Desire: A Doorway to Freedom

Do you remember learning to ride a bike when you were a child? It’s quite natural when we’re learning something new to make mistakes before we master the skill. So, remember learning to ride a bike. And perhaps you remember falling off the bike and getting scraped up. You’re sitting there on the sidewalk, entangled in the bike, maybe bleeding.

A kind and concerned passerby stops, takes out a violin, plays a Paganini caprice, and walks on. Certainly the music is beautiful. It was written by a genius, and perhaps our passing friend is a concert violinist. But it isn’t really what you needed in the moment. What might have been more to the point is cleansing salve and a bandage for the scrape. Maybe someone to tell you it’s alright, to help you get back up onto your feet.

Desire is like feeling wounded inside. Needing something to make it better. Something. Often, we try to fill that desire with something that won’t directly heal us, something that isn’t really what we need.

We may try to fill an emotional need with material goods, or we may try to fill a spiritual longing with personal relationship. This is not to say that we can’t enjoy a basic level of material well-being, or that relationship isn’t fulfilling. It is simply to point out that they are not an end in themselves.

How did we learn to do this? To try to fulfill our eternal spiritual longing with what is material or passing? Your guess is as good as mine. But it doesn’t make any sense. Trying to fulfill a spiritual yearning with something on the material or emotional plane is like hoarding a closet full of jackets so that we aren’t cold when we dream about being caught in a blizzard. You can’t wear the jacket hanging in your closet in the world of dreams. In the same way, experiences in the material or mental world can’t really fulfill us spiritually.

Still, we try. We work continuously to satisfy our feelings of spiritual longing with material things, with emotional bolstering. These things we want are like symbols. They represent something to us. Security. Power. Acceptance. Love. Liberation. But all that we can point to in this world is no more than a signifier of what lives forever within.

How can we realize this? Perhaps by fulfilling desire after desire after desire, only to have another desire crop up. Ah yes, I have the ipod, and now I need a Kindle to go with it. Certainly, I’ve been promoted at work, but I could still have a larger office. I thought I thought that meeting the love of my life would make me happy, but now there’s so much to work out between us.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying the latest gadgets, career success, and romance.  Yet eventually we find that they are not a source of lasting inner fulfillment. No matter what we are given materially or emotionally, there is always an impermanence to it. Or something more that we dream up as being absolutely necessary to our happiness. The mind is so creative.

It’s interesting to notice that desire is expressed according to the causes and conditions of our lives. Our personality. Our circumstance.

Do we want to calm down or lift our spirits? What have we seen our role models do? What’s available to us now?

Desire manifests through the gunas, the three forces of nature. Tamas, rajas, and sattva. Darkness. Passion. Light. The three forces of personality. These three qualities play off of each other in the mind, like a film flickering across a screen.

When darkness, heaviness, or lethargy gets the better of us, we feel like being a couch potato. Then, as passion takes over, perhaps we are energized to work hard, to achieve or to gain something for ourselves. With light and clarity, we begin to let go of personal desires. Still, we want to be good. Perhaps we want to relieve our suffering, impress a teacher, or plant seeds for our life’s garden to bloom in the future.

prakrteh kriyamanani gunaih karmani sarvasah
ahankaravimudhatma kartahamiti manyate
–Bhagavad Gita 3:27

This means, don’t kid yourself. Anyone who thinks she’s doing anything is deluded. All intentional action is performed by the qualities of nature as they dance through the mind, spinning, switching off, partnering up again, and eventually, taking a bow and making their exit. When we transcend these qualities of nature through meditation, we act gracefully, without getting tripped up by personal motivation.

Meditation is about relaxing the mind’s grip on the world. Free of all desire, even the desire to be good and to be praised. We act without concern for ourself. Then, we experience the peace and beauty of the moment. The joy is in the action itself. Or in the nonaction, the stillness. As the Gita says, inaction in action. So we are free.

But still now, desire.

The trick is not to turn away from desire, not to squelch our desire so that it may arise in new and exaggerated forms, but to turn and face desire directly. To walk through our desire as if it were a doorway to freedom.

Be honest with yourself. Really honest. So honest that you know that what you think you want isn’t really what you want. How do we know this? Because the pastry in the display case that I’m gazing at out of the corner of my eye, while waiting for the salad that I’m actually going to eat, was nothing I thought of as being necessary to my happiness before I entered the deli. If I wait long enough, the desire for this brownie topped with large chocolate chunks will fade away. It was never true or lasting. So it is with all that we desire. We want something, and then we forget about it. Or we get what we wanted, and then…we forget about it.

