What are desires?

We all constantly battle with our desires and, many times don't know how to deal with them. After all, what are desires? Why do they come to us? From where do they come? How to deal with them? Is it bad to have too many desires? Are there good desires and bad desires? There are so many questions like this related to just one subject 'DESIRE'. A desire is defined as a 'conscious impulse toward something that promises enjoyment or satisfaction in its attainment'. They are supposed to bring happiness upon their fulfillment, that's why we chase them. But if we can't fulfill them then the same desires bring unhappiness and depression in our lives. Most of the time whatever good or bad things happen to us are blamed on our desires. Desire is one of the strong motivators for our actions. The motivational aspect of desire has been very well documented in philosophy, human desire is considered a fundamental motivation for most human actions.

Our culture and general education are supposed to train our brains to differentiate between good desires and bad (or amoral or unethical) desires. We get trained to differentiate between them but no one can stop them from coming to our mind. Desires come to us automatically, it's a natural phenomenon. They don’t ask for our permission before entering our minds. Since our entry into this world knowingly or unknowingly we desire something or the other. We desire for food when we are hungry, sleep when we are tired, and water when we are thirsty, even our basic needs are also linked with our desires. Generating desires is a sign of an active and functional brain or mind. People in an unconscious state or in a coma though alive don't desire anything because their mind is not in active state.

Path of renunciation blames our desires for all material attachments, according to Buddha we should cut the flow of our desires to achieve liberation. But how to cut the flow of desire? To stop desiring (or not to have any desire) itself is a desire, so technically we can not have a desire-free stage. Our mind is such that it likes to move around, it's curious about many things. We have physical needs and mental or psychological needs, we need to fulfill both of them to live a healthy life. It's also true that there is no limit to desires, they are endless, and they keep on coming. Our needs are limited but our desires are endless. I think the best way to deal with desires is to let them come and learn to deal with them. If we try to suppress or resist them then they will bounce back with stronger force (like Newton’s third law every action has an equal and opposite reaction). We can ignore them if we feel they are unwanted desires, or even store them somewhere in the deep closet of our mind and eventually, they will get lost or go away. Active desires need constant attention, they overpower our mind, take total control over it, and then start dictating our behavior. Therefore, we should be in control of our desires, they should not control us.

If our mind is at peace and full of good thoughts then only good desires will come to our mind because bad desires won't find any attention and if they do, they won't survive long. I think the stage of ultimate happiness is not when you are free from all desires but when you have total control over them. You neither resist them nor run after them, they come and go like people around you. We meet many people in our life but not all of them become good friends, desires are like that, we get many of them but not all stay with us, it's up to us to decide, the choice is always ours. If we learn to do this, then we can learn to live our lives with thankfulness and enthusiasm.

Thanks for reading and your comments are always welcome.

(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing)