I.8 — Wanting

Wanting is not the fault. A life without it is not a peaceful life but an empty one, and this is not a teaching of emptiness.

You will want food, and company, and to do your work well, and to be seen, and none of that is a grip. The grip is what happens when the wanting closes: when the wanted thing must come, on these terms, by this time, or nothing is bearable. Wanting is a hand reaching. The clench is the hand refusing to come back empty.

Feel the difference with something small. Want a cup of tea. Notice the reaching. Now imagine there is none, and watch what the mind does — whether it shrugs and finds water, or whether something in it hardens. The hardening is the thing to see. The reaching was never the problem.

So do not try to want less. That is only another fist, closed on the idea of a self who wants nothing. Try instead to watch the reaching, and to catch the moment it curls. The catching is all that is asked, and it is more than it sounds.