The Planet of Desire — In Plain Words

In Plain Words · United Wisdom
Andrey Zarinsh and Maria Evilkut

In Chapter 46 of the Daodejing, Laozi connects contentment with lasting sufficiency. This conveys the original epigraph's meaning, translated from James Legge's version. The chapter.

I. The Cosmic Dessert after Which Life Can Finally Begin

Imagine a carousel built around a small model of Earth. It promises ultimate happiness with the next serving. Empty spoons circulate in orbit. In the middle sits an enormous golden spoon, eating the little spoons: the need for the next implement of consumption has already overtaken the need for food.

The carousel can dispense anything. Attention, purchases, success, spiritual experiences, a certificate of freedom from desire. You must come back tomorrow for the certificate: a freer version has been released today. Beside the counter lies the sarcophagus of the previous certificate. That one was final too.

This fictional contraption helps us ask the article's question: how can we want, enjoy, and act while retaining the ability to choose? Desire can nourish life. It can also postpone life's beginning endlessly: get one more confirmation first, and then you will be allowed to feel that you already exist.

Our main image is Earth as the “planet of desire,” symbolically placed alongside the third circle of Dante's Hell. This is the authors' map, rather than a report on the structure of the Universe. Buddhism, the Gita, Abrahamic traditions, Daoism, and Stoicism will help us examine desire from different perspectives. Scientific models add their own distinctions while retaining their separate purposes.

II. The Evening That Suddenly Needs Something Else

Dinner is over, work is finished, and someone close to you is there. You could simply be here for the evening. But then you reach for the phone: someone else's trip, a new car, a person who has accomplished more. A minute ago, there was enough. Now it seems real life has departed without you, and you urgently need to find the next spoon.

This need not be envy, or even a wish to buy what you see. Sometimes you want an undefined assurance that you have not fallen behind. One more window, one more reply, one more victory. What you already received soon goes unnoticed: it has become the minimum admission ticket to the next demand.

The variations differ. Someone keeps working despite being tired. Another asks again about love and is briefly reassured. A third buys a new course on inner freedom without opening the previous one. A fourth manufactures a wonderful holiday so diligently that they need to rest after the holiday.

These are illustrative scenes, rather than diagnoses. Work may be necessary, a repeated question appropriate, a course useful. We are interested in the turn where a means promises permission to live your own life at last, rather than particular help.

The carousel sent a notification: “You are close to complete satisfaction.” It arrived on every revolution. Complete satisfaction kept moving neatly ahead, one purchase out of reach. The contraption buried the present in a very promising future.

Earthly experience includes things, bodies, tastes, relationships, opportunities, and losses. All can nourish people. All can be required to deliver more than they can. We do not need to declare Earth a guilty planet to notice the difference.

III. Nine Positions: Our Map alongside Dante

Take the sequence of planets from the Sun and provisionally add Pluto. We obtain nine positions, with Earth third. Modern astronomy classifies Pluto as a dwarf planet. Here it is added for a symbolic table, rather than to correct astronomy by the force of imagination. NASA's reference page.

Dante's nine circles have different grounds: Limbo is not lust, violence is not avarice, fraud is not treachery. They are not nine sizes of one appetite. The Danteworlds overview.

Provisional position	Dante's circle	Our question about experience
Mercury	I — Limbo	Where am I beside life without feeling that I participate?
Venus	II — lust	When does attraction gain control of every decision?
Earth	III — gluttony	What is enough, and why do I demand more?
Mars	IV — avarice and prodigality	How do owning and spending help preserve my image of myself?
Jupiter	V — wrath and sullenness	How do I respond to an experience that has taken hold of me?
Saturn	VI — heresy	Where does certainty stop allowing scrutiny?
Uranus	VII — violence	When does obtaining what I want violate someone else's life?
Neptune	VIII — fraud	How do I distort reality to obtain a result?
Pluto, provisionally	IX — treachery	What am I prepared to sacrifice to keep what is mine?

The right-hand column is ours. It does not describe planetary influences or make psychological diagnoses, and it substantially changes the application of Dante's categories. Limbo belongs to his Christian account of salvation; heresy to theological judgement. Our question about whether certainty can be examined is not Dante's definition of heresy.

Beyond the third position, the correspondences remain tentative. The carousel tried to use the table to assign passengers to moral orbits, but was forbidden to use it as an X-ray of someone else's soul. We were left with a simple map for questions. Not a bad fate for a map.

