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Osho – The more desires you have, the more misery you will create for yourself. Misery is a consequence of desiring — and you go on desiring. In fact, you think that if your desires are fulfilled your miseries will disappear. In the first place they are never fulfilled; in the second place, if they are fulfilled, nothing is fulfilled by their fulfillment. You remain as empty as you have always been — or even more, because up to now you were occupied with a certain desire; now even that is fulfilled. A deep deep emptiness comes to you.
You wanted to have a beautiful house; now you have it. Suddenly, you don’t know what to do. You were so much engaged in earning money, you were so mad after getting the house; now you have got it. For a moment you feel good — not because of the house, remember, but just because the whole tension, that mounting tension has disappeared — the house is yours.
All that strain and tension is relaxed; it is the relaxation of that tension that gives you a little experience of pleasure. That you could have experienced any time if you had relaxed; it has nothing to do with the house.
See the mechanism of desire! But after that relaxation, after a few moments or a few hours or maybe a few days… it depends how intelligent you are. If you are really intelligent, then within seconds that disappears — you can see the futility of it. If you are not that intelligent, then a few hours; if you are really stupid, then a few days. It is in the proportion of your stupidity: you will remain happier for a longer period if you are more stupid because you will not see the point.
But sooner or later, howsoever stupid you are, it is bound to disappear. And then you will be left with a great emptiness, hollowness, and you would like again to strive for something else. Maybe you need more money now or a beautiful woman to suit the beautiful house. Again a new desire, and you rush. Again you will attain… and for a few moments, the relaxation.
It is like the sexual experience. What pleasure you attain in sexuality is nothing but the pleasure of a mounting excitement, tension, and then the relaxation. Your energies go on mounting higher and higher and higher, and then you explode — you ejaculate. And suddenly you fall back into a certain calmness; the excitement is gone. But you don’t learn anything from it: that this is the whole secret of all your pleasures. Running, rushing, competing, fighting for something creates great tension.
That’s why it happens that if you are involved into something really deeply you may not feel any interest in sexuality. If you are involved deep in scientific endeavor you may not be interested in sex at all. You may be a little puzzled, confused: “Why are people so much interested in sex? What is there?” You have found a new sexuality for yourself. Science is your wife; now you are running after science. Or you may be a politician; then politics is your wife. But one day, when you become the prime minister of the country or the president of the country, you have reached to the climax, and then after the climax there is nowhere to go… a certain calm falls over you.
That calm is misunderstood as if you have attained it through the experience, by becoming the president, the prime minister, famous, respectable, a Nobel Prize winner. It is not that; it is because of relaxation. If you relax right now without attaining anything, that same calm will fall over you — even deeper because you will be full of energy. But we never look into anything, and even if we look into anything we conclude very superficially.
Source: from Osho Book “Dhammapada Vol 9”