Desire and Attention

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Desire and Attention - Maria Straatman. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Maria Straatmann at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on March 29, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Desire and Attention

Good morning, Martha. Thank you. And good morning to all of you. It is a total delight for me to see the hall so full. It's been a long time since I've been here to a full hall. So, congratulations to all of you for being here on this lovely day.

Today what I'm going to talk about is desire and intention, discernment and disenchantment.

It has been on my mind, this idea of desire. It's a basic tenet of Buddhism that desires give rise to suffering. And so the word desire has got kind of a bad connotation. Desire has something black about it, when desire is really about delight. The question is, why are you on this path unless you have some desire for the end of suffering? In the morning, you get up because you have a desire to get up. It isn't desire itself that is bad.

Desire is not a problem to be solved. Desire is a state of mind. It's a leaning toward. It's a tending toward. And the question is, when does that become entanglement? When does that become craving? When does that become "I can't do without this"? Because that's what leads to suffering.

To know the difference between skillful and unskillful desire, we need to look closely at intention. When does intention become desire? I have an intention to be free of suffering. If I don't get there by next week, pretty soon you find all this energy shift into something entirely different than a desire to be free of suffering.

When you get up in the morning, you get up because you have a desire, maybe for coffee. You get up in the morning because you want to get to work. You have a desire to get to work because you have a desire to be paid for that work. Maybe you have a desire to do the work. Maybe you have a desire to be paid for the work because it puts a shelter over your head, it buys your food, it buys your clothes. Or maybe you have a desire for more money because everybody else seems to have more money than you do, and you need more money.

There's a kind of continuum that happens where it shifts from "this is skillful" to maybe "not so skillful." And how do we see that? How do we navigate that? What's the difference between intention and desire? And when does an intention itself become an entanglement?

Skillful vs. Unskillful Desire

I may have a desire to reestablish some ecstatic state I experienced in meditation. "I should be able to get there again. Right? If I just do this right, if I just sit correctly, if I just develop my concentration in a certain way, this will happen." We confuse a past experience with happiness.

Or we have a desire to be free of something: free of a pain, free of someone else's anger, free of our own anger. To be free of anger that we see in us is a skillful desire. To become entangled in it, to become self-critical, to become totally obsessed by it, is not skillful because it creates the suffering that we're trying to avoid.

Taṇhā^[1] is the Pali word that's usually translated as desire. It means something like thirst. I have a thirst for something. It's not that overweening "I have to have it." It's a thirst. Now, I might have a thirst for a glass of water. In fact, I'm going to take a drink here if you don't mind, to clear my throat. I might have a thirst for more water because I'm dehydrated. I might have a thirst for something sweet because I need more sweetness.

And you start following that: "What is it that I truly am looking for here? What is it that I really want when I'm drinking this glass of water?" Maybe I'm drinking this glass of water because I can't remember what I was going to say next, and it's a delaying tactic. Intentions can be quite subtle, and they can be very unconscious. Sometimes it's those unconscious intentions that get in the way of our true overriding intention.

For example, I might decide that I wish to be kind. I have the intention to be kind, and so I practice kindness. I notice that I'm looking for ways to be kind. But pretty soon I'm sort of irritated with you because you're not allowing me to be kind, because you're kind yourself. You're getting in the way of my kindness. It becomes my kindness. Now I've become attached to something. I've become entangled in something.

The real intention to come from the heart has been masked by something else. It's become overcome by something else. Instead, I'm now in the place where I want to be seen as kind. It turns out what I'm really worried about is, do people love me? Is that what is underneath the intention to be kind, or is it coming from a place of feeling connected to people?

The Three Kinds of Fabrication

In order to tell the difference between desire and intention, we have to be able to see clearly. We have to be able to see that present-moment experience depends on three kinds of fabrication.

There's the information that we get in the experience. It's all the five senses and the thoughts that arise that give rise to this experience. You hear me, you see me, you feel yourself sitting, you feel yourself standing, you are touching things. The senses are how you make contact with experience.

Then there's the second thing: verbal fabrication, which has to do with what you say to yourself. How do you talk to yourself? Are you always vigilant with yourself? Are you kind with yourself? Are you inquisitive with yourself? What are you thinking now? "Is there something else here? You've always been this way." How is the way you talk to yourself influencing both your intention and your experience? Hear yourself speak to yourself.

And the third has to do with mental fabrications. This is what you think about your experience: your opinion, your judgment, whether you're criticizing it, what the meaning of it is.

