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Introduction

Good morning, IMC Global Sangha. Good morning. Can you hear me? Good morning. Nice to see your names popping up on the chat, and just checking in to make sure I can be heard. So maybe a sound check? Yes, great. Okay, thank you. We've got a little bit of a lag as I'm sure you figured out from the many mornings with Gil, so it's a delight to be with you again. So nice to see familiar names popping in, seeing in my mind faces of friends and sangha-mates. So good morning, Sangha. Welcome from wherever you are.

And this morning, as you greet each other, I just want to mention that we are in the second of a series of five on a teaching called the iddhipāda^[1], which is factors, or bases, or roads to meditative success and spiritual power. And we are going to today talk about chanda, which is a form of desire, a form of wish. A wholesome form in this case. So as you are settling in, perhaps even looking at the chat, I just want to invite you, if your eyes are still on the chat, feeling the warmth or delight or wish for connection and engagement that inspires you to look at it or to engage with it, and just feel that in your body.

Guided Meditation: Attuning to the Heart's Wish

And then when you're ready, take your meditation posture and maybe close your eyes and turn your attention inward and feel that wish or connection. That wish to meditate, to be with yourself, connect with yourself. Feeling whatever that feels like. Maybe it's in your heart or your belly. Maybe that wish is in your whole body. Just feeling into it.

And if it feels right, maybe silently naming whatever that wish is, that wish for your practice. What motivates you to meditate here together in this virtual sangha? You can name it in words, or a mental image. Maybe even it's just like a felt sense, it's almost like a gesture. But tuning in, tuning into the wish to be here, to be in connection, to practice meditation.

And allowing that wish to clarify into an intention. To include an intention to keep mindfulness, awareness at the forefront of your attention for these few minutes we meditate together. Perhaps breathing out any excess tension, settling in.

With a sense of open interest, even devotion, inviting in whatever anchor of attention works best for you. It might be a state of your heart-mind right now. Maybe ambient sounds wherever you are. Perhaps a sense of your whole body present, grounded in the moment. Or for so many of us, sensations in the body. Sensations of this body breathing. That will be the instructions I'll focus on today.

Bringing a sense of devotion, interest, even love to the inquiry into what this breath feels like. Is it long or short? Is it deep, more subtle like a sip? Is it smooth and pleasant? Whatever way your life's breath is, tuning in, allowing the attention to rest in the gentle waves of your body breathing.

We'll meditate in silence for the next while. Towards the end of the meditation, I'll drop in perhaps a suggestion or invitation or two, bringing that sense of interest, love, devotion to each moment, for each breath, each arising.

[Silence]

In this last moment of our meditation together, the invitation is to tune in, tune in to the heart, to the wish at the core of your meditation practice. Bringing in any sense of appreciation for the intention there: kindness, devotion, or love. Feeling that in your body and your heart, in the mind. Allowing it to ripple through all the corners of the heart, the mind, this body.

And then sensing into any larger wish or intention. To consider the people in your life, all the ways each life touches so many other lives. And if it feels right to share that wish, that goodness that comes from this practice, allowing it to animate you. And trusting, trusting that it will ripple out through the lives your life touches. And some of that goodness will ripple out through the lives their lives touch.

Dedicating the benefits of this practice far and wide. May all beings, all people be safe. May they be happy. May they be peaceful, and may all of us, all beings everywhere, be free of suffering.

Announcements

Good morning, Sangha. Before we start with the little talk, the dharmette, I have an announcement. Gil asked me to announce that there are two year-end sessions for the Black-identified mindfulness circle this December. This is facilitated by Anne Royce and Karen Wilkinson. They are Saturday, December 3rd and Saturday, December 10th from 9 A.M. to 12 P.M. Pacific Time, and it is on Zoom. You can register on IMC's website. I believe there's a link under "What's New," and the invitation is if you are Black-identified, please join them. And hosted by IMC, we're delighted to have any and all Black-identified practitioners come. It's two sessions to reflect on the past year, to embrace the present, and to set intentions for the future. And the collective wisdom in the room will allow practitioners to reconnect and celebrate who they are, reaffirm resiliency and vulnerability amidst impermanence. So please feel welcome if you are identifying that way, or if you have friends who you think might benefit from it, please invite them.

Dharmette: Spiritual Power (2 of 5) Desire in Practice

So today's talk is on chanda, c-h-a-n-d-a. The Pali word for desire, which has a number of other translations that I'll talk about. But first, I just want to get a little context. This is one of the bases for spiritual power and meditative prowess or success that the Buddha used to good effect before his awakening, and many other practitioners, including myself, have found it useful in our journeys. Desire often gets a bad rap in Theravada Buddhism, ancient Buddhism. And so I want to make a differentiation. Chanda, this kind of desire, is actually neutral—good or bad—but in the context of these teachings, it's good. It's definitely differentiated from taṇhā^[2], which is thirst or craving.

Instead, chanda (desire) is healthy or unhealthy because of what's desired. And I'll give a couple of examples. So if what is being desired runs counter to, or interferes with, spiritual development, meditative development, then it's considered akusala^[3], or unwholesome, unbeneficial, one could even say unhealthy perhaps from a spiritual perspective. This is preoccupations with externals that distract from developing into the best of who we are. So that could be things that just don't lead to our overall well-being. And they can be innocent enough, sensual pleasures, that's fine. But the way we relate to them gets a little bit maybe out of hand, or distracting, or has unhealthy consequences.