Admittedly, sometimes, it’s not that easy. When we’re really confused about how to fulfill our deepest longing, we fall into the clutches of addiction. We insist on trying to fulfill ourselves with something that cannot do the trick. Whether we turn to food or sex or drugs or shopping or whatnot, it’s always the same story. Yes, it feels like whatever we’ve turned to is numbing the pain, but when the high wears off, we’re back where we started. In fact, we may be worse off: Now, we’re carrying the disappointment and frustration over having lost control. Again. We’re sick, we’re broke, or our family has given up on us. And yet, so sure are we that just one more time will heal the pain.

It’s not our fault. It’s tricky. Momentarily, giving in may ease the pain. Just like, saltwater would be momentarily cool and wet on the throat of someone who’s been wandering, thirsty in the desert. But wise up. Another sip will only leave you even thirstier.

Do you know the story of the monkey trap? A monkey swinging through the trees spots something on the ground. It’s the most perfect banana he’s ever seen. He climbs down to investigate. The banana is fragrant and ripe. It sits in a lovely box made of bamboo slats.

The monkey reaches into the box and takes hold of the banana. Suddenly, his hand is trapped. The opening of the box is too small for his closed hand to fit back through. All he needs to do to be free is to let go of that banana. Still, he hangs on tightly and remains trapped.

The monkey is the mind, grasping at what is pleasant and pulling away from what is not. In fact, it is because we are grasping that we are trapped in the cycle of desire and aversion.

Let go of what doesn’t work. Instead, do something radical. Accept what is. Open to it. Have the courage to live life as it presents itself to you. When we stop labeling physical or mental discomfort as something that needs to be gotten rid of, then we can appreciate the fullness of our lives. We experience the right measures of joy and sorrow for the cake to rise, so to speak, and so that it will be neither sugary nor bitter nor bland. The right causes and conditions combine in perfect proportion, so that we can awaken to truth.

As we stay present for our lives, we build up a tolerance or strength to deal with challenging situations. We wait it out and get through a really rough time. This gives us the confidence to face further challenge.

Begin to expect and turn towards challenge. Embrace your life. Live it fully. It’s really pretty interesting.

As we embrace our lives, it’s important to understand that desire is not necessarily a bad thing. Let’s come back for a moment to the three forces of nature and personality. The gunas. Darkness, passion, and light. Tamas, rajas, and sattva. We can see how one desire can overcome another. Passionate desire rouses us from lethargy. Then, the desire to be good relieves us of selfish passion.

We can be motivated by desire, inspired by our hopes and dreams. Particularly if we begin to desire freedom from desire. Freedom for all beings.

The desire for freedom is like rubbing soap into a very dirty shirt. The soap is rubbed in to remove the dirt. The soup that we have spilled or the grass stains or the paint on our sleeve. At long last, however, we wash the soap out too. Only then is the shirt clean. So it can be with the desire for freedom.

The desire to be free from suffering, for ourselves and all sentient beings, brings us to a place of one-pointedness, or what the Yoga Sutras call ekagrata. We get focused. No longer will we be distracted by what doesn’t work. We’ve been fooled for long enough.

However foolish desire arises, underlying that desire is a kind of longing. It’s a longing that everybody shares. An inner tugging. We’ve all felt it. Sometimes it’s a strong and sudden angst. At others, a vague feeling of being empty inside, as if we need something to fulfill us. Something, but we aren’t quite sure what.

Beneath the different desires present in all of our minds at the same time, and in the same mind at different times, is one need. This is the need for fulfillment. The question we can ask about desire is, “What do we really desire?” What can we experience that will fulfill all desire?

Some say this is the Self. The wellspring of healing within. The oasis of peace. The nectar of inner bliss. Once we sip of this nectar, nothing else compares. It’s like the Sinead O’Connor song, “Nothing Compares to You…”

You don’t need anything but you. And then you find out that there is no real you. What you thought you were is a construct of atoms and molecules, and of personality. Beyond this, some say we are the universe. In fact, there is no permanence to the universe. What we think we are is everything and nothing at the same time. We are all simultaneously full and empty, limitless and complete.

To fulfill the desire behind the desire is to lose ourself in that which cannot be imagined or spoken of. That said, are there any questions?

Desire/Singing Bowl Meditation

Sit with a desire. Notice the way it manifests in your body and mind. How does your posture change when you think of it. What about your heartbeat or breathing? What are the thoughts connected to that desire. How does one thought lead to another?

You may now mentally offer that desire into the singing bowl. The bowl will hold your desire. As the bowl sings, the desire will be purified. Then, allow the mind to be absorbed into silence.

Offered by Swamini Sri Lalitambika Devi at Integral Yoga NYC on April 26, 2009.