“A social creature in a materialistic society is far from being a perfectly peaceful creature. In a consumer society, being healthy is synonymous with wanting. This mind-set is part of our everyday life and is reinforced constantly. We rarely find room to question it, to challenge the assumption that wanting is a way to happiness.
There is something in wanting which is very energetic. If we want something, we feel alive – wanting pulls us, it leads us somewhere. We can feel driven by desire, and you feel that not wanting anything is a deadened feeling. We are not very good at living with not wanting. Most of our energy comes from acting on wanting: searching, looking, seeking. Very rarely do we find peace through the absence of wanting.
So learning to live without wanting comes as something completely new to us. Learning to really investigate wanting takes us into a completely new realm of values. But unless there is a connection with that new realm, that more profound Dhamma, unless there is insight into the mind, we will rely on wanting in order to feel alive.
Rather than to try to cope by searching for something to fill the gap, the hole, the abyss in front of us, we can begin to investigate who is wanting, who is creating this constant wanting experience.”
~Ajahn Sundara