Question from Colleen Loehr: My understanding is that desire is generally a future-oriented obsession based on delusions of deficiency. . . . [and that] the Second Noble Truth is that desire is the root of suffering. . . . I get confused. On the one hand, there seems to be something that could be called devotion or motivation that seems to be essential to any true spiritual blossoming.On the other hand there is the “stickiness” of desire that glues one to the delusion of separate self-hood. I’d be grateful for any clarification you might offer.
Response:
Desire is a natural expression of our human nature. Without desire, quite simply, we would not be. Desire brought our parents together, the desire for food keeps us fed, the desire of the cells for nourishment and life keeps us vital, the desire for contact keeps us connected to others. As the great American mystic Walt Whitman put it, “Urge and urge and urge, always the procreant urge of the world.” Desire is another name for the powerful energy that animates life in the world of form.
The difference between freedom and suffering lies not in eliminating desire, but in being unattached to the objects of our desire. Desire takes its natural place in the order of things, but we no longer attach to the outcome. By contrast, when we believe the view that we’re separate selves in a challenging or hostile world, we tend to feel that our survival is constantly at risk. As a result we cling to whatever we believe will help ensure our survival– material possessions, status, power, people, and our beliefs about how life should be. Desire, which is fluid and dynamic, like a river, hardens into the “sticky glue” of attachment.
Paradoxically, it’s the desire for truth that frees us from the prison of attachment. When we discover who we are, we realize that we were never born and can never die, and that the person we took ourselves to be is just an elaborate and seductive construct. In the light of this realization, attachment naturally falls away, and suffering comes to an end. (More on the desire for truth next time.)