is a deeper question altogether which is what do you desire? what makes you itch?
what sort of a situation would you like? let's suppose I do this often in
vocational guidance of students they come to me and say well we're getting
out of college and we have the faintest idea what we want to do so I always ask
the question what would you like to do if money were no object what would how
would you really enjoy spending your life well it's so amazing as a result of
our kind of educational system crowds of students say well we'd like to be
painters we'd like to be poets we'd like to be writers but as everybody knows you
can't earn any money that way or another person says well I'd like to live in out
of doors life and ride horses I said you want to teach in a riding school let's
go through with it what do you want to do when we finally got down to something
which the individual says he really wants to do I will say to him you do
that and forget the money because if you say that getting the money is the most
important thing you will spend your life completely wasting your time you'll be
doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living that is to go on
doing things you don't like doing which is stupid better to have a short life
that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way and
after all if you do really like what you're doing it doesn't matter what it
is you can eventually turn it you could eventually become a master of it it's
the only way to become a master of something to be really with it and then
you'll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is so we don't worry too
much that that's everybody's somebody's interested in everything
and anything you can be interested in you'll find others as well but it's
absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don't like in order to
go on spending things you don't like doing things you don't like and to teach
your children to follow in the same track see what we're doing is we're
bringing up children and educating them to live the same sort of lives we under
me in order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life
by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing
so it's all retching or vomit it never gets there and so therefore it's so
important to consider this question what do I desire well when we answer that
question in a naive way we figure out that we want to desire what we want is
to control everything to create girls that don't grow old apples that don't
rot clothes that never wear out conveyances that get from one place to
another instantly so we don't have to wait power available to do anything that
you could conceive and do it just instantly like that to get this funny
technological omnipotence but if you take time out to think about that and
really go into it with your full strength of imagination and find out
whether that's where you want to be you will soon see that's not what you want
because the moment you have a situation where you are really in control of
things that is to say in which the future is almost completely predictable
you will see as I said last night that a completely predictable future is already
the past you've had it and that's not what you wanted you want a surprise and
you don't know what that's going to be because obviously it wouldn't be a
surprise if you did you want a pleasant surprise but like
you say what sort of a surprise would be pleasant and you can't really answer
that because you know if there are to be such things as pleasant surprises there
must also be unpleasant surprises there must be rude shops so you're like
somebody taking one of those wishing well boxes you know tubs you know will
you fish in and you'll bring out a package and you don't know whether
you've got a dead rat in it or a new camera and that's the way that's that
seems to be the thing that really excites people but quite certainly there
comes out of this inquiry a feeling of real disillusionment with the ideal of
power to be in power to be in control is not something that any sensible person
wants now you may say that shirking responsibility that if you were a really
responsible person you would go out for power and try to use power it to the
best possible advantage for the benefit of all all right what would be the
benefit of all ask them what do you want me to do with this power
I'm dictator what would you like me to do well nobody knows because they
haven't thought it through they think of all sorts of short-range things and they
are largely conflicting and confusing because they're not well thought out but
again when it finally comes down to it nobody wants to be God now I think that
this is the greatest possible lesson for the Western world to learn because we
are so hung up on the idea of power of control of being able to make everything
go the right way and we've never thought it through when you get control of it
what are you going to do with it and so when you think things through
like that you understand you do not want power don't want to control over them
and therefore in the exploration of what you want you get to the point where
having all pleasures at your command and they Paul and you think of new
sources of pleasure and eventually you get like the ancient Romans who had all
these mad crowds of barbarians who had to go every Saturday to the Colosseum
for a show that really had to surpass everything because they had public baths
they had prostitutes they had every kind of luxury but when they went to see one
of the big shows that people like Nero put on they would have for example
floats circling the Colosseum all full of slave girls from distant parts of the
Mediterranean garlanded with flowers and waving at the crowd and going innocently
around in the next minute they would release wild lions into the arena to eat
up all the slave girls they got a big sadistic kick out of that because you
see pursuing pleasure beyond a certain place takes you in to what are the
Buddhists call the Naraka world that is to say the hells when you have explored
pleasure to its ultimate limit the only thing you can get a kick out of is pain
so naturally you descend from the devil world at the top of the wheel to the
naraka world at the bottom where it de shows all these beings in in states of
torture you get to the hell world as a result of not knowing what you want
as a result of thoughtless pursuit of pleasure which ends you eventually in
the pursuit of pain so when you're in the hell well that's where you want to
be so when I ask I go right down to the question should be started with what do
I want the answer is I don't know when Bodhidharma was asked who are you which
is another form of the same question he said I don't know planting flowers to
which the butterflies come Bodhidharma says I know not I don't know
whatever well when you don't know what you want you've really reach the state
of desirelessness when you really don't know
did you see there's a there's a beginning stage of not knowing and
there's an ending stage of not knowing in the beginning stage you don't know
what you want because you haven't thought about it or you've only thought
superficially and then when you somebody forces you to think about it and go
through and say yeah I think I like this I think I like that I think I'd like the
other as the middle stage then you get beyond that say is that what I really
want the end you say no I don't think that's it I might be satisfied with it
for a while and I wouldn't turn my nose up at it but it's not really what I want
why don't you really know what you want
two reasons that you don't really know what you want number one you have it
number two
you don't know yourself because you never can the Godhead is never an object
of its own knowledge just as a knife doesn't cut itself fire doesn't burn
itself light doesn't illumine itself it's always an endless mystery to itself
I don't know and this I don't know uh turd in the infinite interior of the
Spirit this I don't know is the same thing as I love I let go I don't try to
force or control it's the same thing as humility anytime you as it were
voluntarily let up control in other words cease to cling to yourself you
have an access of power because you're wasting energy all the time in
self-defence trying to manage things trying to force things to conform to
your will the moment you stop doing that that wasted energy is available
therefore you are in that sense having that energy available you are one with
the Divine Principle you have the energy when you're trying however to act as if
you were God that is to say you don't trust anybody and you're the dictator
and you have to keep everybody in line you lose the divine energy because what
you're doing is simply defending yourself so then the principle is the
more you give it away the more it comes back