Awakening to desire

Open to Desire
by Mark Epstein, M.D.

(Page 3 of 7)

What distinguishes the tantric, or left-handed, path is its recognition that desire itself can be transformed through a process that is at once mental, emotional, psychological and spiritual. This is a path that involves not so much physical exercise as mental exercise, a gradual change in the way we relate to desire, in which longing becomes a teacher in its own right. The key to this path is to make desire into a meditation. This idea strikes many as anathema. It is much easier to set desire up as the enemy and isolate it from everything else that we value. When it is split off or demonized it can still be enjoyed guiltily but it never has to be integrated with our loftier impulses. We can continue to look down on desire, or on those who are desiring, when we are not in the grip of it ourselves, and thereby preserve some spurious notion of superiority. As Freud suggested many years ago, there is something vaguely disgusting about desire, something that might have its origins in a repugnance that many feel toward the genitals. "All neurotics," Freud noted, with his characteristic deadpan humor, "and many others besides, take exception to the fact that 'inter urinas et faeces nascimur (we are born between urine and feces).'"

It is this shame or reticence toward desire that has marked most of the spiritual traditions of both East and West. To paraphrase Nietzsche, who described the Christian attack on erotic desire, Christianity didn't kill eros, it just made it vicious. From the Puritanism of American culture to the Eastern view that the seeds of suffering lie in the endless pursuit of passion, much of the world is deeply conflicted about a trait that virtually all people share. Yet for me, this divisive approach is no longer tenable. The separation of the spiritual from the sensual, of the sacred from the relational, and of the enlightened from the erotic no longer seems desirable. Certainly, seeing how impossible the division has proven for the countless spiritual teachers of every tradition who have stumbled over their own longings has been instructive. In addition, having a family and a relationship has made it abundantly clear to me that they require the same dedication, passion and vision that a spiritual journey demands. Now that spiritual life is in the hands of householders rather than monastics, the demands of desire are front and center, not hidden from view.

Desire is one of the most misunderstood concepts in Western spiritual circles. In groups that come together to learn more about meditation or yoga, it is a question that is almost always at the top of the agenda. The notion of detachment, which is fundamental to an Eastern approach to life, now seems more problematic than it used to, given the need that most people feel for intimacy. The Buddha left his wife and young child, after all, to begin his spiritual search. Is this the model we are trying to live up to in our relationships?

At a recent conference in New York City, for example, someone asked the writer and Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor about this issue:

"I have no trouble understanding the idea of non-attachment in meditation," the questioner said, "but when it comes to my marriage and family, I don't get it. Why is non-attachment even a positive thing to aspire to?" Attachment, even desire, seemed to the questioner like something to be supported in the interpersonal realm, not something to be overcome.

Stephen motioned to his wife, Martine, who was just coming into the room. "My wife says it is like holding a coin," he said, and he held out one arm with his palm up and his fist closed. "We can hold it like this," and he emphasized the closed nature of his fist, "or we can hold it like this," and he opened his hand to show the coin sitting in the center of his palm. "The closed fist is like clinging," he said. "But with my hand open, I still hold the coin." Buddhism, Stephen seemed to be implying, actually imagines that desire can be held lightly. The distinction between the closed and the open fist is the distinction between clinging and desire. Although the Buddha saw the cause of suffering in craving, he did not say that the cure was to simply eliminate desire. His "direct" path was actually much more circuitous.

Before his enlightenment, the almost-Buddha actually did try to eliminate desire from his being. This was the more obvious approach to the problem of desire and was already well established in his time. India, even then, was a land of renunciates. In accordance with the spiritual practices of his day, the future Buddha engaged in all sorts of austerities designed to rid his soul of longing. He sat on a stone seat, fasted and punished himself in every imaginable way; there are famous sculptures from what is now Afghanistan showing his emaciated body with his ribs jutting out from so much penance. His asceticism was said to have no match in ancient India.

But the Buddha found that he would kill himself with such practices before achieving any kind of lasting peace of mind. In taking his penance to its logical extreme, the Buddha realized that the world would not tolerate his elimination of eros. It would eliminate him instead. He concluded that there had to be another way and went on to evolve the route between austerities and sensory indulgence that became known as the Middle Path. This is a tricky place to dwell, a between space, that Stephen was also pointing to in his example of the open palm. It is a space where desire is not pushed away but where its inevitable failures are also tolerated, where we open to it just as it is. In this place, one does not reject pleasure but one is not dependent on it either. Desire is given room to breathe while the desirer is urged to examine its qualities. "Look into the nature of desire," counseled the great Tibetan yogi Padmasambhava, "and there is boundless light."

Copyright © 2006 Dr. Mark Epstein

About the Author

Dr. Mark Epstein is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City who lectures frequently about the value of Buddhist meditation for psychotherapy. His previous books include Thoughts Without a Thinker, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, and Going on Being. He is a contributing editor to Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and has written many articles for Yoga Journal and O: The Oprah Magazine.