The central connection is the matching third positions: Earth and gluttony. It gives us a reason to think about consumption and insatiability. After that, we need experience and texts. An ordinal number does not establish the meaning of human life.

IV. Dante's Hell Does Not Become a Training Centre

In Canto VI of the Inferno, cold rain, mud, and Cerberus depict the third circle. Ciacco connects his situation with gluttony. This is poetic punishment after death within Dante's Christian world. Its inhabitants do not graduate from “Balanced Eating” and receive transfers to the next planet. Inferno, Canto VI.

We transfer the image to a living person: obtain something, settle briefly, feel a lack again. The circle becomes a repetition that can be examined and changed. This transfer is our interpretation. Dante is under no obligation to sign somebody else's carousel warranty.

His own work contains an important turn. In Purgatorio, Virgil speaks of love that goes wrong in its object, excess, or insufficient strength, but also lies at the origins of virtue. This concerns the direction of striving within a Christian account of creation. Purgatorio, XVII, 91–105.

The capacity to strive cannot simply be thrown away. People care, love, build homes, protect loved ones, and seek knowledge because they want something too. Freedom must leave room for that force. Otherwise, we obtain an empty spoon proud of having nothing left to do.

V. Real Hunger and the Demand for Ultimate Fulfilment

Hungry people need food; cold people need warmth. Someone may need contact, a reliable income, housing, or assistance. A philosophy recommending that we ignore those shortages easily becomes an elegant way of not hearing another person's life.

Insatiability, in the authors' sense, begins when a demand loses a recognisable boundary. Food must do more than satisfy hunger: it must cancel a difficult day. Money must offer more than a certain degree of security: it must eliminate all anxiety forever. A loved one must confirm your worth so often that doubt never returns.

This is one possible pattern in particular situations, rather than the secret cause of every appetite. People can work long hours out of necessity or check messages while awaiting an important answer. Repetition alone does not establish addiction or inner emptiness. Circumstances and consequences matter.

A useful question: what job has the desired thing been assigned, and can it do it? A conversation can clarify a relationship, but cannot exclude every possible future loss. A purchase can solve a practical problem, but need not establish its owner's human worth once and for all.

The carousel assigned a dessert spoon the task of eliminating mortality, insecurity, and every unpleasant memory. The spoon could move dessert twenty centimetres. Promoted to such an expansive post, it quickly became extremely busy and utterly useless.

This broader image of gluttony therefore includes attention, power, impressions, victories in arguments, and spiritual experiences. A possible shared pattern is difficulty recognising that what was obtained has already done the job within its capabilities. But nobody can assign the ultimate meaning of someone else's experience from outside.

VI. You Can Want More Fiercely and Enjoy Less

Berridge and Robinson distinguish wanting, a reward's motivational attraction, from liking, its pleasurable experience. These processes can diverge in their research model. Wanting is a technical concept, rather than a name for every human goal; the work primarily concerns reward and addiction. Berridge and Robinson, 2016.

This offers a cautious everyday question: am I still enjoying this, or merely pursuing its continuation? One evening cannot establish a neural mechanism or addiction. You can notice that enjoyment has ended, fatigue is increasing, and the movement continues.

Someone sought rest and obtained stimulation. They sought closeness and ended up checking constantly. They sought confidence and collected so much advice that their own decision became harder to hear. Quantity increased; the original task was lost.

The carousel could dispense a hundred empty spoons a minute. Pleasure was handled by a different component, disconnected long ago to improve output. The model helps us step back and ask: what remains after the next “more”? Examine the answer in life, rather than judging it by the metaphor's beauty.

VII. Moderation Does Not Require War with Yourself

We can declare desire responsible for everything and begin endlessly purging ourselves of pleasure. Insatiability then changes its outfit: now it needs still more discipline, renunciation, and control. The enormous spoon stopped eating little spoons and started devouring certificates of its own perfection.

SN 56.11 rejects indulgence in sensual pleasures and self-mortification. The Middle Way has precise content: the Noble Eightfold Path. The second noble truth speaks of craving leading to renewed becoming; this concept is not interchangeable with desire in general. SN 56.11, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

Bhagavad Gita 6.16–17 connects yoga with moderation in food, activity, rest, sleeping, and waking. Overeating and complete abstention from food, like extremes of sleep, are not described as helpful paths. This is instruction within a teaching on yoga, rather than advice simply to make yourself more comfortable. 6.16, 6.17.

The meeting point is limited: destructive excess and destructive deprivation do not exhaust the path. The Buddhist cessation of craving and liberation in the Gita remain different teachings.

