From The Selfless Self, by Laurence Freeman, London, 1989.
If there is one thing we can be sure about the future it is that we will always be wanting something. Whatever happens, whatever we get, we will always be wanting something. Human beings are always looking for something or aspiring to some-thing. It is a characteristic of human nature to be nearly always aware of a lack, of a need, or of something missing. Even at times of great happiness and satisfaction that awareness of something missing is never far away. All the great religious traditions take account of this state of desire that we live in. They do not try to deny it. They accept that human beings are in the state of desire, and most of them see the connection between desire and other human characteristics, such as anxiety, suffering or sin. The Buddha’s way of liberation, for example, taught the escape from suffering through the elimination of desire. Get rid of desire and the desiring ego, and there will be no more suffering. He taught the way of mindful detachment. The teaching of Jesus no less recognises that when we are over-concerned with our material needs or status we will be in a condition of anxiety and disharmony in relation to others and to God. His solution was correspondingly simple — not to try to renounce our needs one by one, because that would be an endless task, but rather to go to the root of desire and to transcend that, to leave self behind. ‘Set your mind on the kingdom before everything else, and everything else will come to you as well.’ It is not easy to follow such a simple, radical teaching, but if we can even approach the experience of its truth we will discover its possibility. If we can take our attention off our needs even for a short period we will discover the extraordinary transforming effect that a redirected consciousness has on us, as we live our daily lives, cope with emotions and anxieties of every kind. This is precisely what meditation does. It does so in an undramatic way. But the revolution-conversion it works is the drama of redemption from suffering to joy. Meditation reveals our role in the story not as anything remote or esoteric, or as something that only the great sages or mystics can achieve, but in a way that is as human as desire itself.
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Meister Eckhart, On Detachment
No man is happier than he who has the greatest detachment …
So, leave all images and unite with the formless essence.
