Having Few Desires
Photo by Jason Yuen
In this first talk in a series on the Eight Awarenesses of Enlightened Beings, Zuisei Goddard speaks on the first awareness: having few desires.
The Buddha did not say have no desires. As humans, desire will occur—and discerning when it is skillful and unskillful is the practice. We don’t vow every day to put an end to desires because desires are bad. We’re vowing to put an end to that which gets in the way of living our lives fully. Because doing this is the most natural way to live a human life.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Having Few Desires:
Zen and Desire
The Buddha said, “Monks, know that people who have many desires intensely seek fame and gain; therefore they suffer a great deal. Those who have few desires do not seek fame and gain and are free from them, so they are without such troubles. Having few desires is itself worthwhile. It is even more so as it creates various merits: Those who have few desires need not flatter to gain others’ favor. Those who have few desires are not compelled by their sense organs; they have a serene mind and do not worry because they are satisfied with what they have and do not have the sense of lack. Those who have few desires experience nirvana. This is called ‘few desires.’”
Eight awarenesses of enlightened beings—the last teaching of the Buddha in the Mahayana teachings, the eight qualities that lead a person to nirvana, cessation of suffering. The first of these eight awarenesses is “having few desires.” In the Pali canon, the Buddha said desire—the root of suffering—must be abandoned. Yet here, in the Mahayana teachings, he says, have few desires. I don’t think these teachings are saying different things. We will have desires, desire to have fame for example, and we gain the desire to awaken. Can he be saying, have the right kind of desire (skillful, wholesome)?
But, this begs the question, what are these skillful desires? Some of them may seem obvious: bodhicitta, desire to cultivate four immeasurables, desire to cultivate wisdom and compassion. But is the desire for love, for example, selfish and therefore unskillful? How about the desire for recognition, when you’ve never been recognized? So how do you distinguish what is skillful or unskillful? And how many are few desires? Three? Five? Twenty? More importantly, what is the mind of desire? Who desires, and why?
What is Desire?
I’ve been looking at the nature of desire in me, at the felt experience of moving towards something, of hunger, of fear of going without. Recently it hit me. Desire is relationship. We don’t desire what we don’t see or care for, right? I was talking to someone about neutral feelings, positive/negative/neutral. Neutral feelings are hard to see because there is no charge, no chemistry (+ or -). I think often it’s only later that you realize you’ve completely ignored or overlooked something or someone, because you didn’t see anything in them that you could get. This is what is so painful about desire. The attitude: What will this thing, this person, give me? If I don’t in some way profit from this, then I’m not interested, I stop relating.
And desire, if it’s to be skillful, needs to be balanced, like any other relationship, give and take—but depending on the strength of the desire, it often isn’t. When it’s strong, can be blinding. All we see is our goal, all we feel is that drive, that push to get what we want, whether what we want is big or small.
A few months ago I was coming down from the interview room just before the work meeting. A young couple in the zendo—we often get tourists driving through—the young man was sitting on a zabuton with camera equipment spread around him. And up by the altar, was a young woman, sitting on Shugen Sensei’s seat, taking a selfie. “Um, can I help you?” I said. “Oh, thank you,” the man said, “Shugen told us it was okay to take pictures.” Well, yes but… no.
It’s not that everyone would instantly get what’s what in the zendo, by any means. But you have to be pretty narrowly focused to not sense that the space near the altar has a certain… significance. (Or maybe she did and that’s exactly why she wanted to take her picture there). Often, the only thing we see or feel is desire itself, not even the thing or feeling or person we think we want anymore. Just the force, the drive to fill a gap, our deeply entrenched sense of lack. And at a certain point, it’s no longer rational.
That’s the quality of passion, element of irrationality. Stoics named four main passions: distress, fear, lust and delight. Distress is an irrational contraction, belief that something bad is present (avoid). Fear is an irrational aversion to expected danger (avoid). Lust is irrational desire or pursuit of an expected good (hold on). Delight is an irrational swelling, opinion that something good is present (hold on).
