Desirelessness

With growing desirelessness, sometimes the person becomes outwardly inactive. Is it lethargy and dullness? Why does it happen?

Many things are possible, and it will depend. Certainly many desires will drop and many actions also. Those actions which were just caused by desires will drop. If I was running for a particular desire, how can I run if the desire has dropped? My running will stop. At least the same running on the same route will stop. So when a person becomes desireless, at least for an interim period, for an interval -- and how long it will be will depend on the individual -- he will become inactive. The desires will have dropped -- and all the actions that he had been doing were concerned with desires, so how can he continue? They will drop. But by dropping desires and actions, energy will be accumulated -- and now energy will begin to move. When it moves, how it moves will vary from individual to individual, but now…

What is desirelessness? Is it to be totally without desire or to be totally free to have or not have desire?

Politicians pretend to be religious because that pays in politics. Morarji Desai pretends to be religious -- that pays in politics. Now, look at the disgusting thing Jimmy Carter has done: he came to India and he asked, first thing in India, three hours for prayer. He knows India is a religious country -- three hours for prayer?! Prayer is nothing to be bragged about. You can do it in your bedroom -- three minutes are enough -- three seconds are enough -- just a single moment is enough -- because prayer has nothing to do with time: it needs intensity. Now, a three-hour prayer! think of God also a little bit: listening to Jimmy Carter for three hours... poor old man! Nobody thinks of God. And what will you be saying for three hours? You will bore Him to death! But he knows that India is a religious country,…

The first state of vairagya, desirelessness -- cessation from self-indulgence in the thirst for sensuous pleasures, with conscious effort. The last state of vairagya, desirelessness -- cessation of all desiring by knowing the innermost nature of purusha, the supreme self.

But the situation is needed -- a silence, energy not in excitement. You are not doing anything, just being there under a tree, and you will have the glimpse. And this will not really be the pleasure, it will be the happiness, because now you are looking at the right source, the right direction. Once you know it, then through sex you will immediately recognize that the other was just a mirror; you were just reflected in him or in her. And you were the mirror for the other. You were helping each other to fall into the present, to move away from the thinking mind to a non-thinking state of being. The more mind is filled with chattering, more sex has appeal. In the East, sex was never such an obsession as it has become an obsession in the West. Films, stories, novels, poetry, magazines, everything has become sexual.…

To be desireless means: I am content as I am. If I am unquiet, I am unquiet; if I am restless, I am restless; if I am in bondage, I am in bondage; if I am in sorrow, I am in sorrow. As I am — total acceptability, a complete acceptance of this. No, not even an inch otherwise is in question. As I am, I am. Then there is no movement, no motivation. How will any journey begin? How will the mind say, Come there, attain that? As I am, I am. The essence of Tao is tathata — suchness, acceptance. Where there is total acceptance, there is desirelessness. And where there is even a slight non‑acceptance, there is the birth of desire. A slight rejection — and desire is born, craving takes hold, the race begins. Have you noticed? From non‑acceptance desire is born.