Desire: Should we rise above it or embrace it?

[Eileen]

Well, the other word that you hear a lot with regard to Buddhism is "attachment," which is basically the same idea, but maybe with different connotations. I think that it is not so much desire that causes suffering, but inability to let go of things. I think that allows for moderate desire, with an emphasis on the importance of not clinging to things.

 

[ajblaise]

Well, the other word that you hear a lot with regard to Buddhism is "attachment," which is basically the same idea, but maybe with different connotations. I think that it is not so much desire that causes suffering, but inability to let go of things. I think that allows for moderate desire, with an emphasis on the importance of not clinging to things.

I think using the term "attachment" might be a more apt choice of words. But are you agreeing with Buddhism that we should seek an actual unattached or detached state when you say "importance of not clinging to things"?

 

[Totenkindly]

Yeah, both these posts make sense. But sometimes I wonder if the most advanced Buddhist monks meditating on top of a mountain lead the most content and happiest of lives.

It depends on what you decide the purpose of living is.

Like Eileen says, when I've read books on the practice of Buddhism, they usually do focus more on the ability to let things go.

You are supposed to live in the Now.
It's okay to be engaged in the Now.
But if you cling to the Now when it becomes the Then, you no longer live in the Now.

People who live in the past are not really alive.
They've living in photographs and scrapbooks and memories and the ashes of Now.
You have to continually engage the Now to be alive, because the Now is the only moment you can act within; the past is gone, the future doesn't yet exist.

People can't let go because they can't embrace loss and death.

I hate to suggest watching The Matrix 3, since half of that movies sucks horribly, but even there it's got the basic lesson that everything ends, and you have to let go in order to live (or die, or whatever).

 

[Salomé]

On the one hand Eastern philosophies tell us that desire is the source of pain and suffering, I think they have a point. But on the other hand, desire can cause us to not only long and crave things, but it motivates us to acquire these things we want, and I think this drive is key to a person achieving some of the happiest moments in their lives.

What do you all think about the issue?

Desire is a bottomless pit.

But you could just as easily say Life is the source of all pain and suffering.
Does that make life undesirable? Are pain and suffering always undesirable?

To desire not to desire is also a desire.

So how do we escape from desire?

Only in death...or in a kind of living death.

"To be or not to be....that is the question."

 

[Totenkindly]

Desire is a bottomless pit. But you could just as easily say Life is the source of all pain and suffering. Does that make life undesirable? Are pain and suffering always undesirable?

I don't think they are undesirable.

Aside from negative experiences framing positive ones, growth is only really catalyzed in this world by adversity.

You don't want the pain and suffering to be intense enough to destroy you, but you do want enough to find yourself challenged.

 

[Virtual ghost]

I think that you are asking something that is impossible by definition.

If you desire not to desire you desire.