This is a talk given at Blooming Heart Sangha on June 16, 2021
It is a huge challenge to walk the path of desire. While challenging, it is also a path to deep awareness and enlightenment. Desire creates a place where our inner life can prosper and grow. Rather than cause suffering, desire can be very useful and a great resource. Desire has great power even while it can be the occasion of great pain.
Actually, I think it is quite complicated. That complicated nature of desire is reflected in the divergence I’ve read about in Buddhist traditions. Some traditions embrace desire as a source of insight and enlightenment. Some traditions attempt to suppress desire; desire is often referred to as sensuous desire. I think you have heard this. I hear it often. It is coupled with “sensuous” because desire can easily lead to clinging and grasping…..the Second Noble Truth. That IS sensuous desire.
Suffering arises from desire because of our inclination to grasp and cling to the object of desire. Problem: desire can never be satisfied because the object of desire can never be possessed. The preoccupation with possessing the object of desire inevitably causes suffering. Understanding and entering that gap ( between desire and object of desire) and entering into the Gap is the path of insight and enlightenment. Some monks recognized this and embraced desire; Some thought it was too difficult and attempted to avoid desire altogether.
Desire, the strong inner attraction we experience, is natural and unites us all. The moon is drawn to the earth, the earth is drawn to the sun. I am drawn to other people, to trees, to dark chocolate. There is a hum in all of us that reaches out for union; it yearns for a union that I think only comes with enlightenment. That potential for enlightenment is not always apparent when desire stirs a deep longing; seeing the potential requires insight; also, the opportunity for enlightenment comes at unexpected times.
Desire is a learning opportunity, a chance for insight. I had one such opportunities of insight in my young days as a monk. Once I was ordained, it was my practice of going to churches nearby and conduct morning services on Sunday, which included giving a sermon. On one occasion, when I was putting things away after the service, a woman my age approached me.
We talked about my sermon, and then she looked right at me and said “It would be nice now if we could just go make love.” I had been well-trained in the skill of controlling desire and said “Yes, that would be nice, but No.” We hugged and never again spoke to one another.
I’ve thought about that incident, not so much then as in recent years. I don’t much think about the decision, whether it was a correct decision or not; (keeping in mind Lori’s frequent reminder “Are you sure?”) I do think of the dynamics of desire, the pursuit, the inevitable frustration of not enough. How that felt. The incident, with all its raw starkness and power, continues to be a teaching moment, a source of understanding and insight.
And that is one of the great values of desire. Besides the power that desire creates, it always forms a Gap between desire and the object of desire. The two will never meet, desire will never be fulfilled, union will never occur. …….it can be a painful Gap. Understanding that Gap is the way of insight and enlightenment.
First I have to deeply feel the desire, then I can examine the Gap it creates. That is where insight arises; in eastern thought, it is what is sometimes called the left-handed path.: experience desire, then enter into the Gap.
It’s complicated: desire creates the space where inner life can grow. Actually, I think the Gap is the same Gap between past and future, space and time. The Gap is “the other shore, emptiness, unconditioned, unchanging, shelter”…….all the synonyms for Nibbana. There is always a Gap between desire and the object of desire, between desire and another person, a tree, dark chocolate. The desire will never be satisfied, union will never occur. Being able, with an enlightened mind, to fully see and enter that Gap between desire and the object of desire is the union of Nibbana.
Again, I acknowledge that there are different schools of Buddhist thought on this issue. Thay says that monks avoid the problems of desire by following the monastic life. I think, however, that Thay often taps into the energy and power of desire. I especially think he captures the Gap in his poetry and writing. Unfulfilled longing is interupted and dealt with by settling into the Gap, into the vast expanse of the present moment.
I’ve obviously been thinking lately how desire livens up in my life and how it stirs mindfulness and insight. Desire energizes my relationships with people I love, the plants in my garden, the food I eat at meals, and dark chocolate. I eat food because I have built up a desire and anticipation, so that when I sit down at the table, I am more intensely aware of how I relate to what I am eating……. I experience more mindful eating.
I open the energy of desire when I walk in my garden so that I am more deeply aware of the plants. When I pull out my one piece of dark chocolate, I am very aware of the coming experience of melting bitter cocoa.