Talks - Beauty of Desire

Should We Let go of All Desire?

Desire is infinite in its mystery
- Can be explored by so many angles
- We can’t exhaust the exploration of desire
Our idea of enlightened people is that of someone who has dropped all desire
- Just perfectly happy with what is
A common teaching is “Let go of all desire”
- Is that even possible?
- Subtle desires will probably remain
- Even the Buddha desired to share his teachings
We have to be careful that the path we are on doesn’t shrink something within us that might be a blessing

We often have a fear of deep desire
- Particularly desire of “deep” things, like God or enlightenment
- Yet many other small desires go unnoticed and accepted. Desire for comfort, convenience etc…

Minute 14:00 - 40:00 of talk 1

Imagining ourselves on our deathbed and asking ourselves (~ min 20-40?):
- What did I want in my life
- What do I regret not doing
Asking “what do I want” may bring up a sense of lack
The Inner Critic may come up and shut our desires down (“you can’t never do that!“)
- That doesn’t give the desire a chance to grow
- Some of the reasoning of the IC may even be right
  - But if we’re too quick to allow the IC to tell us why we won’t be able to do something, we don’t give desire a chance to grow
Maybe we need to protect desire like we protect a small plant that needs to grow
The inner critic inhibits desire and desire inhibits the inner critic

Have we proven it empirically that desire brings suffering?
Is it possible that a lack of desire or non-nourishing of desire also brings suffering?
Is it possible that allowing desire creates depth, energy, dynamism and inner power into our heart or being?
“maybe conversely, not desiring, letting go of what I desire, maybe something in me gets disempowered, becomes weak (over time; I’m talking about years and longer), becomes flaccid or impotent, even, maybe, especially if I’m not desiring because there’s fear of desire”
Just following superficial desires also brings a weakening of the being

Fantasy of being a researcher into consciousness
- How does that change your attitude to practice?
- Instead of thinking of yourself “trying to do it right”?

Dropping the assumptions that desire is problematic and to be suppressed
- Playing with the assumption that desire might have something meaningful to give us
- ”Ultimately one loves one’s desires and not that which is desired” Nietzche
Asking yourself “What am I wanting”?
- Going deeper than the surface, mind craving (usually a specific object e.g. I want a gf)
  - I want to love, the opening of the heart, to see beauty in everything, the sense of being received
Sitting with and opening to the sense of desire
- Being careful to a sense of lack emerging
  - Does lack necessarily need to be there when I feel desire? (hint: no)