Desires

How can one cut desires without suppressing them?

If you want to drop needs, you will have to suppress them -- because they are real If you fast, you have to suppress hunger. Then there is suppression, and every suppression is wrong because suppression is a fight inside, and you are wanting to kill the body, and the body is your anchor, your ship which will lead you to the other shore. Body keeps the treasure, the seeds of divine within you, protected. Food is needed for that protection, water is needed, shelter is needed, comfort is needed -- for the body, because the mind doesn't want any comfort. Look at the modern furniture: it is not comfortable at all, but the mind says, "This is modern, and what are you doing sitting in an old chair? The world has changed and the modern furniture has come." The modern furniture is really weird. You feel uncomfortable in it;…

Osho, looking within I have felt that many of my desires are sick, diseased—especially the negative desires. So are there healthy and unhealthy desires? And would you kindly tell us what the difference is between healthy and sick desires?

Desire is natural. It is nature’s gift. It is a donation from the divine. In itself desire is perfectly healthy. Without desire you could not live—not even for a single moment. In fact, the ancient scriptures say one thing: God was alone. A desire arose in him to become two—and the world was born. A desire arose in God to be two, to be many, to expand, to spread—and the world came into being. We are parts of that very desire of the divine; we are rays of that desire. So the first thing: desire is natural. It is of nature; it is innate. Desire is not bad; it is not sin. Those who told you desire is sin—avoid desire, escape from it, repress it, cut it down, kill it—they are the ones who made desire sick. Repressed desire becomes diseased. Whatever is pushed down turns poisonous. It does not…

Osho, it is said that there are basically only three desires—sex, property, and power—and all the rest are their offspring. Of these, Freud calls sex fundamental; Marx, property; and Adler, power. Though all three seem right in their own way, the confusion does not clear. Osho, in this dispute of Freud, Marx, and Adler—the disputants are gone, but the dispute continues—I choose you as the arbiter. Will you hold court? If yes, what will your verdict be?

In Buddha’s time, Amrapali was famed as supremely beautiful. Emperors lined up at her door—an audience with her was rare even for kings; her price was hard to pay. Yet one day Amrapali donned the yellow robe and came to Buddha’s feet: “Initiate me.” Buddha said, “You are so beautiful; emperors are mad for you—what do you lack?” She said, “Let them be mad. I have seen it all. There is no substance in it—children’s toys.” Has anyone ever been fulfilled by sex? Or by wealth? Or by power? No. Yes—delusions, hopes, dreams—plenty. But no dream is ever complete; hopes turn into disappointments; sooner or later the illusion shatters. All three miss the mark. If any one of the three were right, religion would have no place. If all three were wholly right, religion would have no place. Religion has a place precisely because there is a fundamental mistake in…

Another friend has asked: If one has to drop all desires, then what is the goal of life?

Perhaps he thinks that fulfilling desires is the goal of life! Desires are never fulfilled. No desire is ever fulfilled. One desire seems to be fulfilled, and it gives birth to ten more. No one has ever been able to say that a desire was fulfilled. Even before one is fulfilled, a new progeny appears and the chain starts again. The goal of life is not the fulfillment of desires. The goal of life is to attain desirelessness from amidst desires. The goal of life is to pass through desires and rise beyond them. For the moment one rises beyond all desires, one comes to know that life’s supreme blessedness was not in desires. Desires created tension, a pull and strain. Because of desires the mind would run, tire, fall, become distressed. With desirelessness, your very life-energy meets existence. There is no race left, no running about. As when a…