Want (Pt. 1)

Let us say that you have a house with a beautiful garden, and you look after it nicely. Then you see a television set advertised and, if you have the money, you will buy it. You will keep buying more and more things and adding them to what you already possess and, yet, you will not be satisfied; you will want something more. You will want to be happy, you will want to be peaceful, you will want to be loved. As your wife or husband doesn't love you, you will turn to the priest, to God, or you will give your love to somebody else; but even then you will not be satisfied, and you will keep going on and on in this way.

Now, have you ever asked yourself if there is such a thing as being satisfied? Whatever you have, you always want something more. If you are the big man in your town, you want to be the Prime Minister of the whole country, and so on. You are everlastingly accumulating, climbing the ladder of success. At the end of it all, there is death; and you want, hope, there will be something even after you die. You never question and find out if there is an end to wanting. One must have food, clothing and shelter - that is understood. But why should one have the desire to be well-known, to see one's picture in the newspapers, to be famous as a marvelous artist, a great thinker, or a self-sacrificing social worker? You never ask that question, do you? If you find out for yourself why this craving gnaws at your heart night and day, you will also discover that you can go beyond it - not in ideas, not in imagination, not lost in some cloud away from yourself, but factually. Then you will also find that you can live happily in this mad, stupid world with a few essential things, being neither satisfied nor dissatisfied but tremendously alive; and from that will come the discovery of something much greater, something far beyond all this wanting and not-wanting.
- JK