King Pasenadi once asked Ananda: "Buddha tells us to get rid of all desires, is that true?" "True", answered Ananda.

The King continued : "So when a Buddhist practitioner wants to train to purify himself, to train to achieve higher virtue, higher mind and higher wisdom, aren't all that desires as well?"

Ananda said: "As long as there is desire, there is greed!"

The King asked: "How is that right? You train to get rid of greed, but then training itself is also greed?"

Ananda explained " Before your highness came here, you did have desires. Since you arrived all your desires have disappeared."

As laymen, almost all of our actions have some level of desire attached to it, either directly or indirectly.

There are two types of desire: Bodily desire and Dharma desire.

When we are ignorant of Buddha's way and teaching, we only have bodily desires: seeking pleasure, superficial beauties, good music, nice smell, comfortable living, long life, ...

When we have learned Buddha's way and teachings, we have Dharma desires: seeking purity in conduct, cleansing our mind, avoiding five bodily hindrances, looking to improve our understanding of Buddha's texts, training to better state of mindfulness.

When Buddha said "desire is the origin of everything", desire in this context is bodily desire.

There are two types of desire: Desire of going out or desire of going in.

I said it before: All things on this world, from the highly saints to laymen, to the lowly insects and worms, they are all on a two-way road: to go out or to go in.

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