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Intimacy and Desire

What I'd like to consider and explore for this talk is some aspects of desire. As I've said before, I think that the more proper term for human beings would be "human desiring," because desire is part and parcel, and intimately connected, to human life. There is no human life without desire. The idea that we are supposed to get rid of desire and have no desires is unrealistic. But to become wise about desire is one of the tasks of Buddhism, to learn how to be free in relationship to desires. It's not that they are gone, but we are not caught in them, and we have freedom in relationship to them.

In order to become wise about desire, it helps to become intimate with desire. As I said a little while ago, if you want wisdom, cultivate intimacy. There is some aspect of intimacy, some way of being intimate, that touches in and brings us to the place where wisdom has a chance to operate. So if you want to be wise about desire, be intimate with desire. To explore this topic, I want to talk about a subclass of mental movements in the family of desire, starting with the outermost, the most abstract, and getting closer and closer to something that's more and more intimate inside.

Perhaps this talk will be a little bit of a journey from outward to inward, to what is innermost. Maybe you'll follow along and can imagine or feel what I'm talking about and how it works for you, giving me a little bit of the benefit of the doubt, focusing on what might be relevant for you, what you can identify with, or recognizing in yourself. Certainly, there might be aspects of what I say that you disagree with, but on this journey, it might be better for now to just recognize in yourself, "Oh yeah, I know it this way."

This journey in exploring desire has to do with three parts: what we desire, why we desire, and how we desire. What, why, and how.

What We Desire

The aspect of this is to have a goal. Desires usually have a goal—something we want, something we want to accomplish, something we want to do. Having a goal is an important part of life, and people have all kinds of goals that they want to accomplish. But a goal, in my vocabulary, is a what. It is the purpose of the desire, what we want to get, what we want to see happen. We use the word "what" to describe the goal. You might ask, "What is the purpose, or what's the goal?"

For example, this morning I went shopping for food for a relative. The goal was to go shopping. "What are you up to? I'm going shopping, I'm going to the store." I was able to go to the store and buy what I needed, so I accomplished the goal. But talking about it that way is somewhat removed for me. It is somewhat abstract; it is outside of me. Shopping is outside of me, in a sense. The goal of buying something for my relative is a worthy goal, but you don't really learn anything about me except that I was going to do this task.

Why We Desire

We can also ask, why am I doing it? The why has to do with a purpose. When we start talking about purpose, we're talking about something that's a little bit closer in, more intimate, and more integral to who we are than just the goal.

The purpose for going shopping was that my relative is sick, and I wanted to get something to support her in her time of illness. The purpose was to support and offer aid to a relative who is ill. If I just said that my purpose was to go buy X, Y, and Z, you wouldn't really understand the purpose. But now you understand something about what is motivating Gil and what's happening here.

Then you could ask deeper: "But why are you doing that?" You keep asking the question "why," and in a certain way, that goes through layers and layers inside. You can ask, "Well, why are you doing that?" "Because I care for my relative, I love my relative, and it's out of my care that I'm doing it." Now you know something a little deeper about me. You're going closer and closer in.

It's really useful not to answer with just one answer. If you have a desire, ask what the purpose is. Why do I want to say what I'm going to say? What is the purpose of this activity I'm doing? What is the purpose of this way of thinking? How often do you ask yourself, "Why am I thinking this way? What purpose does it fulfill?" Even if you get one answer, ask again. Ask again because there might be multiple reasons, multiple motivations inside the purposes we're trying to accomplish.

You might have a secondary answer. "Why are you shopping?" "I'm shopping in order to support a relative." "But why do you want to support a relative?" "Because I care for the relative; the relative is sick." "Why do you care for a relative, and why do you want to support a relative?" "Because it's a heartfelt wish—of course I would do that." You keep asking and you get to deeper and deeper questions. It takes you on a journey to something more intimate and deeper. Having the logical answer be the only answer—the first answer only—might miss something of the bigger picture, the intimate picture, or something of what's really going on.

How We Desire

So there's the purpose, and then deeper than the purpose there is the how. How are we when we're doing something? The question how, at least in my vocabulary, always brings us into the activity itself, into the present moment. How we're doing it is how we embody it, how we go forth with it. Whereas purpose can be a little abstract, a little removed from what's inner, when you talk about how, it really comes closer.

How am I doing it? Am I doing it in a hurry? Am I doing it slowly? Am I doing it with resentment? Am I doing it with delight, joy, and generosity? How are we doing it? Are you trying to do the minimum you can, or are you trying to do more than you can? There are all these questions about how.

How did I go to the store in the morning to go shopping? Part of it was with care. Part of it was with a certain delight. It was early in the morning, and it was a quiet and calm time to be going. I was going with a good feeling, knowing that I could do something for my relative, and I was happy to do so.

Then, being in the store, there were a few other shoppers there, and just one clerk. How was I there? I was trying to have a human connection with the person at the counter, in spite of the masks that we were wearing. I was trying to be friendly, to have goodwill, to be connected to the whole situation I was in. How goes deeper and deeper. Really, how were you this way?

And now we come to what is deeper in than the question related to how: the attitudes that we have. I could have gone fast or slow, but what attitude went with going fast? Maybe the attitude of being fast was that I was impatient. Maybe the attitude was that I was overly eager—I really wanted to do something, so I'm rushing out of strong desire, maybe even greed. Or maybe I'm slow because I just really enjoy it; I like being present and being in the experience fully. Or maybe I'm slow because I resent doing it, and I hesitate, and I'm not really putting myself into it—I'm dragging my feet. Now attitudes are coming in more intimately, deeper down. What are the attitudes we carry? What is the mood of the mind? What is the attitude that the heart has?