All four are based on desire as it manifests either as craving or aversion. I would add that these are accompanied by the conviction that we have to have what we want—whether it’s more or less of something. I’ve often spied the thought hidden in some back recess of my mind: “Why should I be uncomfortable?” If I don’t have to, why should I? We think we have to have more sleep, more food, more sex, more attention, less pain, less discomfort, less annoyance. Think of the intolerability of that state in between, when you don’t know if you’ll get what you want, taken to the extreme, this state fuels addiction. It’s unbearable to not have the next hit, which will either give me enormous pleasure, or will at least numb me from the pain.
Desire feels good—until it doesn’t.
Rebecca Solnit says that because meth gives you enormous euphoria at the same time that it destroys the brain’s capacity to feel pleasure, it numbs your ability to feel ordinary pleasure, which in turn forces you to take more and more meth until you’re “digging your grave with what you thought were wings.” Desire feels good—until it doesn’t. “digging your grave with what you thought were wings.”
Feelings, Suffering, and Desire
That’s why I think a big part of working with desire is tolerating the discomfort, the shimmering, or overwhelming, anxiety that comes with a want, and gradually expanding your capacity to tolerate that discomfort, so you have space to ask, Is this what I really want? Is this what I need? Will it fulfill me, actually? Which also requires knowing yourself, knowing what you want, knowing what you feel at any given moment and why:
Last weekend Hojin Osho and I were doing a retreat at the temple called Live Lines. It was really working with the Four Immeasurables from the perspective of both liturgy and creative expression. At some point she leaned over to me and she whispered, I really want to ask them how they feel about this thing that we did, and I had to stop and be like, Right, feelings! Right, right, yes, we should ask them how they feel! I think that’s why we make a good team, you know, right brain, left brain [laughter].
Knowing ever more clearly and intimately what you feel, so in a moment you’re not responding out of either that desire to numb or out of fear (sometimes the fear of just that feeling of fear itself). So that it’s a desire that you know will in fact meet the need of that moment.
That discomfort of wanting and not having, that cellular sense I think—if we can really feel it, because it feels that deep at times—that cellular sense is what the Buddha meant when he said the cause of suffering is desire. It’s not really the thing or person or feeling that we crave that is suffering, it’s that awful sense of wanting and not having or wanting and having and wanting again. It’s the contraction of the self into a ball of craving, the fear—anger, grief—that if you don’t get what you want, someone else might.
The Lady or the Tiger
There’s a story that when it was published in 1882 created quite a stir. It’s by Frank Stockton, a contemporary of Mark Twain. He apparently was very prolific, and yet he became known almost exclusively for this story, and it’s like four pages. It’s called “The Lady or the Tiger.” There’s a kingdom in which a semi-barbaric king, the story says, feels that he’s come upon what he thinks is the perfect method for meting out justice—as well as keeping his subjects entertained, therefore mollified. He has an arena in which there are two identical doors. Behind one door is a tiger, the fiercest tiger, in the kingdom. Behind the other is a lady.
So when a man—because apparently all the accused in this kingdom are men—has been accused of a crime, he’s brought to the arena and made to open one of the doors. If he opens the door with the tiger, he was clearly guilty, and will be devoured instantly. If he opens the door with the lady, he’ll be rewarded by marrying her on the spot. Now, besides the obvious gaps in the soundness of this system, there’s also the fact that the accused is never asked whether he wants to marry the lady or not (I’m pretty sure she’s not asked either). If he’s already married, well, that’s too bad, now he has two wives. These are the conditions and no one, no one is able to argue or oppose them.
One day, the king finds out that his beautiful and fiery daughter is having an affair with a man who, although very handsome and brave and kind, is beneath her in station. The king, jealous beyond belief, condemns him on the spot. The day comes, the arena is packed—especially packed, since by now everyone knows this was the princess’s lover, and both the king and the princess are there. But, this time, things are a little different. The princess has found behind which door is the lady, and which holds the tiger. She also knows the lady, the most beautiful in her court who, she’s always suspected, had eyes on her lover. She saw them talking a few times, her blood boiling. And she holds, for several sleepless nights, the parallel thoughts of her lover, either brutally killed by a tiger or married to a lovely woman who is not her.
When it’s time for the young man to choose a door, he looks at the princess and immediately sees that she knows. “Which one?” He asks with his eyes. And with the subtlest movement of her hand, she indicates the door on the right. Without hesitation, he strides to it and flings it open…
And now, the question is, which came out of the door, the lady or the tiger?
