Question: Sir, what is desireless action? How is desireless action related to love?
Are not the artists attached to their work so much that their lives depend on it? At the same time there are those among them who want nothing but to practice their art for its own sake. Would not this constitute ‘desire’ and ‘attachment’?
Answer: What I understand is that you see a conflict between the following statements:
1.Desireless action is love.
- Love often seems inseparably related to desire, and attachment often is a mark of love.
What statement 2 refers to is passion. Passion isn’t love. Love has no passion. Love is not spectacular. Love is not towards a group of persons or towards an ‘interest’ like music. Love is lack of identification with falsities. Love is oneness with self. Love requires no other – neither a person, nor an interest. One is love. Only one is love. Love is not contingent on the availability of a second.
When one is so purely there that one is not, that is love. In this situation, action happens. In this situation, the action of ‘Being’ takes place. That can be named ‘love’.
‘Desire to play an instrument’ has still doership left in it. Doership is ego. This cannot be love.
Why is the artist attached to his work? Is the instrument a craving? Does the instrument serve to complete the artist? Can anything actually complete someone who does not feel complete in himself? What is that great longing that the instrument serves to treat for a while? Why is that longing more important than life itself? Is that longing love?
The name of that longing is a wonderful thing to meditate upon. For sure, the artist is not longing for the instrument, not even for the music.
-Based on my interactions on various e-media.
Dated: 13th July,’14
