Desire. To have desire for. I've deeply contemplated this term for awhile now, and its association with the concept of non-attachment, and then further through the idea of yoga as a competition. Recently someone posted on my blog regarding competition and yoga and said this: "I read somewhere, I'm not sure where, that in order to overcome suffering, one must overcome desire." In thinking thinking this through (and please feel free to share your thoughts), so, if we were to relinquish our our attachment to our desires (perhaps to win or to lose), then perhaps we relinquish any suffering that may go along with our experiences and our accomplishments.
To get a better understanding for the term desire, I looked it up on Merriam-Webster's dictionary and found some other interesting synonyms along the way:
Desire: stresses the strength of feeling and often implies strong intention or aim
Wish: sometimes implies a general or transient longing especially for the unattainable
Want: specifically suggests a felt need or lack
Crave: stresses the force of physical appetite or emotional need
Covet: implies strong envious desire
What do you think about this topic, and term desire. I can't imagine not having desire - it goes along with motivation and we all need some desire to get us up every morning. But if we are suffering, perhaps its important to check in with our strong intentions and aims in life and perhaps relinquish our attachments to them in order to extinguish the suffering?
But isn't suffering good? Isn't it through the suffering that we reach joy?
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