tranquillity. That is the state of fulfilment! Man never comes to fulfilment through desire; man comes to fulfilment only by transcending desire...

.... Desire is an opportunity to understand. Desire is a great opportunity to understand the functioning of your own mind - how it functions, what the mechanism of it is. And when you have understood that, in that very understanding is transformation. Desire disappears, leaves no trace behind. And when you are desireless, not desiring anything, you are fulfilled. NOT that desire is fulfilled, but when...

... desire is transcended there is fulfilment. Now see the difference: other religions say, "Desires can be fulfilled in the other world." The worldly people say, "Desires can be fulfilled here" - the communists say, "Desires can be fulfilled here. Just a different social structure is needed, just the capitalists have to be thrown, the proletariat has to take over, the bourgeoisie...

... and so-called spiritualists. To Buddha, both are materialists; and to me also, both are materialists. Your so- called religious people and your so-called ir-religious people are both in the same boat. Not a bit of difference! Their attitudes are the same, their approaches are the same. Buddha is really religious in this way, that he says: Desire CANNOT be fulfilled. You have to look into desire...

.... Neither here nor anywhere else has desire ever been fulfilled, never. It has never happened and never is it going to happen - because it is against the nature of desire. What is desire? Have you looked into your desiring mind ever? Have you encountered it? Have you tried any meditation on it? What is desire? You desire a certain house; you work for it, you work hard. You destroy your whole life for it...

....... You desire a woman and you have achieved your desire, then suddenly your hands are again empty. Again you start desiring some other woman. This is the nature of desire. Desire always goes ahead of you. Desire is always in the future. Desire is a hope. Desire cannot be fulfilled because its very nature is to remain unfulfilled and projected in the future. It is always on the horizon. You can rush...

..., you can run towards the horizon, but you will never reach: wherever you reach you will find the horizon has receded back. And the distance between you and the horizon remains absolutely the same. You have ten thousand rupees, the desire is for twenty thousand rupees; you have twenty thousand rupees, the desire is for forty thousand rupees. The distance is the same; the mathematical proportion is the...

... same. Whatsoever you have, desire always goes ahead of it. Buddha says: Abandon hope, abandon desire. In abandoning hope, in abandoning desire, you will be herenow. Without desire you will be fulfilled. It is desire that is deceiving you. So when Buddha said that these so-called religious people are ALL materialists, of course Hindus were very angry - very angry; they have never been so angry against...

... anybody. They tried to uproot Buddha's religion from India, and they succeeded. Buddhism was born in India, but Buddhism doesn't exist in India - because the religion of the Hindus is one of the most materialistic religions in the world. You just look in the Vedas: all prayer, all worship, is just asking for more, for more, from gods or from God - all sacrifice is for more. All worship is desire...

...- oriented. "Give us more! Give us plenty! Better crops, better rain, more money, more health, more life, more longevity - give us more!" The whole Veda is nothing but desire written large. And sometimes very ugly. In the Veda not only do the so-called rishis go on praying "Give us more!" - they also pray: "Don't give to our enemies! Give more milk to MY cow, but let the enemy's...

... that anybody had really understood the nature of desire. They themselves were desiring; of course, their desire was projected in the faraway future, the other life, but still the object of desire was the same, the desiring mind was the same. It is only a question of time. A few people desire before death, a few people desire after death, but what is the difference? - that does not make any difference...

.... They desire the same things - THEY DESIRE! The desire is the same. Buddha went to many teachers and was frustrated. He could not see religion flowering anywhere, blossoming - they were all materialistic people. They were great ascetics: somebody was fasting for months, somebody was standing for months, somebody had not slept for years - they were just skeletons. You could not call them worldly and...

... materialistic if you looked at their bodies; but look at their mind, ask them, "Why are you fasting? Why are you trying so hard? For what?" and there arises the desire to attain to paradise to heaven, to have eternal gratification in the afterlife. Listen to their logic and they all will say, "Here things are fleeting. This life is temporary. Even if you attain, everything is taken away when...

... of spiritualism - but it is a deception. It is as if on a dung-heap you have thrown some beautiful perfume. The dung-heap remains the dung-heap; the perfume can only deceive fools. Buddha was not fooled, he could see through and through. And he could always see that the desire is there. If desire is there you are a materialist and you are worldly. So he is not preaching any paradise to you, he does...