On an ordinary day, moderation can be concrete: eat, rest, finish an activity that has stopped serving the chosen task. Today may require effort; tomorrow, recovery. Declare balance a fixed norm forever, and people once again owe a beautiful scheme more than they owe their own lives.

VIII. Good Things and What We Serve

In Matthew 6:19–34, treasure is connected with the heart, and serving God is contrasted with serving wealth. Needs for food and clothing are acknowledged; the answer includes trusting the Father and seeking the Kingdom and righteousness. The article's concern is that possessions can govern life's direction. The Christian answer retains its religious foundation. Matthew 6, NABRE.

Quran 7:31 permits eating and drinking while requiring avoidance of excess. Bodily goods and moral moderation stand alongside one another within a person's relationship with Allah. This does not reject all pleasure. Quran 7:31, translated by Mustafa Khattab.

In Pirkei Avot 4:1, Ben Zoma connects wealth with joy in one's portion, and strength with restraining the inclination to evil. This is rabbinic instruction. It does not order poor people to be content with deprivation. Pirkei Avot 4:1, AJWS.

We can accept good things: food, relationships, the fruit of work, opportunities to improve conditions. We can also notice when one thing acquires the right to govern all of life. Its absence then seems to mean that the person cannot exist with dignity.

Imagine buying a home. One desire has reasons, a budget, limits, and room for reconsideration. Another requires the house to prove success once and for all, making any house insufficient. The object is the same; the relationship differs. The price tag cannot answer the question of freedom.

The carousel sold the perfect home with an extra room for everlasting self-worth. After purchase, that room turned out to be in the next house. The next one cost more, but promised a bigger promise.

Moderation does not require everyone to live the same way. It helps us ask whether a good thing remains connected with its task. If the means is already taking away health, relationships, or honesty, the prestige of the acquisition does not cancel its cost.

IX. “Enough” Does Not Mean “You Are Not Allowed Any More”

Chapters 44 and 46 of the Daodejing connect fame, possessions, life, and the ability to stop. In Chapter 46, insatiability appears alongside war; personal moderation has consequences for the shared world. Laozi, 44/46, Legge's translation.

But “enough” can easily sound like someone else's prohibition, especially after a long period of shortage. In our practice, it relates to a particular need and chosen task. Growth is possible. Completion is possible too.

We can want more knowledge, income, space, or closeness and specify what would actually change our situation now. A skill can be learned; perfection for every eventuality is an endless assignment. The carousel especially enjoyed selling the course “How Never to Make Another Mistake.” The purchaser's mistake was purchasing it.

Sometimes the issue is quality of participation. Ten attentive minutes may offer more contact than a distracted evening; one choice acted on, more than dozens of explanations never applied. These are illustrative examples, rather than standards for conversation length or productivity.

Sufficiency helps us recognise: dinner happened, the task was completed, the conversation was real. If what is completed immediately disappears beneath a new demand, achievements multiply while lived experience remains scant. The carousel had a vast warehouse of things passengers had received but were forbidden to notice.

X. Acknowledge the Conditions and Keep Acting

The Universe is under no obligation to remove every pain for us. Bodies, finite lives, circumstances, and possible loss belong to earthly existence. We can believe this experience has a spiritual purpose. In our metaphysical version, Earth becomes a place for encountering desire and its consequences. This is a hypothesis of meaning, rather than an established cause of every event.

Having needs is not humiliating. Limits do not make a life a mistake. We can see our conditions and keep striving for something better, without awaiting a world free of vulnerability.

In the Enchiridion, Epictetus distinguishes what is in our power from what is not; he also speaks of helping a friend in danger. Acknowledging limits is compatible with action and loyalty, without cancelling actual harm. Enchiridion, §§1/32, Elizabeth Carter's translation.

Gita 2.47 limits attachment to the fruits of action and warns against attachment to inaction. It is Krishna's instruction to Arjuna within its own religious and narrative context. We can compare participation without complete ownership of the outcome. Bhagavad Gita 2.47.

In life, the step may be small: acknowledge that the conversation happened, an answer was received, or a loss cannot be undone now, then consider available action. That action guarantees no success. But it no longer needs a different reality to arrive first.

XI. Justice Is Not Written Off

Call life a school, and it becomes easy to declare every evil a useful lesson. Call Earth a circle, and we can tell someone harmed that this was precisely the level they were supposed to get. This is an elegant way to overlook someone else's harm, rather than wisdom.

