Is wanting to do something = desire? Is wanting to do something = desire ? Doesn't enlightened people want to do anything ? They just react to whatever comes ? ( "react" may not be a suitable word).

A related question that I hope to ask in Buddhism SE: How a enlightened monk differs from a enlightened lay person ?

As I know:


Monks have intention to teach dhamma to others.
Monks can live more than 7 days.


The first one have some relation to this question.
An enlightened mind has eradicated the fetters that bound that mind with wandering around with suffering born from ignorance and craving.

What kind of craving?

In the Discourse of the Setting in Motion the Wheel of Dhamma (SN 56.11), the Buddha said this about the kind of desires than bind to suffering and dissatisfaction:


  "And this, monks, is the noble truth of the origination of stress: the craving that makes for further becoming — accompanied by passion &amp; delight, relishing now here &amp; now there — i.e., craving for sensual pleasure, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming.


These three kinds of craving are called Tanha, or 'thirst'. As the objects desired from that thirst are impermanent, the emotional and mental thirst is never quenched by getting this or that object.

Other kinds of desire may still arise for the enlightened mind. The main difference is that such kinds do not lead to suffering, because ignorant expectations, assumptions and generalizations about the world have been uprooted. For such liberated mind, the task has been done. There is nothing further for the sake of this world.

Kind regards!