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Guided Meditation: Sacred Desire

Hello everyone, and welcome. I'm happy to be back here, and I was on retreat last week at our retreat center in Santa Cruz, and that was very nice.

To begin with, some comments relevant for the meditation. I believe that often enough in different parts of the world, in different religions, that which is sacred is also considered to be dangerous, or potentially dangerous. And so, to approach the sacred with respect because of that danger. So, I would like to say something about this in Buddhism that might sound like it goes against the grain or contrary to what you've often been taught about Buddhism, and that is that desire can be sacred.

But because desire is also dangerous, and that in Buddhism certain kinds of desire are the origin for our suffering and the origin for a lot of the suffering that we see in the world, because of that, sometimes desire gets a bad name or is considered to be only something to let go of. "Let go, let go, let go" is a kind of Buddhist refrain, and we want to come to the end of desire. There might be some truth to that to some degree, but having desire is a very important part of the Buddhist path. Having some kind of desire is a very important part of the Buddhist life.

The Buddha advocated having particular desires. But as soon as we have desires, we have expectations. As soon as we have desires, it all too easily slides into attachment to the desire, fear of the desire—all kinds of things can happen. And so it's easy then to fall back on, "Desire is bad, we shouldn't have desire."

But desire is important, and as we meditate today, perhaps you can experiment with finding a desire for meditation, a desire for being mindful, being present here and now. That is not just a simple desire, not just following instructions from a teacher like, "to be present, follow your breath," but rather arises out of a deep wish, a deep aspiration, a deep intention. And that being present here now, being with the breath, being present and attentive, is animated, is motivated by such a deep desire within us, such an integral desire within us, for such an important purpose, that the desire has a kind of sacredness to it. It's something to respect, maybe even have an awe that we have this capacity for a heart's wish not to get excited and not to get spinning up in thought, but the opposite.

And where we appreciate this desire, and appreciate that the fulfillment of the desire is not found through thinking, but is found through knowing, being aware, being present here with a quiet heart, a quiet mind. A fullness of heart, a full mind which is full of the present moment peacefully. To know that the desire goes in that direction in a certain way, or that the meditation is foundational and will be useful for fulfilling other desires that we have.

So to assume a meditation posture. A posture that is participating in the desire, maybe the sacred desire to be present now, here.

Gently closing the eyes. Taking some gently bigger breaths. Establishing a connection here and now in this body.

Letting your breathing return to normal. And feeling, resting in your body for a few moments. And then doing it again and again. And each time you return to your body resting, see if you can rest deeper into your body, settle deeper. Maybe with each exhale settling deeper.

Relaxing the body. Relaxing the mind.

And then taking a few moments to feel your way in, assuming there's a place deep inside where desires can be peaceful. Desires can be peaceful and profound. Desires that have no expectation or attachment, but desires which are maybe sacred, maybe integral to us. And in there, be a clear desire for being present here and now. For being awake in this body and mind.

A desire to not have your thoughts take you away to other places, other times, past and future, other events. A desire or the heart's wish to be here in the lived moment, to find the fullness, the sacredness, the vitality that is being manifested each moment. Stay close to that desire as you stay present, mindful, here and now.

When you find your mind wandering off in thought, rather than coming back to the breathing, coming back to the present, come back to the profound desire or the peaceful desire to be here, to be mindful. That desire that has no demand, no expectation, but a desire which is sacred or valuable. A desire whose byproduct is then to be aware.

Settling back into the desire to be present, and then discovering that you are then present.

And then coming to the end of the sitting. Compassion involves having a certain desire for the end of suffering, desire for the welfare and happiness of others, desire for the welfare and happiness of oneself. There are different kinds of love. One is the love that is activated, that is animated by what we receive from others, the love we receive, the care. Another kind of love is a love that we generate to care and love others, wanting their well-being, wanting to support and to serve and to care.

Compassion and love can have within them desire, sacred desire, the heart's wish. Desire for the welfare and happiness of others. To feel that desire, that wish. To feel that well-wishing, no matter how small it is. It's even significant if we wish we had goodwill for others. Just a wish to do so, even if we think we can't do it, that wish is the beginning.

