Silent Musings

Among all topics written about extensively in scriptures, books and articles in the realm of spirituality, desire may be the one that is written about in the most damaging fashion. The conventional wisdom seems to point to the elimination of desire as an important and fundamental step on the spiritual path. To be fair, not all sources actually say this, but they are often interpreted as such nonetheless. For example, to say that all suffering is a result of desire is not to say that we should eliminate desire, or even suffering for that matter. It may actually be true that all suffering results from desire, but it may be equally true that all life results from desire. Have you ever really examined this?

Rather than simply accepting what others have said, I’ve spent many years examining desire from as many angles as possible. For example, I maintained a completely celibate lifestyle for close to two years in my examination of the relationship between desire and sexuality. It was quite an eye opening experience. I won’t bother going into the details of relating what I concluded, if anything, because there really isn’t any value to be found in conclusions. If you are curious enough, perhaps you’ll just try it out. Or not. In any case, it just illustrates how far I was willing to go to discover my actual relationship with desire. I continue in that discovery every moment. Fuck the myths. Really.

Now I’m not asserting that all desires are healthy, nor am I saying that one wouldn’t benefit from the elimination of some forms of desire. However, in my experience, the falling away of unhealthy desires occurs as naturally as breathing itself, if one allows it. And I am asserting that forced attempts to eliminate perceived unwanted desires can be very damaging to the well being of a human life.

Last weekend I was feeling the effects of American life in a heavy way, and concluded that I needed to get away from the rat-race for a bit. So my girlfriend and I got in the car and drove out to Angeles National Forest, which is really more of a burnt out desert on hills than a forest such as one would find in the eastern U.S.

We hiked down into a canyon and sat and meditated for a bit. Slowly but surely, the presence of life made itself into my awareness in a deep and touching way. Although fires had clearly consumed many of the trees that surrounded us, there was life in them nonetheless. Life was everywhere and in everything. Life … Death … Breath … Desire … Beauty … Love … all Present. Whatever headache had accompanied me into the forest dissolved into this deepest desire to inhale the breath of life. As we hiked back up the canyon wall to go home, I could see the breath of life hovering in the canyon air, with movement everywhere and yet nowhere at the same time. I lingered on the precious edge of weeping for the entire walk back.

There is nothing anyone can say that will convince me that such experiences of desire ought to be eliminated from my life. I’ve been accused many times of being detached, but hey, I’m still alive. My teacher is fond of saying that the only real need for human beings is the movement toward ecstasy. How could such volition exist without desire? Sorry, but I have to agree with the teacher on this one.

But don’t take my word for it. Get interested enough to find out for yourself. Fuck the myths … mine, the Buddha’s, or anyone else’s.

When there is a total understanding of need, the outward and the inner, then desire is not torture. Then it has a quite different meaning, a significance far beyond the content of thought and it goes beyond feeling, with its emotions, myths and illusions. With the total understanding of need, not the mere quantity or the quality of it, desire then is a flame and not a torture. Without this flame life itself is lost. It is this flame that burns away the pettiness of its object, the frontiers, the fences that have been imposed upon it. Then call it by whatever name you will, love, death, beauty. Then it is there without an end. - J. Krishnamurti