Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye. Most of the Buddha's teachings make logical sense to me, but not everything resonated with me right away; and that's okay. After all, I was raised Jewish, but I never believed Moses actually parted the Red Sea.
And while I admire Jesus leading by example, I highly doubt he had blond hair, blue eyes, or the ability to turn water into wine. Believing is not an all-or-nothing situation, just like you don't have to love everything on the menu at your favorite restaurant, and it's possible to dislike a few songs by your favorite musician. So when I first heard the Buddhist perspective that Desire is the root of our suffering, I wasn't ready to blindly accept it just because the Buddha taught it.
I had questions. I mean, I didn't seek Buddhism and then changed my way of life to match the teachings, I was already living a very different life than everyone around me when someone jokingly called me a Buddhist monk, and when I looked up what that entailed, I realized, Well, what do you know? I practically am.
Only then did I start studying Buddhism, which, yes, ultimately led to being a Buddhist monk after a few years, but not without my questioning certain tenets like whether desire is truly the root of suffering. I mean, wasn't the Buddha driven by a strong desire for deeper understanding? Isn't desire to alleviate suffering the very motivation behind our practice?
Doesn't desire propel us toward enlightenment? The answer, as it turns out, is both yes, and no. If our desire for world peace, for example, motivates us to always choose the most peaceful course of action, then we can live a peaceful life with a strong sense of purpose, and the fact that world peace is not yet a reality in this very moment is not a deterrent, because we understand that life is a journey.
But if we desire something, even if it's world peace, to such a degree that we are miserable unless we acquire it and preferably soon, then it's easy to see how desire can ignite and continue to fuel our suffering. Or perhaps better stated: it's not that desire is the root of our suffering, it's that happiness is the absence of desire.
The ego plays a major role in our desires, as well. Even keeping with the example of world peace, each of us probably has a very different idea of what that looks like. We have this crazy notion that whatever WE like, everyone else must like,
and whatever we find irritating, needs to be banned. I've probably mentioned this before, but if you so much as picture your ideal Zen garden, for example, you might visualize some wind chimes in the corner, which to someone else are the most annoying things in the world. The ego just assumes that our solution is, of course, the best solution, so... the more you think about this whole concept of desire and the complexities of ego, it's no wonder that it causes so much suffering.
I mean, think about what causes your anxiety and anguish: it all stems from wanting things to be different than they are. Even stress is defined as being here but wanting to be there. And the antidote to all of that is acceptance. But let's not confuse acceptance with approval. Accepting racism, global warming, hatred, animal cruelty, and so on, doesn't mean we stop doing what we can to minimize the harmful ripple effects of our actions.
It means we accept it all as part of our current reality, but we remain peaceful because if we don't, then we become part of the same problem we try to eradicate by not living in the peace that we say we want. Our mind continually generates problems to solve rather than simply taking one step at a time.
So, we can either enjoy this beautiful and never-ending journey, or we can spend our entire lives whining, "Are we there yet?" We have monthly discussions about these topics, and one woman asked, "Isn't it possible to be perfectly content and still have desire?" And I don't think it is, because desire stems from a sense of lack, doesn't it? Like something is missing. It's not something that comes up when you're blissed out.
Desire is a craving or wanting for things to be different than they are, which is why a mantra I repeat to myself multiple times a day in my head, and at least twice a day out loud, is: There is nowhere else I would rather be, and there's nothing else I'd rather be doing. It just brings me right into the present moment. Anytime a teaching is reduced to bite-sized quotes, we don't get the full context from which it was derived.
So, the invitation to contemplate whether desire is at the root of our suffering is yet another opportunity to realize that happiness is not something we need to "pursue." It's not in the distance somewhere out of our reach if only things outside of us were different. What we actually need to do is eradicate the things within us that rob us of happiness. Things like fear, expectations, greed, hatred, ignorance, and yes, desire.
When you think about it, your life became a struggle the moment you turned your preferences into so-called needs. Which is why I always say: want less, suffer less. Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless and Buddhist Boot Camp. For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com, where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project, watch Timber's inspiring TED Talk, and join our monthly mailing list.
We hope you have enjoyed this episode, and invite you to subscribe for more thought-provoking discussions. Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏🏼