Well, as the Buddhists say, desire is the root of all suffering. When you desire something, you're unhappy until you can have it. Whether you desire something great like world peace, something bad like killing your enemies, or something neutral like a million bucks, desiring it still means you can't just stay where you are and be happy. You're always just hoping once you do this or do that, you'll be happy at some point in the future - and of course it never happens because you just start desiring something else.
It's true that wanting to get rid of desire is itself a desire - that's one of the basic insight of Mahayana Buddhism right there, and one of the reasons systems like Zen get so weird. You have to not only not desire anything but not desire to not desire anything (and so on through various metalayers), something which can only be achieved through a mystical disconnect. I don't pretend to understand more of it.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-11-13 04:32 pm (UTC)It's true that wanting to get rid of desire is itself a desire - that's one of the basic insight of Mahayana Buddhism right there, and one of the reasons systems like Zen get so weird. You have to not only not desire anything but not desire to not desire anything (and so on through various metalayers), something which can only be achieved through a mystical disconnect. I don't pretend to understand more of it.