Why Your Desires Will Never Make You Happy

We spend much of our lives satisfying what we call our needs. But do we always need what we pursue? Between need, want, and desire, the line is less clear than it seems. And yet, learning to tell them apart can profoundly change our relationship with happiness, with inner peace, and with that famous "more" that never seems satisfied.

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Needs are legitimate; the endless pursuit of more is not

We spend much of our lives satisfying what we call our needs. But do we always need what we pursue? Between need, want, and desire, the line is less clear than it seems. And yet, learning to tell them apart can profoundly change our relationship with happiness, with inner peace, and with that famous "more" that never seems satisfied.

In truth, peace is the state closest to Man's deepest nature. I would understand if you doubted that. Indeed, confusion, doubt, fear, distress, anger, and incomprehension seem to characterize Man far more. And yet, as incredible as it may seem, the state of inner peace is the very ground of human nature.

Agitation is constantly fed by what comes from outside: our relationships, our occupations, our projects, our expectations, our fears, the events we face, and everything that calls for our attention. Whereas to live inner peace and feel love, it is enough to turn back within oneself.

The inner is closer to you than the outer!

Few people live this inner peace. How can this be explained? The purpose of The Path is not to explain; it is to offer those who thirst for consciousness a place to drink.

Yet there is a cause of suffering that must be named: the confusion between desires and needs.

Human needs are not limited to eating, drinking, sleeping, and having a roof over one's head. We also need security, affection, belonging, recognition, esteem, a certain material stability, and the possibility of fulfilling ourselves.

Wanting to be loved is therefore not necessarily a desire. Needing to be recognized, to have a pleasant home, a materially comfortable enough life, an activity that satisfies us, or the occasional possibility of travel, can all be perfectly legitimate needs.

A need is not necessarily vital in the strict sense. It can be emotional, relational, social, material, or simply necessary for a person's balance at a given moment in their life.

A need can be satisfied. Desire works differently. Some let themselves drift on the endless flow of their desires, addicted to consumption the way one can be addicted to drugs, alcohol, tobacco, or gambling. As long as they have the money needed to feed that dependency, they may not even feel particularly frustrated. The desire is satisfied temporarily, then another comes to take its place.

For those who lack money, the frustration is more visible. Some get themselves into impossible situations, go into debt, live beyond their means, and their whole existence ends up shaped by what they wish they owned.

The problem is not the object. The problem is this movement that always says: more. Better still, more beautiful, bigger, more comfortable, more prestigious. A need can reach satiety. Desire never does: one desire simply chases out the next.

Others go to the opposite extreme: they deprive themselves of everything in the hope of reaching a detachment they wrongly believe favors their Realization.

Anchorites shut themselves away in hermitages, ascetics fast, deprive themselves of sleep, or subject their bodies to all kinds of ordeals. These deprivations sometimes bring on spectacular altered states of consciousness.

But is everything spectacular a sign of truth? Suppose the devil exists... would you think him incapable of performing miracles? An extraordinary experience is not necessarily an experience of truth. What impresses the senses and the mind is not necessarily what brings us closer to the essential.

Spirituality, then, does not consist any more in refusing everything than in wanting everything. One can even become obsessed with things by constantly busying oneself with not possessing them.

There are essential needs that must be met, and in a sense this is a sacred duty. If we start from the premise that "the body is the temple of God," then you must treat it as well as believers of every religion tend to their temples, mosques, synagogues, and churches.

It must be fed properly, cared for, allowed to sleep, protected from cold and heat, and allowed to live in decent conditions. But we must not forget Man's other fundamental needs either: the need to love and be loved, to belong, to be recognized, esteemed, respected, and to be able to accomplish something with one's life.

Meeting one's needs is not materialism. It is giving material and human existence its rightful place.

"Meeting your needs
is a sacred duty."

Bhaktimàrga 133

Distinguish needs from desires. A need can be satisfied; a desire cannot: one desire simply chases out the next. But desire must also be distinguished from want. A want can be light, occasional. You may want a good meal, an item of clothing, a trip, a pleasant object, or a distraction. This want is not always fundamental, but it can be satisfied and end there.

There are also occasional needs. Not everything we need is fixed once and for all on some list. A particular situation, a period of life, a job, a family can give rise to new needs.

Desire, as I use the word here, is something else.

It keeps alive the feeling that something is always missing. When I have this, everything will be better. Then, once that is obtained: when I have that. And then something else again. Desire endlessly pushes the promise of satisfaction a little further away.

If you long to walk a path of truth, you will meet your needs, you may even satisfy certain wants, but you will avoid, as much as possible, getting caught in the mechanism of desire.

"Desires and needs resemble one another
but do not belong to the same family."

Bhaktimàrga 132

Spiritual teachings have long warned against desire when it becomes the driving force of existence. The buddha Gautama Siddhartha spoke of this, as the Dhammapada, the traditional collection of his sayings, explains:

"In the man without vigilance,
desire grows like the Màluvà creeper.
It runs from here to there and there to here,
like a monkey leaping from tree to tree,
seeking fruit."

Dhammapada, 334

The Bhagavad Gîtâ speaks of this too. It invites Man to no longer be ruled by his most primal nature, by his desires, and to remain in the full awareness of Oneness. It uses, notably, this image: when one has access to the source, the well loses much of its importance. That, at bottom, is the whole question. Once you know the source, you can still drink from the well, but you know where the water truly comes from. One can enjoy the pleasures of existence without asking of them what they cannot give.

If you thirst for true spirituality, you will make a choice. Temperance and frugality are not poverty. Unchecked consumption does not lead to happiness. It is not a matter of lacking everything, but simply of walking the paths of the One and finding, there, peace and love.

Failing to rein in the endless round of desires prevents us from finding inner peace. This is not a matter of morality. Being rich is not a sin. Being poor is not a spiritual virtue.

A rich man who received the Revelation of The Path and sat down in meditation would live inner peace just as anyone else would, for the One gives itself to those who give themselves.

The problem, then, is not wealth itself. The problem begins when the pursuit of wealth, comfort, prestige, appearance, or accumulation takes up so much space that it becomes the center of one's existence.

Owning your home outright does not prevent you from going within to find true peace there. One does not have to be a tenant in low-income housing, or homeless, to be spiritual.

Having a beautiful home, living comfortably, traveling, loving beautiful things, does not make someone a materialist either. But owning several absurdly luxurious homes, complete with a helipad, a grotto pool, a tennis court, and all sorts of amenities left unused three-quarters of the time, is no longer simply meeting a need for comfort. At that point, accumulation has taken over.

Materialism, then, is not measured only by what one owns, but by the place that possessions and desires occupy in our consciousness. One can have little and think of nothing but having more. One can have much and know that the essential lies elsewhere. But one cannot devote one's existence to always wanting more while, at the same time, claiming that the essence of one's life lies in the search for truth.

One cannot be both spiritual and excessively materialistic. At some point, a choice has to be made. Peace does not ask us to renounce life, comfort, love, pleasure, or the satisfaction of our needs. It simply asks that we stop looking, in desire, for what only the essential can give us.

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