“Desire, said the Buddha, is the cause of suffering. But without desire, what delight?”
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989) Author and Environmentalist
I love Edward Abbey’s writing but his observation illustrates a common misunderstanding about what the Buddha taught. The Second Noble Truth used to be, and still sometimes is, stated as the “The cause of suffering is desire.”
During Edward Abbey’s time, there were far fewer dharma resources than there are today and good translations into English were hard to come by. So the Pali word “tanha” which literally means “thirst” was frequently translated as desire.
Nowadays, tanha is translated as craving — or even as craving with clinging. So the cause of suffering — and suffering itself a not a very accurate word to describe the Pali word dukkha, which is hard to translate with one word because it has a range of meanings — the cause of suffering mentioned in the second noble truth is now usually expressed as craving. Craving is not a perfect translation either but it is meant to convey the idea of clinging to desire.
Desire is like energy. In its basic form, it’s neither good nor bad. Desire only become a problem when it is clung to. When we get attached to our desires.
Forest Tradition monk Ajahn Sumedho has said: “Desire itself isn’t a problem; it’s the grasping of desire that brings suffering. It’s not in getting rid of desire, but in letting go of desire that we begin to realize the way of not suffering. Letting go of the causes of suffering is letting go of the grasping of desire.
“This realm that we live in is a desire realm. Desire is natural to this realm. Desire is what keeps things moving. This is a realm of sensory experience, of pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness; it’s just the way it is. So desire is not really the problem. Ignorance is the problem—not understanding things as they really are. Grasping these desires is the cause of suffering. We’re actually recognizing that suffering has a cause. It’s not the body, the sense world; the conditions themselves aren’t the cause of suffering, it’s this grasping of the conditions that is the cause.”
When the teachings talk about ignorance, or dharma teachers use the phrase “not understanding things as they really are” — people sometimes get the idea that this points to some really deep or obscure philosophical understanding. Or that it’s like trying to understand advanced physics. Too hard. So they give up.
But I believe that “understanding things as they really are” in the context of the Second Noble Truth is fairly simple. Things are like this, life is like this, desire is experienced constantly. It’s energy. It’s what keeps things moving. We don’t need to get rid of desire.
And, in response to Edward Abbey’s question “without desire, what delight?”, we can certainly delight in the things we desire when they come our way. But we do need to see our desires, to be aware of them, and to let go of them by not clinging to them, not grasping after them. Think of delightful things as objects held lovingly in an open hand, not possessively choked in a closed fist.
Even healthy, wholesome desires need to be held lightly. Because as soon as they are clung to — as soon as they start to feel like “me” and “mine” — the tension of dukkha arises.
A desire could be about obtaining something — good health for example — or it could be about getting rid of something — like an illness. Nothing wrong with those desires in themselves. But how are we holding our desires?
American Insight teacher Sylvia Boorstein said it rather succinctly: “A sign of enlightenment is: ‘Well, this isn’t what I want, but it’s what I got, so OK.’”
We want things to be different. Or maybe we want them to stay the same. That’s desire. And here’s the paradoxical thing about desire. There’s actually nothing wrong with it. Not only is there nothing wrong with, it’s a necessary condition of life. As Ajahn Sumedho says, it’s the energy of life, it’s how things move in the realm that we inhabit.
There is nothing wrong, for instance, in wanting things to be different. We should want things to be different if things are unjust, or need repair. We should want clean water, a healthy environment, economic fairness, climate justice, etc.
Desire can fuel positive change. The Buddha would not have become an enlightened, awakened being had he not had the desire to solve the problem of suffering. His desire to overcome dukkha energized him to make great sacrifices — he left behind his wealth, his noble status, his family — to pursue ultimate peace of mind.
He studied under the best meditation masters of the time. But none of his teachers could really go beyond dukkha so he struck out on his own, fuelled by desire to come to the end of suffering. He almost died before reaching his goal. And when he did reach his goal, his great compassion, which is a form of desire — the desire to relieve suffering — drove him to wander and teach for the next fifty years of his life. And we continue to benefit from his efforts, which were fuelled by strong desire.
On the spiritual path, our desires change. What was so important to us in the past becomes less so. When we are children, we may want certain toys, for instance. Toys make us happy when we are children, at least for a while, until we get bored with them. Then we want new toys. We want the toys our friends have. We want better toys. We want more and more toys.
Sadly, we don’t get much encouragement or training as children to be content with what we have, to learn to tolerate boredom and unavoidable discomfort.
Thus, we carry the same habits we had as children into adulthood — looking for distractions, new toys, better toys, new experiences, more experiences, better experiences. We don’t get much encouragement or training to be content with what we have, to tolerate boredom and unavoidable discomfort.
But if we are lucky enough to find a spiritual path, or to be around people who encourage those things, we find that our desires change. Like the Buddha, we observe that fulfilling our sense desires — even when it is possible to do that — does not result in lasting happiness. We understand that sense pleasures are fleeting, not permanent. They are not worth chasing and grasping after and clinging to, but, if agreeable, they are worth experiencing when they come around.
As American Insight teacher Philip Mofffit writes, when we realize the Second Noble Truth of the Cause of suffering as craving, as clinging to desire, “you switch the manner of the way you measure the success of your life from getting all of your desires met to answering the question: “How do I wish to meet life, regardless of whether it is pleasant or unpleasant?”
You learn that by letting go of your attachment to outcome, you get a taste of freedom. You are in the moment as it is, and temporarily free of suffering. Freedom from attachment to outcome allows you to connect to your intention in every moment. When aligned to your deepest intention, you live a vital and wise life, regardless of the challenges you may face.
As Moffitt writes: “The paradox of desire [is:] It leads to suffering when grasped after, yet without it there is no movement to tend to your child’s needs or help your sick neighbour or to free yourself from suffering. Thus your challenge is not to rid yourself of desire, but rather to choose your desires wisely and respond skillfully.”
William Blake (1757-1827) was a poet and artist who was considered mentally ill in his time because of his idiosyncratic views. Like Edward Abbey he had a deep, transcendent love for the natural world. And like the Buddha, he saw the dharma in everything — though in his case the dharma was informed by Christianity.
Blake died a pauper but he left behind a priceless legacy of poetry for all the world to freely enjoy for generations to come. One of his most well-known poems also happens to express the Buddha’s core teaching in four short lines. It’s called “Eternity.”
He who binds himself to a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.
—Nelle Oosterom