What Do We Do With Desire?

When I was at the National Zoo last week I visited Murphy, the zoo’s Komodo dragon. I am drawn to Murphy, a sturdy 7 foot long, 200 pound lizard with a steady gaze. People sometimes talk about the "reptilian" part of the human brain, the part that just wants what it wants. For me, Komodo dragons are a wonderful manifestation of this energy: total, complete, self interest. When hungry, a Komodo dragons will eat anything, including other Komodo dragons.

Unlike the Komodo dragons, many of us are conflicted about our desires. We have issues with food, with addictive substances, with sexual energies, and with emotions such as envy and competitiveness. Because of our more sophisticated brains and complicated lives we want and we don’t want; or we want and we don’t want to want. When we are conflicted like that, we suffer.

One thing I’ve learned about working with my conflicted desires is to sit with them, understand them more deeply, and try to embrace them. What kind of desire is this? What stimulated it? What underlying need or lack is this desire is trying to fill? When I understand the desires better, often the internal conflict lessens and I see more clearly what action to take, or not take.

In his book Buddhist Economics, the Thai monk, Venerable P.A. Payutto, helpfully distinguishes between two types of desire discussed in early Buddhist writings. The Pali term tanha is used to describe the reactive impulse to accumulate pleasant feelings and avoid unpleasant feelings. It is an automatic, unreflective response, without any consideration of the impact of our actions. In the second of the Four Noble Truths, tanha is identified as the root cause of suffering. The other kind of desire is termed chanda: the desire for that which is right, good, skillful, or wholesome, for ourselves and for others. Chanda arises from mindfulness, reflection, and insight. Payutto notes: "As wisdom is developed, chanda becomes more dominant, while the blind craving of tanha loses its strength."

Sri Nisargatta, a contemporary Indian teacher, expresses the distinction Payutto's makes in just a few words: "The problem is not desire. It's that your desires are too small."

You are invited to join us this Thursday evening for our meditation period and our program on desire. For the month of November we are trying out a slightly different schedule so that we can end a little earlier. We will begin as usual at 7:00 with sitting meditation. At 7:35 we will have walking meditation. Our Dharma discussion will begin at 7:45 and end by 9:00. (Once you have tried the new schedule, please email us at info@StillWaterMPC.org and let us know how it works for you.)

Also, this Thursday is the first Thursday of the month. Beginning at 6:30 p.m., we will be offering a brief orientation to mindfulness practice and the Still Water community followed by a guided meditation during the 7:00 pm sitting. If you would like to attend, it is helpful to let us know by emailing us at info@StillWaterMPC.org.

Desire is Not the Enemy
by Mark Epstein from Open to Desire: The Truth about What the Buddha Taught

The actual word that the Buddha used to describe the cause of dukkha was not desire, it was tanha, which means “thirst,” or “craving.” It connotes what we might also call clinging: the attempt to hold on to an ungraspable experience, not the desire for happiness or completion. As a therapist who has spent the past thirty years engaged in an integration of Buddhism with psychotherapy, I have seen how crucial this distinction can be. To set desire up as the enemy and then try to eliminate it is to seek to destroy one of our most precious human qualities, our natural response to the truth of suffering. Buddhism was not intended to be a path of destruction, it was a path of self-understanding. It did not seek to divide and conquer, it sought wholeness and integration.