Another Look at Desire

Don't get caught in the story society is telling you.
Br. Phap Dung

Hmm! Serendipity is amazing , isn't it?  It reminds us of the interconnectedness of everything and this idea that there is really no such thing as the "little separate self."

Serendipity

I have been thinking and writing about our desires and our need to water selectively those things within us that we want to grow.  Then , as I do every morning, I flick on my you tube with the intention of watching the first dharma talk that pops up ( I don't choose or select...I leave it up to the Universe lol). And what dharma talk was there waiting for me to view it this morning? The Better Way to Pursue our Desire. Go figure!  I know Google is pretty smart and may be watching us more than we realize  but really??? :)

Looking at Desires

So I am thinking even more about desires and what to do with them.  I am attempting, without too much effort, to gain more insight into my own desires. It is quite fascinating and I find myself looking at what comes up with an,  "Oh Wow!  look at that! Isn't that cool."  Years ago, I would not have let this stuff come up.  I had a lid over it that I sat on with all my weight to keep any of it from coming out.  If it did manage to come out, I would have attacked it ( an myself for not being strong enough to stop it); I would have resisted; I would have denied it or did what I could to stuff it back down there in that subconscious field where all our shadows are stored.  Now I want to examine it all in this new light of awareness I am discovering, understand it and transform it.  (I am really not into the "transcending", I guess.)

Purposeful Life?

Anyway...so I look at my desires, motivations and goals in life to determine the age old question, "What is the purpose of life?" .  As this talk discusses, so much of our sense of purpose is derived from what our culture defines as important to be, do or achieve. I come from the west and I live in a country that shadows to some  degree our neighbor's ideology of the "pursuit of happiness".  Our purpose is defined for us:  to find happiness at all costs...as if "happiness' is something out there that needs to be hunted and chased down. Happiness is viewed as an "individual achievement" in my culture, one that I will reap all the reward and recognition for if I achieve, and all the blame for if I fail.  Hmmm!

Br. Phap Dung describes the four stages of a purposeful life that Buddha recognized in his culture, which is actually the same stages seen in many cultures today, including my own. We go from enjoying life passionately and freely (which allows for a little wild oats to be sown) in our young adulthood to focusing on settling down and succeeding in our , say 30's, by establishing relationship and professional successes.  From there we progress to serving the world beyond self and family  by becoming community caretakers (in our fifties maybe). This stage may be devoted to leaving something of value behind and we are not usually adverse to having our name attached to it. It is not until our final stages of life that many of us seek spiritual liberation. (The fear of impending death may actually have something to do with that.)

Pursuit of Happiness?

Throughout it all we desire.  We seek to attain and maintain things our culture tells us are necessary for the fulfilment of these stages.  In my culture  we are taught that money, sensual pleasure, fame and recognition, power and "special relationships" are the keys to happiness. Everyone around us is seeking this stuff so it must be  "true and natural desire", right? We are like separate little fish in a big school of fish that are  caught in a fast moving current, we label as the pursuit of happiness. 

But the sad thing is , it doesn't make us happy. We spend all our time being swept along, reaching out, trying to grasp and cling to the things that are passing by us...feeling desperate to "have" what someone else has, to get it before they do, before it runs out etc.  If we are lucky enough, in our endless pursuits, to get one of those things society tells us is our key to happiness...we feel that so called happiness for all but a minute...then we need to upgrade to something newer, better, what everyone else on Facebook or Twitter seem to be so happy having. Because we are being swept along in a current of collective habitual energy, we do not see this grasping, this striving for and the need to do as society instructs in order to be happy pulls us away from the things that actually make us truly happy. It is only when we can free ourselves of society's story, of this current that we will find teh true , lasting happiness we desire.

We need to stop and examine not only what we desire but what we don't desire.  What we don't desire is often resisted, denied, ignored, stuffed down inside us, suppressed and repressed.  This is our suffering.  To examine our desires means we also need to examine our suffering.  We need to determine the root causes of both.

R-A-E-L-I

That lovely little acronym from Deer Park is forever stuck in my head and in my heart.  Rabbits And Elephants Like Ice-cream.