And then to always find a way to give expression to that care, that goodwill. Many infinite numbers of expressions. But to let it live in you and to manifest in you, and at the end of the meditation, it can manifest in expressing thoughts of goodwill for the world around you.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be safe. May all beings be free. And may it be our desire to contribute to that.

Dharmette: Hindrances and Assistances (1 of 5) Helpful and Unhelpful Desires

Hello on this Monday morning here in California, and happy to be back. I was teaching a retreat at our Insight Retreat Center this last week with Bruni Dávila^[1], a wonderful retreat. And I'm happy to be back here at IMC. I'm beginning to feel here at IMC and IRC a kind of coming to life again more fully from that which had kind of hibernated during the pandemic. It's quite lovely to feel the energy coming back and the people coming back. Here at IMC, in my mind a little bit is represented by the fact that we're starting up offering day-long retreats here in person on Saturdays. This coming Saturday, a wonderful teacher I just talked with, Bruni Dávila, will be teaching one of the first day-longs here, I think from 9:00 to 4:30. So if anyone lives locally and would like to come and meditate for a day in community, that's a wonderful opportunity.

So the topic of these weeks from the beginning of the year, what I'm teaching here is practicing with challenges. How to be with the challenges of life, and the challenges can be minor to being the most major challenges of life. I've been trying to lay down a foundation that's applicable to all these different areas, and for the big challenges, that this is also a very important foundation so that with time we can learn also how to be with the really difficult things that happen to us and within us.

The topic this week has to do with strategies for working with challenges. There are two general categories of strategies for working with challenges: ones are dysfunctional and ones are functional. Ones are wholesome and others are unwholesome, helpful and unhelpful.

I want to use the teachings on the five hindrances^[2] and present them as common unhelpful strategies that people use to cope with, to deal with challenges that come up. But I don't just want to do that. I want to say that each of those hindrances has an opposite quality which is a healthy way of responding to challenges. To have these two working together, to know the two, as you get to recognize how a hindrance works in you, that itself is a prompt to think about: "Oh, what's the healthy form of the same thing? I'm being challenged right now by some difficulty, and my coping mechanism is a hindrance. Is there another strategy? What would be the opposite? And how do I tap into that opposite in me?" So it's integral. It's not an overlay or pretend or something on top of everything.

And often enough, I think in Buddhism, when the emphasis is talking about letting go, and letting go of the dysfunctional things that the mind does, it's often left there. Partly because as the practice gets deeper and deeper and deeper, as meditation practice really matures, in fact there is a profound letting go of everything. But to have this attitude that we're supposed to let go of everything right away, that's not really appropriate. It would be like if you were going to go swimming in a public pool, you would go into a changing room and take off your clothes and put on a bathing suit. It would be like you deciding, "Well, I'll just take off everything and jump in the pool without going to the changing room." You know, there's a time and place for letting go of certain things. So to do it all at once, we end up undermining ourselves or diminishing the fullness and the strength and, I would like to say, the power of a human being that can come from the opposite of the hindrances. Our strength resides there, and if we don't have it there, then our capacity for strength or energy can really flow into the hindrances.

Sometimes people put more energy into the hindrances than they do in almost anything else. So for example, the first one, sensual desire. There are people who put more effort and energy into their addictions than almost anything else. If someone has this really strong addiction, boy are they motivated. Sometimes get out of their way, and they'll do almost anything to satisfy their addiction. It's a lot of energy there. But to have not that desperation, but to have really a sense of power and strength in the opposite of the hindrance, the healthy versions, is possible.

First, we have to understand this. The first hindrance is usually said to be sensual desire. The Buddha offered a separate list of the five hindrances, the only difference being that the first one is covetousness—wanting the things other people have and wanting something someone else has. So one is a little bit more a strong desire for everything in the world of sensual desire, not just for sex or not just for alcohol or something, but comfort and sensuality. In the Buddhist analysis of human beings, this is one of the fundamental characteristics of human life, sensual desire. And the acquisitiveness sometimes has very deep roots inside of us in the desire to survive, to manage in this life of ours. So these things can have deep roots in us.

