Insightful paper from one of the greatest philosopher I have known so far. SN Balagangadhara. Full paper here. How important is to teach these to our kids?! These were once ingrained in our culture, in our day to day conversations, but now that culture is slowly fading away. I remember my grand mother and grand father saying things like "I have to die without any desire" in casual conversations, it was once honourable to desire less, but now it's frowned upon.
When I desire Armani clothes or a burger, I do not have desires for these particular objects. What I do have is just one ‘Desire’ that attaches itself now to Armani clothes and then to the burger. Our desire for multiple objects does not show that we have many desires but shows, instead, that it is merely one and the same: Desire attaching itself to different objects. The limitlessness of our desires does not have anything to do with the limitless number and variety of objects in the world but with the fact that Desire has no intrinsic goal or object. That is why Desire cannot be satisfied: nothing can satisfy it.
To make this notion of Desire perspicuous, let me use an economic metaphor. The Desire that the Indian traditions talk about is like Money. Money is singular, there are no plural monies. Money can become wages, savings, profits, financial capital, Industrial capital, mercantile capital, money-lending capital, or merely something we exchange for some commodity or another. Money can take the form of various currencies, shares, gold, a hoard or any other commodity. Money can buy anything because it is indifferent to what it is exchanged against. According to Indian traditions, Desire is like Money: it is limitless; it has no intrinsic object as its goal; it can be accumulated in any form, quantity or degree and, thus, can attach itself to any object.
More from the paper -
Actually, Indian traditions make a much more radical claim: Desire attaches itself to human mind too, the way it attaches itself to other objects. Such a stance coheres with their notion of Desire, of course. If indeed, as Indians claim, Desire is indifferent to what it attaches itself to and can cling to any object whatsoever, why should human mind be an exception to that? Not only that. These traditions should also claim, whether implicitly or explicitly, that even though Desire has the power to attach itself to any object, it is also possible for us to learn how to circumvent Desire even though we cannot ‘fight’ it. I submit that the Indian traditions do so explicitly as well.