How to manage your desires?

It’s natural that the mind harbors desires. Desires don’t ask your permission, they just drop in and stay. When they drop in and stay, that’s when they create trouble for you. When they drop-in, you should see them off.

If desires don’t come at all, there is nothing for you to get rid of. They have to come, so they come. You say goodbye to them.
Do not hang onto desires and cry over them, just take them as they come and do not hold on to them. Wanting to have no desires in life is also another desire. Be satisfied, content and centered.

Do you know what the ancient saints and Gurus used to say? “When the sunlight comes, a candle has no meaning.” You don’t have to blow out the candle, just bring it into the sunlight; the candle will lose its significance by itself. Similarly, if you have a bigger vision, the smaller desires will lose their significance.

When they lose their significance, it’s as good as you saying goodbye to them. You have said goodbye to them, because they are no longer significant to you. You are looking at an infinite sky, and a speck of dust is enough to blur your vision. Small things can become an irritant to your mind. Suppose you get an insignificant thought when you sit to meditate, the entire time you are sitting in meditation, that thought will be with you. That little thought irritates you. It is utterly insignificant, it is useless. When you wake up after meditation, you can attend to that thought. These little things need not be very important.

We don’t desire the highest in life. What we really desire is – make a phone call to somebody or receive compliments from somebody or correcting some misunderstanding or turn some proper understanding into a misunderstanding. This is all we are engaged in. All that our thoughts hover around are really unimportant, insignificant things but they appear very big. This is Maya, – illusion. Things that really do not matter start bothering you. How to get over these things? It is a skill.

Nothing can bring you satisfaction. Satisfaction is not an adjective, it’s a noun. You are satisfaction. What can bring satisfaction to satisfaction? Nothing! It’s that simple. Only nothing can bring satisfaction to satisfaction. So do nothing!

The whole world is running around to attain satisfaction. Have you heard about the musk deer? It’s the deer from which the perfume musk is obtained. The perfume comes from a gland near the deer’s navel but the musk deer thinks it’s coming from somewhere in the forest. It goes all round the forest looking for the source of the fragrance. The deer cannot find it, because it’s coming from its own body. Dogs chew bones and while chewing the bone they hurt their jaws and start bleeding. When they start bleeding, they think the juice is dripping from the bone, so they keep biting it even more. Finally, they find their mouths all bruised.