Talks - Beauty of Desire - Rob Burbea

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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

Do We Fear Desire?

• 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…

Connecting with Desire (Exercise)

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

Another Side of Desire

• 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

Opening to Desire

• 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”?

Practice

1. 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 ]]

2. 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
3. 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)