Desire is not the Problem, Dualistic Identity Is

Excerpts from Kali Ma Troma Rinpoche’s upcoming book, MahaSiddha Buddhism.
For more information visit: www.MahaSiddhas.org

Seemingly never-ending, unrelenting, seductive, distracting, debilitating; oh, the ebb and flow of Desire. Rumors abound that only the most realized, hard-core, radical, fanatical, warrior-hero Buddhists could ever dare work with it. But is Desire really such a problem?

Desire is the radiance of Buddha-nature, our wakefulness to the sparkling, sacred qualities of existence. We glow with it. Our world is lit up when we are in it. In the surge of desire, we feel alive, tantalized and joyous. How then could it go so wrong at times? How then could it gain the reputation as being the bane of a Buddhist’s existence? To understand the answer, we must venture into the understanding of dualism and non-duality, the heart of the MahaSiddha’s Buddhism.

Mistaken Identity

The fundamental Buddhist teaching is that people live their lives in a state of unnecessary dissatisfaction (dukha). The dissatisfaction is caused by misperception of what we are. When we misperceive our own mind, we misperceive others, our world and all of reality. And in this misperception we find awkwardness and dissatisfaction at best.

Imagine if you thought you were a tuba - imagine how this would complicate your life. People would try to feed you and you’d think, “tubas do not need food.” So you would not eat. Your lover would try to kiss you and as soon as their lips hit your “mouthpiece” you would blare out with your loud, low tuba sounds. Of course, this would make relationships difficult. Misunderstanding what we are is a serious mistake.

If you thought you were a plum and you were really a banana, trying to be more purple and round, more plum, more tart - imagine the awkwardness. Perhaps you would tighten up, knotting up your insides to mimic a plum’s seed and cover up how soft your long, white belly really was. You might try to act more like a plum and avoid expressing those embarrassing banana sentiments. Meanwhile, with all your efforts to be a plum, you might be plagued with shame and confusion about your inability to completely hide your big yellow peel and feathery, white flesh. Our attempt to be the plum would only make our existence as a banana much more complicated than it needs to be. Misperceiving what we are is a grave error that causes us to fall into all kinds of dissatisfaction, confusions and even all out suffering. Our mistaken identity in dualism is as ill-fitting (dukha) as thinking we are a plum or a tuba. It is a subtle but serious mistake that distorts our every experience.

How Desire Could Be Twisted

Our capacity for enjoyment quickly fades and our desire becomes twisted if we manipulate it to prove we are something we’re not. For example, we may think it is imperative to be a plum and therefore we need to be more purple, plum-like and juicy to be satisfied. We believe the way to satisfaction is in being a plum. We start looking for what is missing. A mixture of desire and grasping arise in a tidal wave as we fantasize about our future as a plum. We realize we need purple pants to cover up our yellow peel. We long for those pants, we day-dream about them and invest time in finding the exact right pair. We try them on and think about how great it will feel to finally be a plum. Finally, we get the purple pants, squat and roll around and do everything we can to be a plum. But something is still missing. There is still a problem – but it isn’t desire that is the problem, nor is it the object of desire that is the problem. Purple pants are not problematic by nature. They are quite enjoyable unto themselves, they are what they are. It is only when we are trying to manipulate them to disguise what we really are that a problem arises. Purple pants cannot do that. Objects of desire cannot provide the fixed, “good,” continuous Self that the dualistic habit pursues. Nothing can hide our banana-nature, so life gets very tedious and unsatisfying when we let desire get tangled up in dualistic identity.

