A Quote by Claude Adrien Helvetius
By annihilating desires, you annihilate the mind.
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By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind. Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.
The body is amazingly stubborn when it comes to sacrificing itself to the annihilating directions of the mind.
In the West, there's a myth that freedom means free expression-that to follow all desires wherever they take one is true freedom. In fact, as one serves the mind, one sees that following desires, attractions, and repulsions is not at all freedom, but is a kind of bondage. A mind filled with desires and grasping inevitably entails great suffering. Freedom is not to be gained through the ability to perform certain external actions. True freedom is an inward state of being. Once it is attained, no situation in the world can bind one or limit one's freedom.
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green glade ... Such was that happy garden-state.
When the mind is full of worldly desires, it is their very nature to confuse the mind. Withdraw the mind from outer things and turn it inwards.
You did not so much mind being -conventionally- betrayed, if you were not kept in the dark, which was humiliating, or defined only as a wife and dependent person, which was annihilating.
Of all the inventions that have helped to unify China perhaps the airplane is the most outstanding. Its ability to annihilate distance has been in direct proportion to its achievements in assisting to annihilate suspicion and misunderstanding among provincial officials far removed from one another or from the officials at the seat of government.
If the desires are cut off one by one, then there is peace. When the desires go one by one then there is die-mind. Then there is peace of mind.
The body is there because the mind seeks desires through the body; desires cannot be fulfilled without the body. You can be completely fulfilled without the body, but desires cannot be fulfilled without the body. Desire needs the body; the body is the vehicle of desire. That's why possession happens. You have heard, you must have heard, many stories about a ghost possessing somebody else. Why is a ghost so interested in possessing somebody else? It is because of desires. Desires cannot be fulfilled without a body, so he enters somebody's body to fulfill his desires.
You can live with victory over the desires of your flesh. Habits, attitudes, desires, worries, and dissipation must yield as you exercise authority over your mind, emotions, and will.
This is a very fundamental reason why man cannot become meditative - or why very few men have dared to become meditative. Our training is of the mind. Our education is for the mind. Our ambitions, our desires, can only be fulfilled by the mind. You can become president of a country, prime minister, not by being meditative but by cultivating a very cunning mind. The whole education is geared by your parents, by your society, so that you can fulfill your desires, your ambitions. You want to become somebody. Meditation can only make you a nobody.
It is not the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying on itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things.
A technique can only work if it is in harmony with universal principles. Such principles need to be grasped through Mind, pure consciousness. Selfish desires thwart your progress, but Mind, not captivated by notions of victory or defeat, will liberate you. Mind fixes your senses and keeps you centered. Mind is the key to wondrous power and supreme clarity.
Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat. When your desires are strong enough you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.
The world cannot hold onto you, for the world is not sentient. The world doesn't have a mind nor does it have desires; it is only your mind's objectivisation. It is your own mind's play which imagines that an object-call it the mind or whatever-can hold onto you. It is the idea you have of who you are that is holding onto its own fearful projections as the mind. Leave all of this and remain as the pure, joyous Self.
WE HAVE SEEN that hunger and breathing are desires of the body. There are other desires that are not of the body, but again man seldom pauses to observe these desires in himself.
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