Desirelessness: An_Opening To The Unknown

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 still 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 more the horizon goes ahead. The distance remains always the same because, really, it never touches anywhere. The touching, the contact line, is just false. So when you go to seek the horizon, you will never find it. It will always remain there, but you will never meet it. And you can continue to be in the illusion that the horizon is there - a little distance more to be traversed. You may go around 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? That's 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.

Work is never enough unto itself; it is always meant for some result. The result has a real value, the end, and work is only a means. You work to achieve something; no one works for work's sake. So work is in the present and the result is always in the future, and it all depends on the result. Work in itself is just a burden to be carried somehow, because it is the end that is to be achieved. If you can achieve the end without the work, you will never work.

Play has a different dimension - altogether different, diametrically opposite. There is really no result to be achieved. Play is for play's sake. But we have become so insane that we cannot even play for play's sake. So even through play we try to achieve some result, to win something - prestige, medals, anything, but something must be there 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 else. 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, mmm? - 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 means desires that are dead, and future means desires that are still alive - and the present is untouched by your past and by your future.

So, really, past and future are not divisions of time, but parts of mind. Time is the present; mind is the past and future. Mind has two divisions: past and future; and time has only one: the present.

That's why mind and time never meet. They cannot meet because mind has no present, and time has no past and no future. If there were no mind on the earth, would there be any future or past?

There would be only the present. Flowers, of course, would flower, but in the present. Trees would, of course, grow, but in the present. There would be;no past and no future. With men, or rather with a mind, comes past and future. Really, if you look into a child he has no past. How can he have?

That's why he is never burdened - because the past becomes a burden.

An old man is always burdened. There is a past - a long past - so many dead desires, so many frustrations, so many horizons never found, so many rainbows just broken. He has a long past and he is just burdened. An old man is always thinking about the past, remembering, going again and again into the memory. An old man, by and by, begins to forget the future - because now the future only means death and nothing else. So he never tries to look into the future: he begins to look back.

A child is always looking forward, never back, because there is nothing to look back to. For an old man there is only death to look to in the future and nothing else.

A young man is in the present, so a young man cannot understand children and he cannot understand old men. They both look just foolish - both! Children look foolish because they are unnecessarily wasting their time, unnecessarily playing with toys. An old man just looks dead, just worried unnecessarily. A young man cannot understand really, because he cannot see what has happened to an old man - that he is now only the past. This happens.

But every young man will become old, and every child will become young, and every old man was once young and once a child - because the mind moves, it goes on moving. In children it has a vast expanse to move. With an old mind it has no expanse to move further. But this is movement of the mind, not of time.

Really, we think that time is moving. No, we are moving! We just go on moving: time is not moving at all. Time is 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.

 

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