Are those attitudes of the moment, or are they part of our character? Part of how we've cultivated and how we live? The patterns of mind, thought, beliefs, and emotions that characterize how we've chosen to live our life. This is different from personality, which maybe we don't have much choice about. But character we have some choice over. It's been shaped by society, events, and experiences of our life, but it has also been shaped by all the small and big choices we've made about what kind of thoughts to emphasize, what kind of desires to emphasize, what kind of ill will to emphasize. The habits we're building up of behavior and ways of being all contribute to ongoing attitudes that we carry with us.

Now we're talking about something that can be really deep. These attitudes sometimes can be subliminal or not obvious to us all the time. They can start becoming invisible to us because we carry them with us all the time. But to sit in meditation, to get quiet and intimate with myself, I start seeing what, in some deeper way, are the underlying attitudes operating for me, and how those attitudes might relate to the desires I have and how I pursue them.

Unwholesome and Wholesome Roots

The deeper we go in Buddhism—and you might not agree with this—it is considered that there are three fundamental, unhelpful, unwholesome roots^[1] for our attitudes, and three wholesome ones^[2]. All wholesome, beneficial impulses come out of these wholesome roots, and all the things which are unhelpful or harmful that we do to others, or things that are unhealthy, derive from the three unwholesome roots.

The unwholesome roots are usually translated in English as craving or greed. Occasionally, there is another word in Pali^[3] that maybe is closer to lust, implying a strong desire where somehow there's a contraction, a loss of freedom in the movement. It's unwholesome; there's some kind of selfishness connected to it, maybe an overriding of wisdom that goes with greed.

The second unwholesome root is ill will. Often in English, we use the word "aversion" for this, but it could also be more dramatic—it could be hostility. So it can be very mild or very strong, but there can be an underlying momentum, movement, attitude, or mood of aversion, hostility, pushing away, or not wanting. If that's the seed, the root for behavior, it tends to lead to behavior that expresses ill will in forms of hostility and causes all kinds of difficulty. That can be directed towards oneself or towards others.

The third unwholesome root attitude is delusion or confusion, where we're just confused in a sea of not knowing, doubt, and uncertainty. We're not making sense of things, jumping around in different ideas, and not settling on anything. When there's confusion and delusion, then it's easier for greed and ill will to arise. We're not connected to wisdom, there's no clarity, and so that tends to support more greed and more ill will.

The healthy attitudes are generosity, goodwill, and wisdom. Generosity is a feeling of openness, availability, open-handedness, and open-heartedness. It's a spirit of being open to the world around us, but also manifesting or actualizing something for the world. It's a movement that is connected to wisdom and makes room for wisdom. A closed hand is not open to experiencing something in the palm of the hand. But if we open the palm, then we can experience something. It can be stroked by someone, for example. We can clean the palm; we can't clean it if it's closed. The same thing applies to the heart or the mind. With greed, something closes down; with generosity, something opens up and becomes available for wisdom, available to be cleaned.

Goodwill, instead of ill will, is also an opening movement. It is something that liberates us. It frees something inside; it frees us from the contraction and closeness of what goes on for us.

[Laughter] I got distracted because I saw this somewhere. There was no bell; I guess I didn't bring the bell into the sitting, did I? So maybe no bell, no end.

Wisdom itself is also an opening movement, because one of the primary forms of wisdom is the wisdom of not clinging, the wisdom of not suffering, the wisdom of non-harming.

Think of these as attitudes. Do we go about with an attitude of generosity, an attitude of goodwill, an attitude of wisdom, an attitude of discernment and seeing clearly? Or do we have an attitude that somehow closes or limits wisdom, like greed, ill will, or delusion? Or is it fear that is somehow connected to those three? It's fascinating that unhealthy fear is considered to be rooted in either greed, ill will, or delusion. How does that work? Is there a different kind of fear that's rooted in generosity, goodwill, love, and wisdom? I think there is. That's why fear doesn't fit neatly into just the unwholesome or just the wholesome; it depends on the roots that support the fear.

Finding Freedom

Attitude is more intimate than the goal. Attitude brings us into something close in to what is innermost, what makes us tick, what influences us, and what influences how we see the world and ourselves. To sit in meditation, or use other ways of beginning to find the underlying attitudes and dispositions in which we operate, is to learn how to not be caught by them, not be limited by them, and not be closed by the unhealthy ones. We begin to open and open and open.

My sense is that the unwholesome roots of greed, hate, and delusion are themselves not what is innermost; they are a little bit more on the surface. As those fall away, and as we keep opening, generosity, love, goodwill, and wisdom belong to that which is most innermost, most sensitive, maybe most shy at times, most tender, and most quiet. It is only by getting quiet, settled, or intimate, and being willing to have a certain tenderness, that generosity, goodwill, and wisdom can really shine and be part of our life.

Certainly, we can have goals, we can have purposes, and we can focus on how we are. But don't be too caught up in the goal; don't be too caught up in the purposes. Pay attention to how you do things. It's a huge key and an important part of mindfulness practice. As you pay attention to the how, at some point come in and really begin discerning what the underlying, deeper attitudes are that are fueling or influencing how we're going about our life.

There, in those attitudes, is where you can start discovering freedom. When the attitudes become free, then the desires that flow from them are free as well, and we become free. So when we have desires of generosity, goodwill, and wisdom, hopefully we have a sense of how to remain free with those—for our attitudes to contain freedom so our desires can be free, so that our purposes can have qualities of freedom, and their goals can be intimately involved with freedom as well.

I hope that this has given you something to think about and explore in yourself, and some questions to ask yourself as you go about: questions about what, why, and how. Take the how question and go as deep in as you can, to see if you can find the underlying deeper attitudes and dispositions that animate your life. See if you can switch to having those attitudes be the wholesome roots.

May that journey of exploration be empowering and freeing for you. Thank you.