The map does not establish that people deserved suffering or agreed in advance to particular violence, betrayal, or deprivation. Acknowledging an event in your history and acknowledging it as just are different decisions.

Quran 4:135 requires just testimony even against oneself, parents, or relatives, without favouring wealth or poverty. This sets a limit on the substitution at issue here: inner calm does not justify refusing to notice a violation. Quran 4:135.

We can protect boundaries, seek available help, and demand redress for harm. A desire for another life can have grounds and be proportionate. It does not become insatiability merely because someone is dissatisfied with their current circumstances.

External justice and inner freedom are different areas of work. Sometimes both are needed. The carousel advised a passenger to stop noticing the broken step in order to ascend spiritually. They decided to repair the step. This interfered with neither reflection nor ascent.

XII. Choice among Desires

In self-determination theory, Deci and Ryan distinguish autonomous from controlled motivation. Autonomy concerns one's own participation and action experienced as congruent with oneself, rather than independence from everyone. Alongside it stand competence and relatedness. The scientific model does not confirm the spiritual structure of planets. Deci and Ryan, 2000, selected definitions.

For us, the question is whether I choose an activity or fulfil a demand I no longer know how to reconsider. People can work towards a meaningful aim or from constant fear of losing others' recognition. The same action is experienced differently; the answer needs exploring within the situation.

Freedom becomes noticeable when alternatives remain. Want something, enjoy it, notice the cost, stop, postpone, or change a decision if conditions allow. The absence of what we want can hurt. Pain need not determine the next action all by itself.

This is not indifference. We can love, strive, argue, protect, and remain attentive to consequences. In our map, “leaving the circle” changes participation in earthly life without destroying the world of things and needs. Spiritual continuation remains a question of faith; what can be examined begins today.

XIII. A Small Experiment without a Willpower Exam

If you wish, choose a recurring episode with moderate stakes: scrolling through a feed in the evening, an optional purchase, or work beyond your chosen finishing time. Pausing should be possible and must not deprive you of necessities.

Reconstruct the sequence. What came before the impulse, what did you want, what did you do, and what changed immediately and later? A few sentences suffice; explanations remain open for now.
Name the desire's task. Entertainment, rest, connection, postponing a conversation? The answer may be mixed. Examine it through the consequences.
Specify a sufficient result. Some clearly defined rest, a completed task, a clear request. If the object must establish your right to be loved once and for all, it may have been assigned too large a job. That invites investigation, rather than self-blame.
Try a reversible turn. Pause, finish at a chosen moment, communicate a need directly, or postpone an optional decision. See whether clarity or a choice appeared.
Return to the consequences. Observation does not replace action; action does not remove the need to check. An unsuccessful experiment also allows reconsideration of the approach.

Real shortage, fatigue, an awkward environment, or others' demands may prove more important. Then conditions need changing too. The map does not reduce everything to missing inner moderation. You can stop, decline the experiment, choose assistance, or take another approach.

XIV. Return to Earth

The phone is still there. You can keep looking, put it down, or discover that you need a conversation and try to start one. Dinner already happened; the person close to you exists; today's work was part of life without a worldwide announcement of achievement. The new alternative matters.

On the carousel, one passenger acknowledged having eaten. The machine urgently offered a still more definitive dinner. The passenger did not have to refuse. But for the first time, they could ask whether dinner was what they needed. Sometimes they needed a conversation. Sometimes rest. Sometimes another bite, perfectly reasonably.

The enormous golden spoon got its normal job back. The little spoons were no longer buried inside one another and were set out on the table. The carousel no longer decided when passengers were permitted to exist. It could offer dessert. A much smaller post than a cosmic appointment, but the dessert sometimes brought pleasure.

Earth as the third circle is useful while it returns us to experience: what nourishes, delights, and directs us, and at what cost? We can see a larger spiritual purpose or investigate without that belief. Either way, the map issues no final verdict.

Life ahead can become more just through attention to others, noticed violations, and manageable changes to conditions. It can become freer when desire stops being the sole manager of choice. We need not leave Earth to begin. We can gain the possibility of living what is already happening.

Key Thought

“Who is rich? One who is happy with their portion” — Ben Zoma, Pirkei Avot 4:1, conveying the AJWS version cited in the Russian adaptation. The text on Sefaria.

Here this means the capacity to participate in the life available, rather than someone else's imposed ceiling on what others may have.

