“Forbid Us Something and That Thing we Desire”

“[I]t is rather the case that we desire something because we believe it to be good than that we believe a thing to be good because we desire it. It is the thought that starts things off.”

“We always long for the forbidden things, and desire what is denied us”

“The word desire suggests that there is something we do not have. If we have everything already, then there can be no desire, for there is nothing left to want. I think that what the Buddha may have been trying to tell us is that we have it all, each of us, all the time; therefore, desire is simply unnecessary.”

“Our stations in life, our difference of cultures, the pain-laid men who raised us—forbid us to be us. They have brainwashed us. We feel we should believe the polarity between us.”

“We treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to acquire it rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the desire between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing.”