All Desires are Insane

 

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All Desires are Insane

Desire is insane because desire means living in the future, and the future does not exist at all. What exists is the present. To live in the present is the only sanity there is, but to live in the present we have to drop all desiring. Desire takes us away from the here and now. Desire means fantasizing about the tomorrow. Desire means: “If this happens, if I can manage this, then I will live.”.

We are sacrificing the present for the future, and the present is and the future is not. Sacrificing that which is, for that which is not, is sheer insanity. A high-pressure salesman for a milking-machine company seemed unable to convince a farmer to buy his appliance. Finally, the salesman told the farmer that he will give him a demo and so, the farmer took the salesman to the barn. The salesman set up the shiny machine and the farmer saw how efficiently the machine worked. The farmer who had only one cow, was impressed and said he loved the machine but had no money to pay for it. After thinking for a while, the farmer said he will give the salesman his only cow as payment for the machine!

That’s what you all are doing — sacrificing the present for the future, sacrificing that which we have for that which we don’t have yet and may never have. The tomorrow never comes. All that comes is always today, and we can become addicted to sacrificing the today for the tomorrow. Then we will go on doing the same thing our whole life - always sacrificing the now for something which is not.

Desires are crazy. They make us sad in two ways: if they are not fulfilled, we will be sad, frustrated; if they are fulfilled, we will be sad and frustrated - in fact, more so, because when our desires are fulfilled, then we suddenly recognise that we have been chasing shadows, illusions. We have been trying to catch hold of a rainbow, and all that we find is that our hands are wet, that’s all!

People go on asking for the impossible; in fact, the more impossible a thing is, the more attractive it appears because it gives a challenge to our ego. The ego is not interested in the easy, it is interested in the difficult, and if it is impossible, it is immensely interested. The ego exists only through the difficult and the impossible. That’s why the ego is not interested in God, because God is the simplest phenomenon in the world. We don’t have to do anything to achieve God, because he is already inside. We don’t have to do a thing. We have just to sit silently and watch and look in, and we will find him. It is so easy; that’s why the ego is not interested in it at all.

All desires are insane! The only sanity is to be desireless. The only sanity is to be here and now. This moment is more than enough.