jnñeyah sa nitya-sannyāsī
yo na dvesti na kānksati
nirdvandvo hi mahā-bāho
sukham bandhāt pramucyate
“One who neither hates nor desires the fruits of his activities is known to be always renounced. Such a person, free from all dualities, easily overcomes material bondage and is completely liberated, O mighty-armed Arjuna.” -Bhagavad Gita
Desire is not the enemy. The attachment to the outcomes of our desires is what causes suffering.
If you love to paint and you desire to paint, you will enjoy yourself and be closer to God or Krishna consciousness (as the Bhagavad Gita explains), because you are creating in harmony with the universe.
If, however, you paint because you need people to find your painting, to earn a certain price, or to reach a difficult goal you set for yourself, you are no longer full in yourself and you are seeking fragments of the Self externally, which leads to suffering.
Both scenarios contain the desire to paint, yet the former is a ‘renunciate’ because you are beyond the duality of splitting into joy or sadness at the outcome.
A renunciate in the true spiritual sense of the word, is still active, still desiring, yet unattached.
Love in it’s true sense is also unattached. There is desire in love, but true love seeks no outcome. It is content in every manifestation and doesn’t attach to forms, time and egoic constructs or rules.
True love recognizes that there is no outcome to not being love.
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