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Desire can be thought of in several registers of experience (and language). It can be felt as a primarily bodily force, like hunger or sexual lust. It can be felt as an emotion, like longing, discontent, or relational love. It can take the form of narratives about purpose, ambition, or spiritual attainment. Of course in a given situation—like an interpersonal relationship—all 3 of these registers may be interwoven. *

Dhamma practice looks primarily at emotional desire to reveal painful patterns of fixation and obsession. This is often intense work, and goes against our instincts for comfort, reassurance, and certainty. To do it successfully, we need a very strong counteracting force, which I’ll call “soul desire.” (The Pāli term is saṁvega—intense spiritual determination.) We have to want to be free from emotional pain in order to be willing to do the work, because the work is exactly in acting against our instincts and feelings.

We’ll talk tonight about different kinds of desire, and how practice relies on some to work against others. This will build on some of the conversation we had 2 weeks ago about the stickiness of states, and how insight doesn’t easily penetrate to the level of the nervous system, but that doing so is necessary for the liberating aspect of the path to really take root.
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* Text-critical footnote:

It’s important to understand that these 3 types of experience are not only not absolutes, but they’re all narratives, specifically stories that come out of European medieval philosophical and religious (which aren’t separate) inquiry into who we are. All of our language about inner experience is culturally-specific. The language we use to talk about inner experience shapes our relationship to it, and we relate differently to narratives like “Autonomic Nervous System,” “grasping and identity,” or “emotional intelligence.” The Buddhist system uses an idiosyncratic vocabulary to describe inner experience, and so as English-speaking practitioners we’re always translating it into one or another of these Western bodies of thought.

The standard Buddhist vocabulary in English—grasping, craving, desire, letting go, serenity—uses emotion language, so we naturally practice with the emotional register in the foreground. These terms came into use in the 19th century with the early British translators, many of whom were under the influence of the philosophical movement called Romanticism, which included aspects of nature mysticism, heroic individualism, and Humanism, all of which tended to prize emotion as a central channel of meaning for people.

If you have the idea that it’s good to trust your intuition, or that your feelings are an important clue to what’s real in a given situation, you’re a descendent of the Romantics—and all of us of Western European cultural descent are to a large extent. This is a deep and often beautiful cultural heritage, but it’s also somewhat alien to the South Asian worldview that animates Buddhism.

SEAN OAKES
Sean Feit Oakes, PhD (he/they, queer, Puerto Rican & English, living on Pomo ancestral land in Northern California), teaches Buddhism and somatic practice focusing on the integration of meditation, trauma resolution, and social justice. He received Insight Meditation teaching authorization from Jack Kornfield, and wrote his dissertation on extraordinary states in Buddhist meditation and experimental dance. Sean holds certifications in Somatic Experiencing (SEP, assistant), and Yoga (E-RYT 500, YACEP), and teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, East Bay Meditation Center, Insight Timer, and elsewhere.

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Blessings on your path.