Sylvia Boorstein^[2] tells this absolutely wonderful story where she had been trading phone calls back and forth with someone from Zen Center, and they kept missing one another. One morning she called and asked for the person, and the person who answered the phone said, "I'm sorry, he's not here." And she said, "It just must mean we're not supposed to talk to each other." And he said, "No, it means he's not here." [Laughter]

Think how many times you establish a meaning for something where such meaning does not exist at all. It's an attempt to explain to yourself the frustration, the vexation, the irritation. "Well, this means this."

Or suppose I am saddened by war, and I have an intention toward peace. How does that intention manifest itself? If it manifests itself in hating all the people who perpetrate war, I've failed in my intention toward peace. On the other hand, if my intention toward peace is to say no, then I must say no. Can I say no without developing ill will and hatred? Oh, yes. But it takes practice.

Most of these questions about mental formations—about what's happening and what our experience is—have to do with establishing "me." Who am I? "This is what I believe. I'm like this. I'm an introvert, or I'm somebody who's kind."

Pay very close attention to when intention becomes about becoming the person who does something, as opposed to simply "I want to be kind." If I say, "I want to be a kind person," now I'm establishing it as something that I'm entangled with. It has to do with who I am, how I am, what I think, and how I talk to myself, and it can become a source of suffering and sadness.

Pleasant, Unpleasant, and Craving

All of these original urgings and leanings come out of sense experience followed by the feeling tone. This is pleasant, this is unpleasant, or I'm neutral. There are very few things we're neutral toward. Things are generally pleasant or unpleasant.

If it's pleasant, it's very easy to want it. It's very quick to go from pleasant, to like, to want. "Pleasant" and "like"—that's a step. It's not the same. Pleasant is not the same thing as liking. It's simply pleasant.

To be able to see the difference between pleasant and liking, or unpleasant and not liking, you have to see them as two different things. When you're running a marathon and it becomes painful, you don't stop running. You may not like the pain, but you actually don't focus so much on the pain. You just keep going.

Or when I'm sitting here. I've recently had a knee replacement. I have a brand new knee, and I can feel the difference between my knees. One is warm because there's still inflammation there, which means it hurts sometimes. I can make my life about my knee, or I can say, "Ah, sometimes pain is here." It's not debilitating pain. I can walk. I can do most of what I want to do. But if I focus on that pain and the disliking of the pain, I very quickly run into wanting something else. And that's the secret.

Wanting things to be other than they are. "I want more of this. I want less of this." That's where desire falls into the place where it starts creating suffering: wanting it to be other than it is. So, how can I convince myself that I know how it really is? Because this is complicated, this business of experience.

There are lots of things that go into this experience. There are all the conditions that conditioned you as the person you are, arriving in this room. And there is nobody in this room who is having exactly the same experience right now. There is nobody in this room that is on exactly the same path. You have to start where you are with what's happening in your experience.

I grew up in a family that was short on money, and so I developed a number of mind-habit patterns having to do with, "I'm never going to be in debt." Well, you can't buy a house if you're not willing to be in debt. Well, you can, but I don't live in that stratum of money. Or, I'm quite addicted to sales, and I have to remind myself: just because it's on sale doesn't mean I have to buy it. You laugh, but it is to notice the mind tendencies.

The fear of vulnerability. What does that lead to? To recognize your mind habits helps you understand why your intentions appear to be the way they are. It helps you be able to see through the intention to what is your real intention. What's my unconscious intention? My unconscious intention might be to be safe. And when I can see clearly that this intention to be safe is leading me to make some very strange decisions, then I can step away from those decisions. I can step away from those desires that arise purely out of those previous conditions. I don't have to act on them.

The Power of Pausing

There are two things that happen. Suffering arises from wanting things to be other than they are—"I want more, I want less"—and also from the underlying thought of, "I have to be different to realize my intention."

You don't have to be different than you are. You merely have to be true to your intention and see clearly what's up, so that you can choose what the next action is going to be. So that you can decide yes or no. So that you can pause in the middle of being angry and say, "You know, I really don't want to be angry." Your body is full of adrenaline, and you say, "But I'm stopping. I have to do something with this adrenaline." Yes. But I don't have to lash out.

And when I am not successful at my intention and I find myself gossiping or speaking ill of someone, I can stop. I don't have to chew myself out for it. I can just stop. That's all the Buddha asks of us. Just stop. But it takes presence of mind to do that.