But there's a lot of dysfunctionality in sensual desire and acquisitiveness. One of the things it does is it creates a very strong separation or shutting down or diminishment of our full connection to others and to the world. Our connection to the world and to others is through the lens of fulfilling that desire. Some people will even confuse love with a strong desire to fulfill their sensual wishes. That person can provide me with that wonderful sensual possibility, and so there's a strong kind of drive that fills our being, fills our heart, a deep, deep kind of yearning and wanting, and it can be confused with love. It can be seen as a kind of love, but it happens to be that it probably more has to do with sensual desire than what I think would be a heartfelt love.

So a lot of what mindfulness practice has to do with, or said differently, a foundational aspect of mindfulness practice is to really become an expert, really become attuned and skillful in recognizing the hindrances and working with them. Recognizing all the different flavors and colors and shapes of sensual desires that arise all the time. And not to reject sensual pleasure, which has a place in life, maybe an important place in life at times, but it's the drive, the addiction, the way in which we get preoccupied and kind of lose ourselves in this world of sensual desire that makes it a hindrance. And so when we have strong, strong challenges in our life, some people try to cope with it by getting something else, escaping into a world of sensual desire, or fantasizing about sensual desire, soothing themselves in a sensual way as a compensation for the challenge they're in. That could be useful at times, but as a hindrance it's not useful and it's so strong.

On the other end of what's healthy and functional, there are profound desires inside of us. A capacity for desire, a capacity for wanting something that arises out of our heartfelt desire that opens us. Desires that open and connect us here to this moment rather than narrow us and close us down. One that, if anything, frees us from addiction rather than submerges us with addiction. We often don't get this message in Buddhism because of the strong idea that many people have that you're supposed to let go of all desire. Sometimes people even think that all desire is wrong. The Buddha did not say that. There are certain kinds of desire which produce suffering, but there are also dharmic^[3] desires. Desires that connect to the dharmic path, the desire to be free, the desire to be present. Compassion has desire in it, and care has a desire in it. It's caring for someone.

So when we're challenged by life, challenged by things, to take the time to pause. Having the faith that inside us, deep inside, there is a place of healthy desire. Healthy wishes for well-being for ourselves, for others, for welfare and goodness. And to be present, to be part of a healing process, to be part of a transformational process for ourselves and the world to be a better place. And if we could take the time when we have big challenges, especially if we're caught in the hindrances, to see if we can shift gears, take a deep breath, try to find this deeper place where we have these healthy desires, and know that there's a place of healthy desires. Know that's part of it. Now don't diminish ourselves or pretend it's not supposed to be there.

Healthy desires are also the channel or the support for our personal strength, our kind of power of sorts, even if it's very gentle power. There's a kind of wonderful strength in the gentleness of the desire and the wanting, and it can be the fuel or the catalyst for agency, for engagement. To know what to do, not assertively, not selfishly, not aggressively, but like water that just flows and flows around things and eventually wears all kinds of things down. We can give birth to and give rise to and give expression to these healthy desires once we know what they are and we trust it, and we know that it has an important place in our life. In Buddhism, we allow ourselves to have dharmic desires until the dharmic desires no longer have a role, and then we can let go of them because they've done their job.

So you might consider this today. Spend this day reflecting and feeling, and maybe talking with friends about what you know about the deepest desires you have that do not feel dysfunctional. They do not feel like they're hindrances or diminish you or frustrate you or add more problems to your life. When we respond to challenges with hindrances, we tend to create more problems. When we respond to challenges by tapping into finding the healthy desires, then we tend to be able to move towards health. And sometimes it takes time to reflect and to think, go for a walk, or spend time meditating or talking to a friend to drop down below the layers of reactivity and hindrances and things that we have, until we tap into some of the deepest wellsprings of healthy desire within us.

So what are your healthy desires? What desires are valuable for you to stay close to, especially when you have challenges, that help you go through a challenge without collapsing, without being discouraged, without succumbing to the compensatory escaping that the hindrances are?

So thank you, and I trust that all of you have somewhere, maybe silently, maybe hidden for now, have within you beautiful desires. Thank you.