The word ‘desire’ is a tricky word. The sentence –‘to be free from desire’ also is tricky, because the mind makes a target of freedom, believes in the target and works towards the target, as if freedom from desire is taken to be ‘desire to be free’. It may work or not, like all desires that are sought.
Desire is a sense of wanting more or desperately wanting. However it is a functioning aspect of sentience. Its unique for human forms, the desperateness about the wanting more, or the continuous pursuit of wanting, as compared to other forms of sentience. So the basis of human function as an individual or a group is based on this theme. Alternatively, functioning with this theme, is what is making the feel of individuality (or separateness) or belonging to group, as if human nature supports this theme to maintain itself as a unique human race.
Desires are of various kinds. Desire to know, desire to become, desire of acquire, desire to comfort, desire to more security, health, wealth, prosperity, status, power, knowledge etc etc. Its all coming under one method of functioning, which is ‘mind’s exclusivity in its nature of functioning. Then there is a desire to solve problems, to achieve perfection, so on and so forth. There is nothing right or wrong with this aspect of functioning of mind, as it is its ‘skilled’ nature or expertise. Its evolution aspect to be more skilled, creatively or destructively. Unfortunately, the mind functions largely in a desirous way, to maintain a commonality in functioning of the human race. The entire human race, is conditioned to acknowledge, maintain and pass on this basis of mental behaviour for the whole of human race. However the whole of such mental functioning is thought based or thought ‘provoked’ and has little chance of falling out, as long as thinking process is maintained, by sentience.
In a matter of basic survival, this functioning supports the cause. Desire for food, shelter etc, when dealt with and maintained, becomes basic essentially However desire has an inbuilt aspect to raise the requirement of such basic necessity in order to change for the better. To understand what better is, a sense of judgement has to fall in place and this becomes a mechanism of original perceiving mechanism to make up certain conditions within perception. So desire, includes use of mind to check out probabilities and deal with them to evolve some result, that is regarded effective. The effectiveness so judged, lies in the condition the result, which must then offer more pleasure and less pain. So, ideas regarding pleasure and pain must take form and be deeply embedded in the psyche, so as to fall back each time onto that, to make the basis of choice and thus make the choice effectively progressive. The choice so made, being personalised will affect the surroundings also, as all forms are in the end, connected as one single form, that we call creation or Universe. The choices focused as ones personal target will be automatically bound to have consequences on wholeness, as such choice is a movement of wholeness, even though seemingly personal. Some other ‘parts’ of wholeness will ‘suffer’ consequences of the first part, as it has to be sacrificed to some extent to support such a single ended choice. Impersonal choices are more of a statement and 'impersonality', doesn't need to choose to have a particular end.
Sentience by itself, being singularity, should find a way to balance its functioning as plurality of individual minds, by finding a method to see success in comparison and not as an absolute, so that the game of mind is kept alive. So success become a progressive game of mind, to that individual and may be at a cost of the rest of the seeming world. Desire then takes on a complex process of dividing all that is, into many brackets of opposites so that there is space for the mind to make progress in terms of achieving more and more pleasure and less and less pain, be it individually or as individual groups.
Desire thus has to be the cause from making of individuals or groups and maintain such separation. In order to achieve the said desire, mind must uses a method of ‘hook or by crook’ to get over with the desires in shorter and shorter span of time. So to desire peace, wars may be raged and to desire wealth, health may be sacrificed and so on and so forth. When these become the primary nature of the conditioned mind, and gets established and settles down, it starts to show that the basic ‘desire’ is getting to be the root cause, having to keep its own game plan active, and that this maintains separation in the cross section of all creation. This gives hope that there could be a method for such discriminating mind to transcend mind, to overcome ‘desire’ which was by now, seen as the basis of all progress and also regress, to be used for bringing an end to desire, which normally is achieved at a cost of rest of the creation.
Considering that the mind has to function in its own sphere, this problem is now taken head on to have this ‘new’ desire, which is - to be free of desire. The thinking mind or human mind or split-mind cant work without this principle. Being a desire in itself, its still bound in the original mind game. It is then seen that it becomes difficult to transcend mind, using mind, as keeping the mind active is still its own normal behavior However, when the mind seeks to use mind to challenge its own functioning abilities, as not to desire, which is not what it is original designed nature, it is possible that the mind may go into a spin and collapse (or not, for that matter, depending on its conditioning ). Such a state where thinking gets out of way, in terms of being fully functional, in its desirous aspect, there is a lot of rest and freedom. Freedom is then seen to be an absence of a desiring mind or thinking mind, in terms of judgement. However, other than this function, that consumed most of its energy, the mind suddenly gets exposed to a its basic nature of only perceiving, prior of conceiving, for the purpose of maintaining itself expertise in being judgmental Then it is seen that ‘desiring’ or mind function, comes to ease.
So freedom from desire, must come as a easing of the functioning of the mind, in filling up time, continuously, being judgmental about all perception. Until then, mind behaves, as the separate individual, desiring or else called suffering a ‘lack’.
Cool! Thanks Nanda.
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