The Nature of Need

" The understanding of need is of great significance. There is the outward need, necessary and essential, food, clothes and shelter; but beyond that is there any other need? Though each one is caught up in the turmoil of inward needs, are they essential? The need for sex, the need to fulfil, the compulsive urge of ambition, envy, greed, are they the way of life? Each one has made them the way of life for thousands of years; society and church respects and honours them greatly. Each one has accepted that way of life or, being so conditioned to that life, goes along with it, struggling feebly against the current, discouraged, seeking escapes. And escapes become more significant than the reality. The psychological needs are a defensive mechanism against something much more significant and real. The need to fulfil, to be important springs from the fear of something which is there but not experienced, known. Fulfilment and self importance, in the name of one's country or party or because of some gratifying belief, are escapes from the fact of one's own nothingness, emptiness, loneliness, of one's own self-isolating activities. The inward needs which seem to have no end multiply, change and continue. This is the source of contradictory and burning desire. Desire is always there; the objects of desire change, diminish or multiply but it is always there. Controlled, tortured, denied, accepted, suppressed, allowed to run freely or cut off, it is always there, feeble or strong. What is wrong with desire? Why this incessant war against it? It is disturbing, painful, leading to confusion and sorrow but yet it is there, always there, weak or rich. To understand it completely, not to suppress it, not to discipline it out of all recognition is to understand need. Need and desire go together, like fulfilment and frustration. There's no noble or ignoble desire but only desire, ever in conflict within itself. The hermit and the party boss are burning with it, call it by different names but it is there, eating away the heart of things. When there is total understanding of need, the outward and the inner, then desire is not a torture. Then it has quite a different meaning, a significance far beyond the content of thought and it goes beyond feeling, with its emotions, myths and illusions. With the total understanding of need, not the mere quantity or the quality of it, desire then is a flame and not a torture. Without this flame life itself is lost. It is this flame that burns away the pettiness of its object, the frontiers, the fences that have been imposed upon it. Then call it by whatever name you will - love, death, beauty. Then it is there without an end. "


J.Krishnamurti



"One of my favorite stories comes from the Sufi tradition of mystical Islam. It is a tale that tells us exactly what we will have to face if we endeavor to walk the path of desire.

A man sits in the center of a Middle Eastern marketplace crying his eyes out, a platter of peppers spilled out on the ground before him. Steadily and methodically, he reaches for pepper after pepper, popping them into his mouth and chewing deliberately, at the same time wailing uncontrollably.
"What's wrong, Nasruddin?" his friends wonder, gathering around the extraordinary sight. "What's the matter with you?"
Tears stream down Nasruddin's face as he sputters an answer. "I'm looking for a sweet one," he gasps.

Nasruddin is rendering a conventional spiritual teaching. Our desires bind us to the wheel of suffering. Even though we know that they bring us pain, we cannot convince ourselves to relinquish our grip. As Freud liked to say, there is an "unbridgeable gap" between desire and satisfaction, a gap that is responsible for both our civilization and our discontent.

But Nasruddin's perseverance is a clue to how impossible it is to abandon ship. He is an enlightened teacher, after all, not just a fool. Like it or not, he is saying, desire will not leave us alone. There is a hopefulness to the human spirit that will just not accept no for an answer. Desire keeps us going, even as it takes us for a ride. As Freud was also fond of saying, desire "presses ever forward unsubdued,"2 pushing us to find and make use of our creativity, propelling us toward an elusive but nonetheless compelling goal.

I have been doing a little reading and searching for a few topics of my intrest like 'Meditation and Knowledge etc. to upgrade or remind myself of these lessons in the past few entries. I have also exhausted myself writing about the day to day happenings in my life and needed to detour. So most of what is entered are quotes and passages from great thinkers and writers i had on ocaisions been fammiliar with and taken here for my personal use and not plagiarised for any purpose other than as what i had mentioned, simply notes to myself. J. Krishnamurti, G.I.Gurdjief, among others were my regular readings in my younger seeking days and their works has some influence on my life thoughts and ideas. I was blessed to have developed an intrest in reading the 'heavier stuff' such as philosophy and religion and often books came my way out of the blue as though called upon in answer to unknown questions or to impart an unthought of idea. In these days and age of the internet a whole world of literature is made available at my fingertips and I am able to conjure up all my past gurus and masters at anytime, what more can be called a miracle?
Baba Ram Dass, Alan Watts, Gary Zukav, Richard Bach, Osho, Rabinranath Tagore, Carlos Castaneda, M.K. Ghandi, Sunryu Suzuki, Katagiri Roshi, Tich Nath Hanh(sp?) to name the few whose teachings had touched my life in the past and helped me find my way to who I am today. Today I am accompanied by the works of Sheikh Abdul al - Qadir al- jilani and Ibn Arabi. My spirutal journey, if i may call it that is coming to to a full circle and my reintroduction into the way of the Prophet of Islam and the works of Sufi masters will hopefully makes some sense of the whole time spent in seeking for answers that the inner being had demanded for its own salvation. I am no where close to getting to fully understand who I am and what my potentials are but I am alot closer than I used to be when i was an upstart starting my life in the US in 1973. The exposure i had to these books and teachings had soften my personality somewhat form being judgemental and critical of others especially those whose views are opposed to mine or whose ways makes me want to drop a bomb at their doorsteps.