Seven Connections and Their Limits

Comparison	Meeting point	Boundary
Dante and our model	The third circle helps us discuss insatiability	Punishment after death and a provisional map of living experience differ.
SN 56.11 and Gita 6.16–17	Indulgence and destructive deprivation do not exhaust the path	The Eightfold Path and yoga retain their own teachings on liberation.
Matthew 6 and Quran 7:31	Using good things has a moral orientation	Trust in the Father and a relationship with Allah are not identical.
Avot 4:1 and Dao 44/46	Recognising sufficiency changes acquisition	Rabbinic ethics and following the Dao differ.
Epictetus and Gita 2.47	Limits on outcomes are compatible with action	Stoic choice and Krishna's instruction are not one teaching.
Quran 4:135 and our practice	Working on oneself does not cancel justice	The authors' synthesis is not a shared quotation from every tradition.
Psychology and philosophical texts	Impulse, pleasure, and participation need distinguishing	Scientific models do not establish a spiritual cosmos.

Sources

All fifteen entries and links from the original are retained below. Descriptions of reading belong to the original article's research report. The entire frozen text was read again for this adaptation, without rereading all the external works. The planetary comparison remains the authors' model; everyday and carousel scenes are illustrative. Neither the Russian nor the English adaptation independently reproduces the original's external reading claims.

NASA. About the Planets. The planetary sequence, Earth's third position, and Pluto's status. Page.
Danteworlds, University of Texas at Austin. Inferno Overview. An academic reference on the nine circles, used to check the table. Overview.
Danteworlds. Circle 3, Canto VI. The original article reports checking the third circle's description and connections with gluttony; reading covered selected passages, rather than the entire Comedy. Page.
Dante Alighieri. Purgatorio XVII, 91–105. Princeton Dante Project. Italian text and Robert and Jean Hollander's English translation: love, its object, and moderation. Selected passage.
SN 56.11, Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta. Thanissaro Bhikkhu's translation; the original article reports reading the sutta. The Middle Way, extremes, and craving. Text.
Bhagavad Gita, 6.16–17. Gita Supersite, IIT Kanpur. The original article reports reading available Sanskrit and translation excerpts: for 6.16, including Swami Sivananda; for 6.17, the Sanskrit text, Shankara's commentary, and its Hindi translation by Sri Harikrishnadas Goenka. The complete work was not read. 6.16, 6.17.
Bhagavad Gita, 2.47. Gita Supersite, IIT Kanpur. The original article reports checking the available passage, including Swami Sivananda's English translation: action, fruits, and inaction. Verse.
Gospel of Matthew, 6:19–34. NABRE, USCCB. The original article reports reading Chapter 6; selected verses are used. Chapter.
Quran, 7:31. The Clear Quran, Mustafa Khattab's translation. Quran.com. Using good things and excess. Verse.
Quran, 4:135. The Clear Quran, Mustafa Khattab's translation. Quran.com. The requirement of justice. Verse.
Pirkei Avot, 4:1. AJWS translation reproduced in Sefaria Sheet 114872. The original article reports checking Ben Zoma's teachings and the quoted wording; the main work's entry was not available as readable text. The sheet with the translation.
Lao-Tse. The Tao Teh King, or The Tao and Its Characteristics. James Legge's translation, Project Gutenberg, eBook 216. The original article reports reading Chapters 44 and 46; Chapter 46 §2 supplies the epigraph. Electronic edition.
Epictetus. The Enchiridion. Elizabeth Carter's translation, Internet Classics Archive, MIT. The original article reports checking §§1, 15, and 32; §§1 and 32 are used. Text.
Berridge, K. C., Robinson, T. E. (2016). Liking, Wanting, and the Incentive-Sensitization Theory of Addiction. American Psychologist, 71(8), 670–679. DOI: 10.1037/amp0000059. The original article reports reading the introduction and definitions on pp. 670–671; a limited distinction is used, without reproducing the paper or drawing conclusions about a particular reader. Author's copy.
Deci, E. L., Ryan, R. M. (2000). The What and Why of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. DOI: 10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01. The original article reports checking selected definitions and sections on autonomy and internalisation; no reading of all 42 pages is claimed. Copy on the theory's website.

About the Authors

Andrey Zarinsh is the author and founder of United Wisdom. He explores inner transformation, unity between traditions, intercultural dialogue, and contemporary spiritual discipline. Instagram: @andrey.zarinsh.

Maria Evilkut is a co-author of United Wisdom. Alongside research, she seeks to test these ideas in practice and observe how principles of unity and mutual understanding work in real life between people and cultures. Instagram: @ilkutki.