If we misperceive what we are, we misperceive everything else, including desire and the objects of desire. Then instead of having desire properly and fully, we confuse desire and attempt to manipulate it to serve our mistaken identity. The piece of chocolate is no longer just a piece of chocolate, it becomes a way of drugging ourselves so that we don’t have to face our own insecurity. It becomes a way to avoid emptiness, the open-ended, insecure nature of what we are. The chocolate fails to do this of course, thus that desire leads to frustration. So also, relationship fails to makes us feel secure. Work we have done fails to prove we are the “good” self. Everything we have desired only fails us when what we are really wanting is not the object of desire. When the hidden motivation is establishing some ideal Self, the objects of desire doesn’t provide it. That is dualism, forever disappointing. Trying to establish Self is a futile pursuit, since what we are is too open-ended to be captured in fixed form. That is the "me" project that brings us so much suffering as we attempt to establish an identity made up of dualistic fantasies. It is called dualistic because it is form based, the Self we want to find is imagined to be some permanent, definite, secure Self, divided from the temporary, ambiguous, insecure reality of life.

Every person wants to be loved for “who they are,” what if we also loved the objects of desire in this way? What if we enjoyed things for what they really are; lacking any security or confirmation, temporary and ineffable; as empty as we are. All objects of desire give us no solid ground to stand on, and we don't have take issue with that. We can enjoy phenomena as is. Then desire is just simple minded delight. Nothing more, nothing less.

Contacting What We Are Directly

Meditation is a method for contacting what we are directly. We can observe and become intimate with what we are. We discover moments where we are not relying on reference points to deduce what we are. We have the direct experience. Our attempts to prove we are “good” or disprove that we are “bad” through referencing how we measure up to plum-ness, tuba-ness or dualism has less meaning. What we actually are becomes directly apparent. Then desire is what it is. No more, no less, it is as pure and innocent as primordial existence. We can want the cake and eat it too. There is nothing un-buddhist about that. We can enjoy the cake even more, because we can eat the cake without the confusion of trying to use the cake to take away our anxiety, or give us the happiness or confirmation. It is just cake. We eat it as it is, with the calories, pleasure and the vivid emptiness that pervades all forms.

"By looking into the essence of desire
and resting in that state, you experience bliss..."
- Padmasambhava, Advice from the Lotus Born

Desire can be as enlightening as it could be poisonous. Like everything, it could be the opportunity for waking up or confusion, based on our understanding of our own mind. We have all heard about the monastic path of renouncing desire. Who couldn’t appreciate the potency in that? Most adults have followed desire into neurosis at one time or another, but it is not the only direction we could go with desire. We could be in it and find liberation. Desire will only ever point to the non-dual nature of things if we do not try to forge a Self with it, and so would anything. The whole of existence is communicating non-duality to us, it is communicating the actuality of no-fixed-self to us at all times, we simply have not been paying attention.

The MahaSiddhas

"Know that desire and covetousness are Discriminating
Awareness - You will find fine sensory distinction in no
other place than a mind hungering for beautiful things,
wanting the whole world. Look into the intrinsic
freshness of your desire and there is boundless light!"
-Yeshe Tsogyal, Sky Dancer

Motivated by revenge a king tried to corrupt the MahaSiddha of the Bell, by sending a woman to seduce him. Instead of being corrupted by desire, he was enlightened. Within passion, desire, love and companionship, he found the final ingredient to go beyond ignorance. The MahaSiddha called the Glutton was not told to go on a diet. On the contrary, he was instructed to increase his appetite to extend to all phenomena. When desire is liberated from the confines of dualistic identity, it is a raw appreciation that connects us with the living energy of all things. If we set down our dualistic obsession with trying to be other than as we are, then Desire is not a problem. A banana can enjoy appreciating plums. A person can enjoy a tuba. We don’t need to renounce them, unless of course that is our cup of tea. We only need liberate our grasping at dualistic identity to enjoy our world with awareness.

Disclaimer: Buddhism is a tradition of methods for awakening. The Buddha introduced 84,000 different methods that may seem contradictory because of their differences, but are each appropriate according to the specific individuals and stages of the path for which they are intended. This article is written from the perspective of the Inner Tantras. It does not address the relationship with desire taken by renunciate or monastic practitioners who take a different view as a method for awakening.