Hobbes said that desire is the fundamental motivation for all human action. Buddha: Engine that keeps the self running, moving toward pleasure, away from pain. And there is no stronger desire than the desire to be. But, to be what? To be who? The quote I read in the beginning is from Dogen’s Hachi Dainin-gaku, Eight Awarenesses of Great beings, also Dogen’s last teaching:
Those who have few desires are not compelled by their sense organs; they have a serene mind and do not worry because they are satisfied with what they have and do not have the sense of lack.
This is key. Those who have few desires know that things, other people, fame and gain won’t fill me, won’t fix me, won’t ultimately comfort me or secure my well-being. It doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a good meal, a good book, or sex, it means that knowing who you are, knowing what things are and what they’re for, you can choose to pick them up or put them down. It means knowing that other people are not the means to your happiness, they’re people trying, as you’re trying, to be happy, to be fulfilled.
Shasta Abbey’s translation of this teaching says:
The person of few cravings is free from seeking after things or yearning for them, hence they are free of such sufferings; they desire little, only esteeming what is fitting for their spiritual training and practice… The heart of someone who behaves with few desires is, as a consequence, composed and free from gloom, anxiety, sorrow or fear.”
An awakened being—this includes all the beings on the path to awakening—learns, with much practice, and a lot of trial and error, which desires are actually satisfying, which desires are skillful and fitting for their spiritual training and practice. This doesn’t just mean sitting or studying the sutras. It could mean going for a long run or taking a nap to recharge yourself.
It might mean wanting to take the time to sit down with someone and have a conversation about a topic you normally wouldn’t talk about, something you’re not necessarily that interested in but wanting to do so because in order to meet the other person where they are, wanting to show them that you care, because you don’t want to retreat into the exclusivity of the self.
So is it possible to have desire and be free from gloom and anxiety, sorrow and fear? Is it possible to feel fulfilled in desire? I’ve heard people say—and I’ve said it myself—that during sesshin there are moments in which we feel we have everything we need, moments in which we are everything we need, moments usually accompanied by a strong sense of joy or contentment (bliss, rapture). What is happening in those moments? Why the utter lack of desire, of grasping, of wanting me or things to be otherwise?
Then the next moment you’re wondering how you can get to the sink before anyone else does because that’s the only job you like to do for dish crew. Notice, in those moments, the anxiety creeping in. Notice the disquiet, gloom, sorrow and fear, what if I don’t get what I want? So and so is always at the sink, so and so never helps out on Sunday dish crew. Notice the resentment, the contraction, notice the walls closing in.
No suffering, no cause of suffering,” says the Heart Sutra, “no extinguishing, no path, no wisdom and no gain. No gain and thus the bodhisattva lives prajna paramita, with no hindrance in the mind, no hindrance therefore no fear. Far beyond deluded thoughts, this is nirvana. “Those who have few desires experience nirvana,” says Dogen. “This is called ‘few desires.’”
Those who have few desires are closer to themselves. They are closer to the world around them. They’re closer to joy and to the extraordinary amazement at most ordinary of things. [Ches-swaf Meewosh]: poetry “is an attempt to break thru the density of reality into a zone where the simplest things are again as fresh as if they were being seen by a child.” This is exactly what we’re trying to do with practice. Except I would say we’re trying to break through the density of the self in order to see reality, because in reality things are always fresh and new.
Music of Spheres by Jean Follain (Jan Follá):
He was walking a frozen road
in his pocket iron keys were jingling
and with his pointed shoe absent-mindedly
he kicked the cylinder
of an old can
which for a few seconds rolled its cold emptiness
wobbled for a while and stopped
under a sky studded with stars.
We don’t vow every day to put an end to desires because desires are bad. We’re vowing to put an end to that which gets in the way of living our lives, fully, of being ourselves, fully, of seeing and feeling and caring. Not because doing so will make me feel better, but because it’s who I am, because it’s the most natural way to live a human life.
Having Few Desires, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.
Explore further
01 : Eight Means to Enlightenment by Master Dogen
02: Music of the Spheres by Jean Follain