I have this lovely quote from Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu^[3] that I particularly like: "The mind is trapped not by the things it clings to, but by its own act of clinging." It's not what we want, what we desire. It's that we get attached to it. We become entangled in it. We become enchanted by it. We're tied up in it.

Seeing that we're caught is freeing. The things, actions, and conditions that we desire or are attracted to aren't the problem. Clinging to them as necessary for our happiness, that's where it gets to be a source of suffering. Being enchanted leads to the dissatisfaction that we experience.

If I'm sitting and I really want to be concentrated, I went through years of really wanting to be concentrated, and I didn't even realize how concentrated I was. I was concentrated in a way that I didn't appreciate because I thought it had to look a certain way. "It has to look like this." And in that having it to be this way, I was missing it. When I gave that up, it was a very different experience. And then there were these lovely things that happened, and I wanted them to happen again. "Okay. Well, now I know the secret. I can just sit down and not want it." Right underneath is all that wanting.

The Buddha listed the Four Noble Truths^[4] as four liberating insights. He describes these insights as, "I directly knew as it actually is: This is suffering. I directly knew as it actually is: This is the arising of suffering. I directly knew as it actually is: This is the cessation of suffering. I directly knew as it actually is: This is the practice leading to the cessation of suffering."

He didn't say these five items will lead to suffering. He said you have to directly know, "Oh, this is suffering." And you have to see that it arises and passes away. "Oh, it's only my belief that makes it constant. It's only my retelling the story that keeps the anger present. If I don't retell the story, it stops."

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi^[5] is famous for having said he noticed with his Western students that they tended to be very self-critical, thinking, "I'm not good enough, and I have to be better." And he said, "You are perfect just as you are, and you could use a little work."

The secret behind that has to do with the realization that this doesn't just happen, this end of suffering. We have to resolve to be free of suffering. We have to put in effort. And that effort requires us to cultivate the ability to see clearly. "This is what's really happening." Discernment to tell the difference between desire and intention, to see when one shifts into the other.

Edge Walking and Disenchantment

I call this edge walking. Walk on the edge and see, "Oh, it feels wholesome on this side, not so wholesome on that side of the edge." Notice what that is, so that you can see your own reactions. Be willing to forego short-term happiness for long-term happiness.

This is not the marshmallow experiment, where you put the marshmallow in front and you say, "If you don't eat the marshmallow for 15 minutes, you can have two marshmallows." And who eats the first marshmallow right away? It's realizing that if I satisfy this desire now, it may lead to addiction. It may lead to bad things happening.

In the world of actions, there are four possibilities. I like it, and it has good results. This is to be cultivated. I don't like it, and it has bad results. That's pretty easy to avoid. I don't like it; I'm not going to do it. I like it, and it has bad results. Oh, harder. But just because I like ice cream doesn't mean I have to eat it. At least not all the time. And there is: I don't like it, and it has good results. I hate exercise. Floor exercises drive me crazy, but I need to do them. So, I do them.

In the conversation between Ananda and the Buddha, he asked him, "How do those with vision see?" And Buddha said, "There's the case where a monk sees what's come to be as what's come to be. Seeing this, he practices disenchantment with what's come to be, dispassion for what's come to be, and the cessation of what's come to be."

The end of suffering arises out of the cessation of the passion attached to enchantment. If I'm totally enchanted with something—"I really want that. I really, really want that"—and I'm unable to disentangle myself from that, I'm stuck. I'm caught. This is what clinging does. It catches us.

If I can see, "Okay, I really want that," I can see wanting. I don't have to go to craving. I don't have to go to "I'll do it." I can just see wanting. In fact, before I get to wanting, I can just see pleasant. How about stopping there? "Pleasant. Oh, that's pleasant." Just because I like it, I don't have to own it.

In order to practice disenchantment, we have to cultivate clear seeing. This requires brutal honesty. I have to see when I'm behaving in an unskillful way. I have to see it and say, "Oh, I don't want to do that." And if I can't get myself out of a place of ill will, I at least want to be the person who wants to be out of the place of ill will, because that softens my heart and makes it more likely that I can walk away from that.

We have to be committed to relinquishment. We have to be willing to say, "Yeah, I want that, but I'm not going to do that." We have to be able to stay with what is unpleasant and say, "Yep, it's unpleasant." We have to be willing to see that not everything requires us to establish meaning and action from it. We don't have to change pleasant or unpleasant into pleasant. We can just say unpleasant.