• Recognize your desires and your suffering when they arise or maybe even as seeds in the subconscious ( Of course we often are not aware of our seeds until they manifest in the conscious mind). 
• Then allow them and accept them, accept yourself for experiencing them.  Don't beat yourself up for wanting a new car or a successful business.  It is not the thing you desire or the thing you don't want that is the problem.  It is the why and how of it all that is the problem...the root cause of it that needs to be examined.  Maybe you want a new car because you feel unworthy in comparison to others, you feel like a "nobody" and you erroneously assume the  car will make you worthy, at least in the eyes of others.
• But before you examine it , allow it...embrace it, hold it gently and say "Oh Wow!  Look at that! Isn't that cool?  I wonder what it can teach me about myself. I wonder how I can use this to awaken?" By embracing, we put down our resistance and our need to push away.  We offer loving kindness to ourselves for our human tendencies.  We don't add to suffering, we seek to ease it.
• Then and only then can you truly approach the process of looking deeply at the why you want what you want, or the why you suffer. There is never "one" cause.  There is never one person or thing to blame.  If your desire is for someone to change because you do not like the way they treat you.  You have to realize that your desire comes from many things, not just from that person's behaviour in your present life.  You might have suffered as a child from similar behaviour. You might not like the way that behaviour impacts your children etc etc.  Then when you look at the person you feel is the source of your suffering...know that there are several causative factors making them the way they are.  Maybe  they are unwell or overly stressed, maybe it is the environment, or their upbringing.  Maybe you are actually seeing his or her parents, grandparents, great grandparents in the behaviour you so desire to change.  Just know that: This is because that is.
• The insight will come as to why we desire what we desire or why we suffer as we suffer.  We will find a new way to desire, a new way to ease suffering.  This is enlightenment and it doesn't come from anywhere but inside.  In order to get there we need to stop swimming along with all the other fish because we society tells us to.  We stop, breathe and look inward to determine what we really, really want. What we really want, we may discover, is to have spiritual freedom now!

My own Example: Writing and the Three Truths

In my own example of writing, it helps if I remember these three things Br. Phap Dung tells us to consider: Impermanence, inter-being and non-self.  I do have a desire for recognition as a writer.  I have a desire for some monetary gain for it.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting that.  The problem would only come if I was caught up in that, dependent on it for my happiness, wrote only for that reason.   I will suffer because  these things will never last.  Those who have established literary fame will be praised one moment, criticized the  next.  Will succeed with one book, fail with another.   Be honored one moment, disgraced the next. That is the nature of impermanence.

Then there is the Buddhists notions of inter-being and non-self to consider.  I say "I want to be recognized as a writer.  I want to have what I have written honored and praised."   Now look at this .  I desire these things as if "I" was the only one who deserves recognition for what I supposedly written.  It wasn't just me that put effort into the creation of whatever I write.  I am inspired by a million things and whatever I write would not be without those inspirations.  Take these blog entries, for example...if I did not listen to the dharma talk today, I would not have written this, at least not in the way it was written. Br Phap Dung is just as much responsible as I am for what I wrote here, if not more so. Thich Nhat Hanh is therefore responsible for what I wrote and the Buddha himself.  This little idea of "I" as the separate little  writer of these things is not reality.  As I said many times, especially in reference to poetry, it just comes through me as one collective thought from One Collective Mind. I love this in Three Magic Words.

Every book has been written by the same author...Every sonnet composed by the same poet. (location 180,181)

Without Ego, What Do You Want?

Now that really shrinks ego down to size whether he is in the redeeming mode or the shaming.  So ...without ego...do I really, really want recognition as a writer?  No...I want readers in order to complete this glorious cycle but fame and notoriety I realize will come and go, will turn from praise to criticism in a moment...I don't want to be dependent on that.  What I want is to have so much joy in me, so much peace  as I write for the sheer love of writing and giving that it doesn't matter how my work is received.  Now wouldn't that be cool? I think, I will water those seeds of desire! (Hey...not that I would say no to a publication or to get paid fro what I do lol)

Anyway, know what you really, really want and what you don't want.  Look deeply into these things and decide what should be watered and what shouldn't. Don't let society dictate that for you! Make it an inner game.

Heartfelt thanks to all those wonderful beings who helped me write this and who help me to write all I write!

All is well.


Andersen, Uell S.. Three Magic Words . BN Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Plum Village ( May, 2020) The Better Way To Pursue our Desires/Dharma Talk by br. Phap Dung. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbEOX-orTMg&list=PLaX_vxbhs8fgKZ8fpSs8QyvNwdJMSv4Kp&index=5&t=0s