Passion for every thing ( 30 April 2006)

In the state of passion without a cause there is intensity free of all attachment;but when passion has a cause, there is attachment, and attachment is the beginningof sorrow. Most of us are attached, we cling to a person, to a country, to a belief,to an idea, and when the object of our attachment is taken away or otherwise losesits significance, we find ourselves empty, insufficient. This emptiness we try tofill by clinging to something else, which again becomes the object of our passion.Examine your own heart and mind. I am merely a mirror in which you are looking atyourself. If you don't want to look, that is quite all right; but if you do want tolook, then look at yourself clearly, ruthlessly, with intensity—not in the hope ofdissolving your miseries, your anxieties, your sense of guilt, but in order tounderstand this extraordinary passion which always leads to sorrow.When passion has a cause it becomes lust. When there is a passion for something—fora person, for an idea, for some kind of fulfillment—then out of that passion therecomes contradiction, conflict, effort. You strive to achieve or maintain aparticular state, or to recapture one that has been and is gone. But the passion ofwhich I am speaking does not give rise to contradiction, conflict. It is totallyunrelated to a cause, and therefore it is not an effect.The Book of Life - April 30