One of the characteristics of Buddhist teachings often is an emphasis on non attachment. And that can translate into the idea that you should let go of desires and not have any desires.
Another emphasis is the idea that when you meditate, you should not try to make something happen, engineer your practice, try to fix it, try to kind of, you know. But rather just be present and see clearly what's here, which is just suggests also no desire just be present. So, in some way or other people listening to Buddhist teachings can feel that to get their message that desires are not good. You're not supposed to have any.
But this is a mistake. That the desires are important part of the practice, important part of human life. Chances are that, if people have no desires, that probably depressed. I don't think that, you know, having no desires is really, you know, I think that human beings are not really human beings. They're human desire links. Desiring just part and parcel of life, you know, wanting to eat, if you're hungry, wanting to drink when you're thirsty, or want to pee when you need to pee. There's all kinds of desires that are part of the normal course of life. And there's bigger desires to be had. And there's the desire to practice, desire to meditate, desire to be in the present moment, and not losing your mind to your distractions over and over again. And these desires are really important to have without those desires, why would you do anything? Why would you show up here? Where would you meditate? Why would you want to be you know. And so, there's a way in which desires are important, valuable. Rhey can be orientation, they can be a motivation, they can be a safeguard, the alternatives might be worse, which bind us. And it also can, so they could orient us to what we're about this is this is what I want to do this is clearly this so desire, the art of it, is to have the desire, together with a certain kind of non attachment. It's not one or the other, but both together, to have a desire. But to do so with clarity and maybe some strength even to it. But without being caught up in expectation to succeed. Without relating it, the desire to all kinds of ideas about me myself in mind, the conceit like I have to do, this is up to me, and I have to prove myself, I have to be successful, I don't want I shouldn't fail. There can be so much me that goes together with desire. That makes it much more complicated. It needs to be just a simple desire. This is what I'm doing. I'm putting my my life force for this 45 minutes into doing this, this is what I like to do. There's clarity and kind of decisiveness. The mind likes decisiveness, sometimes like this is what we're doing. And then there's also being relaxed about that's succeeding being relaxed, but the mind has other ideas and yet, you come back, not making it a problem. And not making it something that no neurotically pursuing, not being something that you have to there can be a lot of strength behind the desire, but no attachment, a lot of strength, without expectation, a lot of strength without relating it to the whole complex of me and myself in mind, that can be a strength to a desire, without there be any strain whatsoever. That can be said, you know, part of one desire is to have desire with no tension as part of it. That's a great desire. And that's a that protects you from having the desires of tension associated with them, to have desires that somehow their desires itself is more aligned with freedom than it is with clinging.
So put some clarity, this is what I want. So for today, while you're here, you might experiment with this. You might see when you're doing walking meditation, whether you kind of establish your own desire, but a clear desire to somehow do the walking meditation in some way or other, some desire associated with it that's realistic for you don't have desires which are unrealistic, you know, maybe, you know, modest desires, and then if they work out, then maybe you can up it up a little bit. It could be my desire, determined, this is like the most important thing, this is what I'm going to do. Yes. I'm going to try to track the whole exhale. That's the one desire, and then we'll see what they put, we'll see what the desire is at the end, when that's over. You know, maybe I'll do the inhale. But so the point being, make it small enough, make it modest enough that it's kind of doable. And then as it's appropriate, you can make the desires live bigger and bigger. When you come back to sit, you know, sit down with desire that's related to the practice it just and see if that having clarity and some definitive decisiveness around it can be helpful for you. If it's not helpful, then it's probably there's some attachment to it some clinging, some extra strain that's involved. And part of the purpose of this kind of this way of talking, you said, to discover what that extra is. That's part of the path as well. So in this way, I hope that you enjoy your desires today, that they serve you and you benefit from them. Thank you
