Daily Quote, Friday May 8, 2009.

Good morning,

It's amazing how May manages to be the foggy month!

Thought has been built through time.

One has to understand the nature of thought, that is, first desire, then pleasure, and then why thought interferes at all. If I find out the relationship among these three, then desire becomes a very small affair. I can see a beautiful house, and leave it; I see a beautiful woman, and not produce all the reactions. Thought has been built through time. Thought is time. If you do not think, there will be no tomorrow. And, we have to think; but if that thinking is based on pleasure, on desire, then thought becomes a problem, then thinking becomes a danger.

So, is it possible to see a house, a woman, and not let thought interfere with it? Not deliberately - not say that thought must not interfere because it brings pain, sorrow, and all the rest of it, but actually see the fact not the explanation; see the actual fact that, when thought interferes with desire or when thought gives importance to desire, then it becomes pleasure, and where there is pleasure there is always pain. The two, pleasure and pain, are not separate: pleasure is pain. You can see that very obviously. Most of our values, concepts, ideals, relationships between man, woman, neighbor and yourself - all that is based on pleasure, and hence all our problems. We function with the principle of pleasure.

Collected Works, Vol. XVI - 62