desires

This must seem a weird post. I will discuss about things that has a flavor of Buddhist thoughts. It should not be surprising, after all, I am raised in a Buddhist family, and I myself had been a Buddhist for a long time. My favourite Chinese poet is Wang Wei, who is a Zen Buddhist and is famous for the Zen elements in his poems.

back to topic. We are probably born with few desires. Eat and sleep, that's what we want. Most often, we get them. No worries. We began to develop desires after we enjoyed something novel---When we tasted a especially yummy cuisine, we begin to realize the enjoyment of such experience, and hence develop the taste and desire for such cuisine. Ironically, that begins our trouble. We cannot always have that, maybe it is too expensive for our daily consumption, and that brings pain. Prior to our exposure to that cuisine, we are not aware of such enjoyment, and hence have no such desire. Desire does not make us feel bad or good, but the inability to satisfy our desires bring absolute pain. Unfortunately, knowledge and awareness is a tricky thing, and once we have them, it is impossible to get rid of them (unless we get tired of something)---it is hard to return to the stage of innocence.

Because of this, our desire accumulates throughout our life, and people are often less happy as they age. I observe too often that some people often began with a job they really enjoyed, then as they develop more and more desires, they could not afford all those desires. Consequently, they felt bitter about their job, feeling it is their job that in their way to fulfill their desires. Grumpy they get. In the end, the pain comes not from unfulfilled desires, but also frustration emanated to things we have been perfectly fine with.

It was painful when I realized that I am so deep in the crap. I like to read books. In fact, every single second I have so many books on my mind that I wish to read. some technical books, some philosophical, some historical, and some just fun. One day it began to bother me---when I started reading one book, I could not enjoy it---I realized that I had been busy, and could only read book for a short period time, and there came the pain. I was torn between which books to read. I sampled all books by reading the first few pages, and tried to find the most enjoyable book. In the end, I only got to sample the piles of books without finishing any one of them, and I had to get back to my homework. I got very angry and unhappy. I am constantly battling this, even today. There is no easy way out. As I grow and read more, I got interested in more and more stuff, and are able to read more and more stuff. I still refuse to specialize, and that adds to my desires. Of course, my desires have expanded way beyond reading.

I remember my mum telling me that, "those days you spend in school are the best days. You seldom have anything on your mind. Once you are out, you will constantly be drowned by other trivialities that you can no longer read." I guess that's true.  Looking back at last year, how I enjoyed it! Throughout last year, I had few deadlines, few to rush to, and simply had a peace of mind, that I now long for.