... understanding. AND THE THIRD THING BEFORE WE ENTER IN THE SUTRAS: He does not believe in the soul - no God, no paradise, no soul. Now, this seems to be very difficult. We can accept there is no God - maybe it is just a projection; who has seen it? We can accept there is no paradise - maybe it is just our unfulfilled desire dreaming about it. But no soul? Then you take the whole ground from underneath. No soul...

... lust, your anger. All your scriptures are nothing but creations of your mind. So it is bound to be so, that they will carry all the seeds of your mind. Scriptures are man-made. That's why religions try hard to prove that their scripture at least is not man-made. Christians say the Bible is not man-made; the Ten Commandments were delivered to Moses directly from God, directly from the boss Himself...

..., THE FIRE THAT CONSUMES IS STEADILY BURNING UP THE STICK." A very simple and matter-of-fact statement. "MOVED BY THEIR SELFISH DESIRES, PEOPLE SEEK AFTER FAME AND GLORY." WHAT IS A SELFISH DESIRE? In the Buddhist way of expression, a selfish desire is one that is based in the self. Ordinarily, in ordinary language, we call a desire selfish if it is against somebody else and you don't...

... care about others. Even if it harms others, you go ahead and you fulfil your desire. People call you selfish because you don't care for others, you don't have any consideration for others. But when Buddha says a desire is selfish, his meaning is totally different. He says: If a desire is based in the idea of self then it is selfish. For example: you donate, a million rupees you donate, for some good...

... cause - hospitals to be made or schools to be opened, or food to be distributed to the poor, or medicine to be sent to poor parts of the country - nobody will call it a selfish desire. Buddha will say it is - IF there is any motivation of self. If you are thinking that by donating a million rupees you are going to earn some virtue and you are going to be rewarded in heaven, it is a selfish desire. It...

... may not be harmful to others - it is not - in fact, everybody will appreciate it. People will call you a great man, religious, virtuous; a great man of charity, love, compassion, sympathy. But Buddha will say the only thing that determines whether a desire is selfish or not is motivation. If you have donated without any motivation, then it is not selfish. If there is any motivation hidden somewhere...

... - conscious, unconscious - that you are going to gain something out of it, here or hereafter, then it is a selfish desire. That which comes out of the self is a selfish desire; that which comes as part of the ego is a selfish desire. If you meditate just to attain to your selfhood, then it is a selfish desire. Buddha has said to his disciples: Whenever you meditate, after each meditation, surrender all that...

... feel hungry in the night and in the dream you go to the fridge and open it and you eat to your heart's desire. Of course, it helps in a way - it does not disturb your sleep; otherwise, the hunger will not allow you to sleep, you will have to wake up. The dream creates a substitute; you continue to sleep, you feel "I have eaten enough." You have deceived your body. The dream is a deceiver...

.... Their last glow has shown us our own possibilities, our infinite potentialities. THE BUDDHA SAID: "MEN ARE TIED UP TO THEIR FAMILIES AND POSSESSIONS MORE HELPLESSLY THAN IN A PRISON. THERE IS AN OCCASION FOR THE PRISONER TO BE RELEASED, BUT HOUSEHOLDERS ENTERTAIN NO DESIRE TO BE RELIEVED FROM THE TIES OF FAMILY. WHEN A MAN'S PASSION IS AROUSED NOTHING PREVENTS HIM FROM RUINING HIMSELF. EVEN INTO...

... THE MAWS OF A TIGER WILL HE JUMP. THOSE WHO ARE THUS DROWNED IN THE FILTH OF PASSION ARE CALLED THE IGNORANT. THOSE WHO ARE ABLE TO OVERCOME IT ARE SAINTLY ARHATS." Buddha says: Those who are lost into the filth of passion and never transcend it, those who never transcend as the lotus transcends the mud it is born into, they are the ignorant people, the worldly people. Those who transcend lust...

... and desire, those who understand the futility of desire, and those who become understanding about the whole nonsense that the mind creates and the dreams that it manufactures, they are the great ARHATS. 'Arhat', the very word means one who has overcome his enemies. Buddha says desire, desiring, is your enemy. Once you have overcome your desire, you have overcome your enemy, you have become an Arhat...

... guide, nowhere to find any security. In that fear, in that awareness of fear, the only place left will be to start going withinwards - because there is no point in going anywhere. It is so vast. THE INTERIOR JOURNEY STARTS when you have dropped all beliefs and you have become aware of the fear, death, desire. And once you are in, suddenly you see fears are disappearing; because in the deepest core of...