Is desire a disease …?

Many great scholars and sages have said very clearly – Get rid of your desires, and you will be free from all disease, sorry, etc. But my ignorant mind rebels. Is it wrong to have desires, when desire is inbuilt into humans? Take away all desires from a person, and he will become a robot or zombie. We obviously desire what we don’t have. Life would be boring if we had everything. Desire for needs (food, water etc.) subsides as soon as the needs are met, but desire for wants (wealth, status, luxuries) is endless, at times increasing as we get more.

In a lighter vein was this incident: The expectant father was standing outside the Labour room. The nurse came out and said, “I know you were hoping to get a boy, but it’s a baby girl.” The man replied, “Oh, it doesn’t matter really, because I was hoping that if it wasn’t a boy, it should be a girl.”

On a touching note, a naïve and innocent pupil went to the Guru and inquired:

“What happens when I get free of the desire to get rid of all desires?”

Passion and intensity of desire is what drives some great people to break social norms and even redefine them. Martin Luther King desired equality, Gandhi desired non violence, and Edison was hell bent in inventing the light bulb. Their desires made the world a better place. At the same time Hitler was diseased with cleaning up the race. There are religious fundamentalists who think they are divinely chosen to execute a non divine act. These people are also ‘diseased’ with the desire to make the world a better place.

What separates them is that the former follow a policy of inclusion and universality whereas the latter follow exclusion and a secluded universe. For the rest of the mankind who are on a mission to get through their day today lives, if their desires brings in inclusion and an open universe, they must certainly allow them to infest their entire being and see to it that they spread the disease so that many more are afflicted with the same condition. May our race never develop immunity for such diseases.