Enthusiasm

There must be enthusiasm in our endeavors, or nothing will get accomplished.

Enthusiasm drives all our actions. To be exact: this is a youthful enthusiasm.

To be excited about what we are involved with ensures that we remain on the path. This is true in all endeavors, including the spiritual ones.

At first, we get a wisp of liberation, a taste, and then we run after this wisp, this taste, spending many years of our lives finding its deepest source. We will find it and rest in it to our greatest satisfaction.

One of my teachers would tell this story:

A musk deer caught a sense of a wonderful perfume and began searching for its origin. Wherever it went, there was this delightful aroma. Little by little the deer became desperate, because it could not find the source of this wonderful scent. After many years of running in all different directions without result, the deer finally fell down, greatly exhausted and its head came to rest near its naval. There it finally found the source of the perfume it had been so enthusiastically seeking.

That is the way with people also. We run around in search of the blissful state that we carry with us all the time. If we only sat down quietly and meditated within ourselves, we would find the source of the bliss within us