Buddhist Teaching: Follow Compassion, Not Desire.

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Crazy With Desire

 

When you have a lot of dissatisfaction because you are obsessed

with desire, you can drive yourself crazy. Your life becomes out of

control, and you have no peace. Because of the dissatisfied mind of

desire, you have great pain in your heart. Your life becomes crazy

because you are possessed by strong desire. You become so much of a

problem to yourself that you have no peace, day or night, even when

you're sleeping. And you cause so many problems to others. You even

drive other people crazy!

 

When you don't get what you desire, the thought then comes to

commit suicide. When some obstacle prevents you from getting what you

want, even if nobody wants to kill you, you kill yourself.

 

At that time, if you simply stop following desire and follow

Dharma wisdom, right where you are, sitting on that same spot where you

used to think you had mountains of problems, you immediately find

satisfaction. It's as if there are two parties, and you have to take

the side of one of them. Rather than taking the side of desire, take

the side of Dharma wisdom, which opposes desire and brings

satisfaction. As soon as you stop following desire and follow

compassion and other positive attitudes, the mountains of problems that

you believed you had simply don't exist. Rather than thinking one way,

you think another. Like using a radio or TV remote control, you turn

your mind onto compassion or Dharma wisdom rather than onto desire.

 

Immediately there is no problem. The mountains of problems

that were suffocating you before no longer exist. Before, because you

couldn't find a way to fulfill your desire, you had so much pain in

your heart that you wanted to commit suicide. The danger of that

disappears. To stop following desire is the greatest protection. No

matter how many weapons and bodyguards you have to protect you, they

can actually endanger your life, depending on what you do with your

mind. They are supposed to be there for your protection, but they can

become a danger to you. Many times you see in the world that bodyguards

kill the people they are hired to protect.

 

If you simply stop following desire, there is immediate

satisfaction, immediate peace and happiness. The pain and tightness in

your heart is released. You immediately feel great inner relief. But

how do you stop following desire? By thinking of the infinite problems

that come from desire. You have to meditate on the problems that desire

brings in this life, and in the lives after this. You meditate on what

you know about these problems from the teachings you have received,

studied, and meditated on.

 

One way to control desire is to think of its shortcomings.

Desire makes life difficult and brings every failure to find temporary

and ultimate happiness. You can think about this extensively, but the

main point is to be aware that no matter how much you follow desire, it

never brings satisfaction. It is impossible to get satisfaction by

following desire. That is the nature of desire.

 

Lama Tsongkhapa, a great Tibetan lama who practiced the path

and became enlightened, explained that people follow desire with the

aim of getting satisfaction. Their aim is worthwhile, and they are

right to wish to attain that aim, but their method for attaining it is

wrong and results only in dissatisfaction. Following desire then brings

many other problems. Like a train going to many different stations, the

suffering goes on and on.

 

In other words, by following the dissatisfied mind of desire,

we are constantly tortured. It doesn't allow us to have peace,

relaxation, or even physical health. For example, AIDS, cancer, and

many other diseases that have no cure come from not having controlled

the mind, basically from not having controlled desire. The mind becomes

very gross through following the dissatisfied mind of desire. Because

the disturbing thoughts are very strong, many unrighteous actions are

done. Because of that, AIDS and many other diseases are happening

nowadays.

 

Analyses are done of diet and other factors, but if you

analyze a person's attitudes and behavior, how they live their life,

you can then find the reasons they have the disease. You will find

similarities in their way of thinking and behaving; they are almost

addicted to their unrighteous actions. It becomes clear that these are

the real causes of disease. The process of disease becomes clearer,

rather than being limited to explanations about diet and other

conditions of disease.

 

When a person is infected with HIV, for example, their mind is

often in a state of strong sexual desire, then later they experience

fever, weakness, and other symptoms. There is a relationship to the

mental state and to the actions during that time.

 

During times of strong desire, you can meditate in the

following way. Some people think that they might die this year or this

month because they have cancer or some other life-threatening disease.

Because the doctor has said that they won't live long, the person

thinks, " I'm going to die soon. " However, so many of the people who die

each day don't know that they're going to die when they get up that

morning. They don't know that they're going to die in a car accident, a

plane crash, be stabbed by someone, or commit suicide. Even though they

are going to die that day, when they get up in the morning, they have a

conception of permanence, believing that they're going to live for many

years.

 

So many people who die on this earth don't think of death

until the condition of their death-the heart attack or

earthquake-comes. Until that happens, the person doesn't think that

they're going to die that day. They don't even think they are going to

die that month or that year. Many people die suddenly, without warning,

even though they believe they are going to live for many years.