In some contexts, a lemon is unpleasant. It's very bitter. If you just cut the lemon open, your mouth closes with the astringency of it. But there's nothing better than a lemon bar or lemonade, or something that's been altered, modified, soaking in water. The context of something changes it. And the context is something that you can affect. What do you cultivate in your mind, in your heart-mind?

This requires training for clarity and calmness. In order to stop in the midst of passion, in order to get to the place of disenchantment, we have to be able to pause and say, "Okay, what's really happening here? What's really going on? What am I really experiencing?" This is what we do in meditation. The whole process of disenchantment requires mindfulness and a certain stillness, a centeredness that we cultivate. This has value for us because it allows me to be with pleasant, unpleasant, all the conditions of the world, and be free of having to be a certain way.

Experiencing Calm

Keep in mind when you do this that the experiences may not be what you expect. I remember one time when I was sitting in retreat and something came up, and it was absolutely terrifying to me. "What is this? I don't know." After a brief period, I realized it was calm. I had never truly experienced calm before. I thought the energy of jitteriness is what it meant to be alive.

Truly being calm frightened me. I didn't know what to do with it. I was so used to being jittery. Now when I named it "calm," it piqued my curiosity a little and I said, "Oh, what? Oh, [Laughter] what is this?" But it was only in realizing that that jitteriness I was so addicted to was just energy, and that I was addicted to a certain kind of energy, and that I valued high energy over low energy. "Oh, lower energy. Yeah, it's a lower form of being."

I no longer think that. I no longer act that way because my practice has told me that the stillness that I reach is a source of freedom. It's the way I'm able to see when desire becomes clinging. It's the way I'm able to see that I don't have to be this way, that I don't have to be any particular thing. I simply have to be present, cognizant of what the consequences of my actions are. "This leads to suffering. This does not lead to suffering for me, for you, for both of us." Ah, then it's to be cultivated.

Letting Go of the Story

It's useful to see how we become enchanted by a view. "I'm not good enough. I'll never be able to do this. I've forgotten how to meditate. This just doesn't work for me." All of these thoughts.

Remember when we were talking about being aware of thinking, the way you speak to yourself? When you hear yourself full of self-criticism, remind yourself that you don't have to become other than yourself to be a virtuous person. You don't have to be different than you are. You simply have to have intentions that lead in the direction you wish to go and stop doing whatever you feel is unskillful.

It's not just a matter of willpower. It's a matter of seeing. "Ah, this is what's catching me. Oh, this is what's catching me. Well, today I'm going to eat the ice cream, but tomorrow I won't eat the ice cream. Well, today I'll only have a spoon of ice cream." This is not an overnight "I'm going to become somebody I'm not." This is practice.

Suffering doesn't arise because of what doesn't exist, but how things are and our relationship to how things are. That's what we have to look at.

Let's take something like resentment. I resent this person or I resent this happening. So there's a physical feeling in the body. There's a contraction. There's sadness. There's sorrow, and this is unpleasant. I recognize it's unpleasant. And then I say, "Well, of course it's unpleasant." I tell myself the story about why I resent. "Well, this person did this thing. It was totally unjust. Should not have been happening."

But if I feel the suffering that arises from the unpleasant feeling of resentment, if I see the caving in of the heart and I notice aversion—not my fault, not my fault—I can stop telling myself the story. "That person always does that. He never packs his own suitcase. Why doesn't he pack his own suitcase? Why can't he participate in this whatever it is?" And when you recognize this is happening, you can say, "Wait a minute. You could just not pack the suitcase. You see your place in that resentment."

But you have to stop telling yourself the story. You have to be able to pause before you can do that. We see the suffering that comes from retelling the story. Attention returns to the just here and now. Just here. Just now. And we say, "I'm pretty attached to that story. But it is just a story." It's just a tale about what's happening. And in truth, what's happening now is I'm thinking about this, and I'm not liking the feeling in my heart about this.

Now I become disenchanted, and it loses the energy of the passion of being entangled. It loses the energy. I don't have to let go of resentment. It just kind of loses its energy. That's what disenchantment does for you. It leads to dispassion and the ending of resentment. It turns out the resentment hurts nobody but me. Oh, how interesting.

So, I practice seeing clearly just how things are. I practice seeing how I'm creating my suffering. I practice walking on the edge between intention and desire. Where does this intention lead? Touch this in the wrong place and you truly lose your place.

