A desire arises with the memory of a pleasant experience and past impressions. A desire might arise through listening. A desire can be triggered through the association of certain people and a place. Someone else's need or desire may manifest in you as your own desire, e.g. when someone is hungry, you get a desire to feed them or someone wants to talk to you and you get a desire to talk to them. The destiny or a happening in which you have a part to play may trigger a desire of which you have no idea.
Wherever the mind can go, that is its jurisdiction. When a desire gets fulfilled, the mind goes away from it. For example, if you want an umbrella, till you get the umbrella, the mind looks for it. Once you get it, the mind moves away from it. This is a natural tendency of the mind. The mind thus keeps wandering from one desire to another.
Learned men from many years have talked of dispassion and the need for dispensing of desire. But isn’t the want to get rid of desire a desire in itself? To know dispassion, you need to know desire. To shed desire, you need to embrace it with all your heart. Do not give too much weight to the fulfillment of desires. Don’t fight it off and try to rid it from your system.
In the Bhagavad Gita, lord Krishna says, “You cannot get into yoga (union with the self) unless you drop the desires in you.” So the question is how to drop desires. Meditation is the art of letting go your desires. Life teaches you the art of letting go in every event. What is that you are looking for?
When a desire comes to you, just offer it and say, “If it is good, let it happen to me.” And then let go of it but do all the actions that are required to make it happen. Surrender is to be active and dynamic, but not obsessed with the feverishness about fulfilling the desires. And everything will blossom naturally, like a flower blossoms from the bud. So surrender and be free.
