Did the Buddha really say all desire is bad?

Today is Āsāḷha Pūjā. It is the commemoration of what all Buddhist traditions regard as the first Dhamma talk. The name of the talk in Pāḷi (the liturgical language of Theravāda and the closest we have to what the Buddha actually would have spoken) is the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, “The Discourse Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion.” In this sutta, the Buddha lays out the four ariyasacca, usually translated as “noble truths,” but possible translations include “ennobling truths” or “truths of the noble ones.” These are commonly recognized as the doctrinal foundation of Buddhism. They are about dukkha, a word usually translated as “suffering” but referring to anything falling short of perfect, imperturbable happiness. The four truths are: Suffering exists; suffering has a cause; because suffering has a cause, it can be ended by removing that cause; and there are methods for doing that.

There are two common misconceptions about these noble truths in the West. One is that the first one is “life is suffering.” This is not what the Buddha said. It would require an entire other post to get into what the first noble truth actually says, but here I will simply say it’s the clinging that’s the suffering. Not everything in life. That is, he does not say, “All life is suffering”; he says, “Suffering exists.” Which is obviously true!

The second pertains to that second noble truth. Most people who have a passing familiarity with Buddhism have heard this stated as, “The cause of suffering is desire.” That is often presented as meaning any desire whatsoever. That all desires, wants, wishes, are bad, and are a cause of suffering. This misunderstanding leads people to ask, “What about the desire to end desire?” which can be presented as a valid question to clear confusion, although is often forwarded by people who think they are very clever as some kind of ‘gotcha’ that has never been considered by any Buddhist philosopher in 2.5 millennia.

Here’s what the stock formula of the noble truth actually says:

Katamañcāvuso, dukkhasamudayaṃ ariyasaccaṃ? Yāyaṃ taṇhā ponobbhavikā nandīrāgasahagatā tatratatrābhinandinī, seyyathidaṃ—kāmataṇhā bhavataṇhā vibhavataṇhā, idaṃ vuccatāvuso: ‘dukkhasamudayaṃ ariyasaccaṃ’.

And what, friends, is the noble truth of the origin of suffering? That thirst which leads to existence again and again, going together with pleasure and attachment, delighting here and there, that is to say: thirst for sensuality, thirst for existing, thirst for not existing, this, friends, is called: “the noble truth of the origin of suffering.”

So it is not all desire. There are a lot of words in Pāḷi that could be translated as “desire,” such as chanda or icchā. Those are somewhat neutral words that can be used in both positive and negative contexts. Chanda, for example, is one ofthe “four roads to success,” a list of four components for achieving goals.[1] The word here is taṇhā, which literally means “thirst,” and is meant to call to mind the desperation of a parched throat after a few days without water in the driest desert.

This is further specified with the words ponobbhavikā, nandīrāgasahagatā, and tatratatrābhinandinī.

Nandīrāgasahagatā is a compound of nandī, rāga, and sahagatā. Sahagatā literally means “going together with,” but is often translated as “accompanied by” or “mixed up with.” This is one of many cases where I think the literal translation gets the sense across perfectly well, though. So it’s a kind of thirst that goes together with nandīrāga. Nandī is one of many words for “pleasure” in Pali (and some day I’d like to do a study of them and the role they play in the economy of Dhamma practice, a sort of Buddhist version of Foucault’s History of Sexuality Part 2: The Use of Pleasure). Rāga can be translated as “desire” or “passion,” but I really think it’s better rendered with “attachment” in most cases. We could read this compound as that the thirst goes together with pleasure and attachment, or, I think more usefully, goes together with pleasure and attachment to that pleasure. The attachment is what is critical for leading to suffering.

Tatratatrābhinandinī is another compound, formed from the idiom tatra tatra, “here and there,” and abhinandinī, which includes the aforementioned nandī. Venerable Sujāto translates that as “relishing.”[2] So it’s a thirst that goes with attachment to pleasure, and alights on various experiences, sometimes here, sometimes there. As the previous thing gets old, the thirst pushes the mind to a new thing.

Finally, ponobbhavikā. This is the continuous renewal of existence. This is coming back, again and again, to the same things. It is the very dynamic the Buddha was problematizing: that which keeps us stuck suffering in the great Wandering (the literal translation of saṃsāra).

So, what does this mean?

If you have feral cats in your neighborhood, to protect them and future cat populations, you may participate in a trap-neuter-release (TNR) program. You trap the cat, you take them to a veterinarian to be neutered, and then you release them again (because feral cats usually do not make for good house guests). The first step is, of course, the trapping. You need them to come to the same place, every day, reliably, and feel comfortable there. The best way of doing that is to set out food at the same time every day. They will see and smell the food, come to the food, and eat the food. They grow accustomed to the time of day (and will probably start demanding to be fed at that time, in the way cats do!). Then they can be snared and be prevented from generating a future generation.

This is the kind of “desire” the Buddha was talking about.

We go through our worlds, and come across some experience we like. It’s pleasurable in some way. Our minds land on that experience. One of the words used in this process is nivisati, “makes a home in.” The mind makes a home in the experience that it likes, and it reifies the experience into a thing. It sets up camp. It raises a tent and stakes in the corners. It builds an identity. It hangs a sense of existing, of “I am,” on this thing it has sculpted out of the flow of experience. And it will keep coming back, over and over again. This is what the Buddha was talking about.

One of the descriptions of the enlightened mind is that it is “unestablished consciousness.” Our unenlightened consciousness lands on a thing and gets established in it. An enlightened consciousness does not. The Buddha compared it to sunlight. If it is coming through an open window in a building, sunlight will fall on the floor or a wall. But if there’s no floor, no wall, nothing but empty space, the sunlight will never fall on anything. It never stops. This is the unestablished consciousness, the awareness that never gets stuck on anything and is completely free.

But what is the problem with having “established consciousness”? Well, if you make a home somewhere, you will need to protect it. Houses require upkeep. They require maintenance. They require new water heaters when the old ones break, or fresh coats of paint when the old have weathered. They need new HVAC units from time to time. Further, they need to be defended from attacks or thieves. This is the suffering: the stress that comes with all of that. The mind being stuck, the consciousness being established and building an identity, requires maintenance, and must be defended. An unestablished consciousness never has to do any of this.

So it’s not about what the consciousness is established on. It’s not about what the mind lands on, and where it makes its home. If it loses that home, it finds a new one. It goes from experience to experience, making its home by relishing experiences here and then there, for as long as it can. Whatever the particular thing the mind is relishing and reifying is irrelevant. It’s the relishing and reifying that’s the problem.

So, no, the Buddha never said that all desire is bad. Just specifically the desire which leads to getting stuck on things, and, consequently, to suffering.

[1] The four “roads to success,” iddhipāda, are: Chanda, desire or interest or enthusiasm; viriya, persistent and energetic effort; citta, intent and setting one’s mind to the task, and vimāṃsā, analysis of the results of the effort in order to evaluate success or see what must be changed about one’s approach.

[2] He also asserts that tatra tatra is “everywhere” and not “here and there,” that is, distributive and not selective, but I find the selective usage more helpful for my understanding.