Volition, our deepest desire or intention, is the ground of all our actions. We have to ask ourselves, “What is my deepest desire in this life?” Our desire can take us in the direction of happiness or suffering. Desire is a kind of food that nourishes and gives us energy. If you have a healthy desire, such as a wish to protect life and the environment or to live a simple life with time to take care of yourself and your beloved ones, your desire will bring you to happiness. If you run after power, wealth, sex, and fame, thinking that they will bring you happiness, you are consuming a very dangerous kind of food that will bring you a lot of suffering. You can see this is true just by looking around you. For example, if you think that becoming president of a large corporation is what will make you happy, everything you do or say will be directed toward realizing that goal. Even when you sleep, your consciousness will continue to work on it. Or perhaps we believe that our suffering and that of our family has been brought about by someone who wronged us in the past. We feel we will only be happy if we can hurt that person, so our life is motivated solely by the desire for revenge and punishment.
Everyone wants to be happy, and there is a strong energy inside us pushing us toward what we think will make us happy. We need to see that position, wealth, fame, possessions, or revenge are often the very obstacles to our happiness. We can cultivate our wish to be free of these things and nourish our deepest desire so we can enjoy the wonders of life that are always available—the blue sky, the trees, our beautiful children.