To Have And Have Not
When you start a Zen or Tao practice, your goal is to realize some kind of wisdom. Some people try to rid themselves of desire, but the desire to practice in itself is good. However, when you start meditation, n you should not have any desire to produce anything. You have to bring some desire to keep practicing but stay away from entangling yourself in your desire. Desire can be like a kind of nervous dog that is cute and fun to pet, but if you let go of it, it begins to run wild. Once that happens, it is hard to track it down again and get a hold of it. So you see you have to have desire but at the same time not have any. You just have enough to push you to the edge of the cliff, but not enough to send you flying off into the ravine below. We can use the teachings as a type of guardrail. They teach us balance and that we must act according to our nature, and not to an extreme. Having no desire would lead us nowhere, having too much gets us tangled up in a web of attachments. Having the right amount leads us down the road of wisdom.
