Evolution of Love 2

Desire

So, what are the causes of desire? Let us go into it very carefully. What is desire? How does it arise? It doesn’t arise by itself. It arises through sensation, through contact, through seeing something—seeing a man or a woman, seeing a dress in a window, seeing a dress or a car or the great hills. There is immediate sensation. It is natural, healthy, to have such sensation, such response. Then what takes place? I see a beautiful woman, a beautiful man, a beautiful house, a beautiful dress. I see a beautiful shirt made most delicately. I go inside and touch the material. First seeing, then contact, and from that contact, sensation, right? Then what happens? Enquire into it: You have touched the shirt, you have the sensation of its quality, its colour. Up to now there has been no desire; there has been only sensation. Then what happens? You have touched that shirt or dress. Then thought creates the image of you in that shirt, in that car, in that dress. When thought creates that image, that is the moment desire is born. That is, desire begins when thought creates the image. I see a beautiful violin—I want to have it; the beauty of that sound that violin makes—I like to possess it. I look at it, touch it, get the sense of that old structure, and I would like to have it; that is, the moment thought enters into the field of sensation and creates the image, then desire begins.

Now, the question is whether there can be a hiatus, a gap; that is, have only sensation, and not let thought come and control sensation. That is the problem. Why does thought create the image and hold on to that sensation? Is it possible to look at the shirt, touch it—sensation—and stop, not allow thought to enter into it? Have you ever tried any of these? When thought enters into the field of sensation—and thought is also a sensation—then thought takes control of sensation, and desire begins. Is it possible to only observe, contact, sensation, and nothing else? Do you understand that? And discipline has no place in this because the moment you begin to discipline, that is another form of desire to achieve something. So one has to discover the beginning of desire and see what happens. Don’t buy the shirt immediately, but see what happens. You can look at it; but we are so eager to get something, to possess a shirt, a man, a woman or some status that we have never the time, the quietness, to look at all this. So, desire is one of the factors of our disorder. We have been trained either to suppress or to change the object. But we have never looked at the moment of the flowering of desire. That is one of the causes of disorder in our life. Please bear in mind, we are not trying to control desire—that has been tried by all the so-called saints—nor are we talking of indulging desire, but we are looking at it like a flower, how it grows.