 

After birth comes death. That's the evolution. But death can happen at any

time-even today, even in this hour.

 

The person who is the object of your desire is also not a

permanent phenomenon; they're impermanent, under the control of causes

and conditions. This person also has to experience death, and they can

die at any time, even today, even in this hour. Like a criminal in

prison waiting to be executed, you shouldn't find any reason to cling

to any object. Thinking of impermanence and death, that death can

happen at any time, is one meditation you can do to control desire.

 

The conditions of death are not just one or two-they're

infinite. Many times even the houses, food, medicine, and other things

that are there for your protection become the conditions for your

death. When you commit suicide, even your own body becomes the

condition for your death. Even your own mind can endanger your life.

 

Life is like a candle flame in the wind. There are so many

conditions for death. Besides the external conditions, there are

internal ones. Instability of mind, with your mind under the control of

desire, anger, and other harmful disturbing thoughts, affects your

body, making the elements in your body-earth, water, fire, and

air-unbalanced. An unbalanced mind makes the body unbalanced. The four

elements can then also become conditions for death. Even though we are

constantly surrounded by conditions for death, somehow, by good luck,

by good karma, our death hasn't happened so far.

 

This is a good meditation to calm the mind. When you think

this way, desire disappears, like a cloud disappearing in the sky. When

you think of impermanence and death, you don't find any reason to cling

to anything, and desire disappears. There's quiet, calm, tranquility.

When you are released from overwhelming desire, you feel immediate

satisfaction. Because awareness of impermanence and death makes you

stop following desire, satisfaction comes immediately.

 

If the object of your desire is someone's body, meditate on

the nature of the body. Examine what is inside the body: the bones of

the skeleton, the pieces of flesh tied with veins. Like using an x-ray

machine, look through the outer covering of skin to what is inside the

body. Practice mindfulness of the nature of the body.

 

Think of all the dirty things that come out of the body: from

the mouth, the nose, the ears, and other places. When food is on your

plate, it is clean, but once it has gone inside your mouth and you have

chewed it, it becomes dirty. What makes it dirty, so that you are

unable to eat it when it comes out? The body. If the body were clean

and pure, this wouldn't happen. With all its thirty-two impure

substances,* the inside of the body is similar to a septic tank, and

what fills up a septic tank comes from the body.

 

If the skin were separated from the body rather than stretched

over it, you wouldn't find any reason to cling to human skin itself.

Skin looks smooth from a distance, but when you examine it closely with

a magnifying glass, it's full of bumps, like small hills. The way the

skin appears to you is your own creation, your own projection. And

although the body may smell of various flowers, sandalwood, or other

perfumes, this is not the actual smell of the body.

 

Another point to consider is that with all these ways of

talking and behaving, with all these external substances for color and

scent, you hallucinate about the person you desire and that person

hallucinates about you. Try not to be caught in one hallucinated view,

but look at the person with a different view. Looking at each other in

a different way also helps to control the dissatisfied mind of desire.

In this way, you won't cause problems to other people. You won't harm

the relationships of other people, and there will also be peace for you.

 

It is said in the teachings, " One who clings to a small

pleasure cannot achieve the great pleasure. " Clinging to a small

pleasure becomes an obstacle to obtaining the great pleasure of

ultimate happiness.

 

Why is it important to meditate? Because you then have

personal experience of the peace gained through meditation. When you

have some experience of tranquility of mind, you see how the mind that

is obscured by desire is gross and uncontrolled. By comparison, that

pleasure is gross. You then find the rapturous ecstasy derived from

higher levels of meditation, such as calm abiding, great insight, and

the meditations of even the form realm. Compared to the pleasure

attained through meditation in the form realm, human physical

pleasures, such as sexual pleasure, seem extremely gross and like

suffering. You have no attraction to them at all. Such ordinary

pleasures are nothing compared to the bliss that can be experienced

through actualizing the tantric path. It is also helpful to think that

clinging to these gross pleasures becomes an obstacle to achieving

greater bliss, up to the peerless bliss of full enlightenment.

 

Note:

 

*For details of the thirty-two impure substances, see page 64 of The Four

Foundations of Mindfulness by Venerable U Silananda. Edited by Ruth-Inge Heinze.

Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1990.

 

Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave this teaching in Nice, France, 25

July 1990. Edited from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive by Ven. Ailsa

Cameron.

 

“The world is moving ahead but our lives have become harder.â€

- Nikheil, small farmer from Kohima, India.