The word dharma in Pali is dhamma, and dhamma-chanda together refers to a kind of virtuous desire, a beneficial, skillful, sometimes called wholesome desire. Kusala in the Pali language, k-u-s-a-l-a. So wholesome desire is the kind of desire that is talked about in this teaching. It's onward leading. It helps to energize the practice.

And it fits in, as I talked about last time, with kind of two other legs on the tripod beneath this basis for spiritual success. Two that are always there are samadhi, often translated as concentration or collectedness; I like to think of it as immersion in this context. And viriya^[4], which is wholehearted engagement, sometimes called exertion. So these three things together form this basis: the desire, the wholehearted engagement, and the immersion, the samadhi, the collectedness.

Wholesome desire has a sweet taste to it, or flavor to it, and it's kind of a sweet feeling in your heart, right? Maybe some of you tasted that in the past or in your meditations. There is another distinction to make though. Even a wholesome desire can, to a lesser extent, be co-opted or accompanied by an unwholesome motivation. So it's also about how something is wished for. And I'll give an example here. When I was in graduate school for Buddhist studies, I had a colleague, friend, who had come from the activist community—beautiful man, did a lot of good work in the world. But he described over years how he and this small group of others, they had these lofty intentions for the world, but it was accompanied by a lot of judgment, and anger, and aversion, and eventually a sense of alienation. And he described remembering seeing the people around him slowly drop off one by one, alienated, burned out. And how they weren't bringing other people into their cause because the way the desire was manifesting had this grasping and judgment and unwholesome type of constriction to it. You can see it in my hand movements, those of you who are watching me.

So another facet of skillful desire is that it's open, expansive, rather than constricted or obsessive. Ajahn Chah^[5], a very famous teacher in the Thai Forest tradition, describes suffering as rope burn, clinging too tight to something. So is the desire a grasping hand, an open hand, or is it more arms flung wide? And the arms flung wide hints at a dimension of virtuous wholesome desire or wish, which is that it's aspirational, uplifting. So uplifting, open, the opposite of fanatical. Because it is allowing whatever outcome to be will be, but tuning into a wish for goodness. So less expectation, less grasping is more helpful.

That said, if one looks at one's mind or heart, and I have deep in meditation, there's usually a little bit of grasping, even in the dhamma-chanda, the virtuous desire. It's a holding on to the practice. One translator calls this the "one fortunate attachment," and that that is the kind of attachment that leads to the end of attachment, right? So it doesn't have to be perfect. I can repeat that, it really doesn't have to be perfect. We don't need to get snarled up in our own intentions as long as the bulk of the intention for the practice is in the right direction. And we notice, notice the parts that aren't helpful, and the beauty of mindfulness practice is that the mindfulness self-corrects.

So some ways to cultivate and nourish this wholesome wish, to recognize it as it arises. And so I'm going to give kind of a word cloud of meanings, all of which are different nuances of translation from the Pali, because no Pali word really translates perfectly into one English word, right? There's always a range. So as I explore the meanings, feel in your body how it feels as I speak. The first is that chanda is close to the Sanskrit root—I'm forgetting what it is—that means to jump.^[6] I like to think of it as to sort of jump or hop with joy, that kind of enthusiasm. So feel that in your body. Maybe imagine a skillful basketball player, totally immersed and engaged in the game, jumping to make a perfect shot through the hoop. There's desire there, there is immersion, complete focus, collectedness. There's intentness, engagement. There's flow. It's how these factors pull together. It's enthusiastic participation, less play to win. So feeling that wish animating you to practice.

Maybe listening for these words: excitement, enthusiasm, love, zeal, eagerness, appetite for, delighting in, animating impulse, intention, devotion. So this cluster hints at a continuum. A continuum from excitement and enthusiasm on one end through a heartfelt wish and all the way to quiet devotion, even contentment on the other end. Because really, this is a continuum to contentment, the wish that leads to wishlessness.

One really beautiful way I've found to cultivate dhamma-chanda, which I'll close with—cultivate virtuous desire and really turbocharge the practice—is to appreciate the wish itself. Appreciate that even that you want to have the beneficial wish to practice, to walk in the world with more kindness, mindfulness, whatever it is. That begins to create a positive feedback loop, a beautiful feedback loop that grows that desire, and grows enthusiasm for the practice and engagement. And over time, as the practice deepens, and many of you are already very experienced, even at the very beginning, you might notice this: that this meditative development is the process of continually trading coarser, maybe less helpful desires for more and more refined ones. One very erudite teacher calls this trading candy for gold.

So this dharma desire is the wish that leads to wishlessness, to letting go, and eventually to freedom. So thank you. Thank you, friends. In the next 24 hours, I just want to invite you, if it feels right, to notice the desire that animates you to do certain things, to practice or maybe engage in other activities, and make a distinction for yourself: Is it beneficial or unbeneficial? Does it help with immersion in what's beneficial? If it feels right, talk it over with friends, or write about it, or just notice. Thank you. Thank you for your practice and being back with some of you tomorrow. Be well.