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substitutes it with another desire.
Even the so-called spiritual people are not without desire, hence they are not spiritual; they are only so-called spiritual. They have left the worldly desires but now they have substituted them with other-worldly desires. They are no more seeking and searching for money, true, but now they are seeking and searching for god. The search remains, the seeking remains, the desiring remains; and desiring is the problem, not the object of desire. The very process of desire is the problem, not the object. The object is irrelevant. What you desire is not the point. You desire, that is the point.
That's the way the mind plays tricks. You say 'I am finished with the world. I don't want to desire anything of the world. I have seen all the games and I have played with all the toys. They are all just toys and the time is just wasted -- I am finished, I am fed up.' The mind says 'Perfectly good. So now desire god.' You are right -- the mind agrees with you: now desire god. And it looks so logical: 'Drop the world, move to a monastery, pray, desire, knock on his door, and hope that some day in this life or in some future life....' Because in this life it doesn't seem to be possible, hence the mind has proposed other lives. It says 'Don't be worried. This is not the end -- you will be reborn so that you can continue. So even if you desire the impossible, don't be worried about time -- time will be available; if not in this life then in another life.' The mind creates the future, the mind creates this future too -- future lives -- so you can be at ease and you can go on desiring. But changing the object of the desire changes nothing. Hence the worldly and the other-worldly are absolutely alike, aspects of the same coin -- apparently opposite to each other but deep down joined together. The really religious person is one who has seen through desire, who does not drop the object of desire but drops desiring.
That is the meaning of nishkam: dropping desire, becoming a no-desire, a no-ambition -- spiritual or secular... no ambition. Hence no future, hence no mind, hence there is nothing to do. One simply is, and in that is-ness,
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