Knowing how it is here and now, not living in the sadness of fear of how it is not, or the fantasy of how it should be, I'm able to be present for just how things are now. Just how they are now.

When I step out of resentment, when I step out of anger, anger is here, but it's not me. I've got some adrenaline to get rid of now, but it's just anger. It's just resentment. I don't have to hold it to me like some precious thing, wishing it were otherwise. I can feel the agitation. I can feel the yearning for something. I can feel the wanting and just say, "Wanting, wanting, wanting. I feel wanting."

Oh, what does it feel like? Well, you know, there's this kind of leaning forward. Sometimes I notice this when I'm driving. Traffic is moving too slowly, and I find myself leaning forward over the steering wheel. And I remind myself that I won't get there any faster than the car, [Laughter] and I lean back. And the act of leaning back lowers the tension. If the body is reacting, use the body. You don't have to do everything in your mind.

Suffering stops when we become disenchanted, dispassionate. When we see there's entanglement here, but I do not need to be entangled. "Well, I'm kind of stuck." Stuckness is here, but it's not me. It's just stuckness. It's not me. And as I watch, it goes away, it changes shape. It changes form. Unless I try to build it back up again because I believe it's me. Watch how that works in your mind. Watch how it feels in your body.

May you all see things just as they are. May you become disenchanted with those things that are unskillful. May you become dispassionate about your entanglements. May you see the end of suffering. These are my wishes for you.

A Poem on Impermanence

Now I have a poem that I was going to read you from Thich Nhat Hanh^[6]. I really want to read you this poem, but I have a better one. So, I'm going to use both wants, both desires, and I'm going to read the first two lines from the first poem because I like it so much and it's so relevant to this. The poem is "Message." Actually, one of the reasons I like it is it's an anti-war poem, but I'm just going to read the first two lines:

Life has left her footprints on my forehead,
but I have become a child again this morning.

I can begin again. Even though I have footprints up there. Okay, but this poem is what I want to leave you with. Now, it's a little long, but it's not that long. So just hear it to the end. It's a love poem.

Your eyes are made of the six elements.
Earth, water, fire, air, space, and consciousness.
They are made of these only, but they are beautiful.
Should I make them mine?
Should I try to make them last for a long time?
Should I try to record them?
But I know that what I can record would not be your true eyes.

Your voice is made of the six elements, but it's truly lovely.
Should I try to make it mine? Should I record it?
But I know what I can hold on to or record would not be your true voice.
What I get may be only a picture, a magnetic tape, a painting, or a book.

Your smile is made of the six elements, but it is truly wonderful.
Should I try to make it mine? Should I try to make it last for a long time?
Should I try to own or record it?
But I know that what I can own or record could not be your true smile.
It would only be some of the elements.

Your eyes are impermanent. Your eyes are not you.
Yes, I've been told and I've seen it. Yet, you're still beautiful.
Just because they are impermanent, they are all the more beautiful.
The things that do not last long are the most beautiful things:
a shooting star, a firework.
Just because they are without a self, they are all the more beautiful.
What does a self have to do with beautiful eyes?

I want to contemplate your beautiful eyes,
even if I know that they do not last.
Even if I know they do not have a self.
Your eyes are beautiful. I am aware that they are impermanent.
But what's wrong with impermanence?
Without impermanence, could anything exist at all?

Your eyes are beautiful. I'm told that they are not you.
They have no self. But what's wrong with the nature of no-self?
With self, could anything be there at all?

So although your eyes are only made of the six elements,
although they are impermanent, although they are not you,
they are still beautiful. And I want to contemplate them.
I want to enjoy looking at them as long as they are available.
Knowing your eyes are impermanent.
Knowing, I enjoy them without trying to make them last forever.
Without trying to hold on to or record them or make them mine.
Loving your eyes, I remain free.

Loving your eyes, I learn to love them deeply.
I see the six elements which they are, the six wonderful elements.
These elements are so beautiful and I learn to love them too.
There are so many things I love.
Your eyes, the blue sky, your voice, the birds in the trees,
your smile, and the butterflies on the flowers.
I learn each moment to be a better lover.
I learn each moment to discover my true love.

Your eyes are beautiful.
So is your voice, your smile, the sky, the birds, the butterflies.
I love them. I vow to protect them.
Yes, I know to love is to respect, and reverence is the nature of my love.
It's not necessary to hold something.
It's very delightful to enjoy it completely.

Please enjoy your lives. Thank you.