Expert: Laurie McLauglin - 4/17/2009

Question
I am confused about the whole concept regarding desires in Buddhism. I understand that I am always going to have desires, and Buddhism mentions this I believe. How does an enlightened person approach desires? Does he ignore them or repress them?

Also, If I am in a cold atmosphere, I have a desire to put on more clothes, such as a jacket. How would an enlightened person react to this situation? Would he fulfill his desire of warmth?
If this is an issue of unnecessary desires vs. Physiological needs, to what extent does a need become a desire?
Thank you,
Joey


Answer
Hello Joey.  Thanks for the questions.  I will answer your regular question and your follow up question in this one answer as they both deal with the same things.

Let me answer both of your questions at the same time because they are both dealing basically with the same question.

First of all though, just to clarify, I don’t recall saying that a person may desire food so that it will bring us closer to enlightenment.  If I said that, it was a mistake.

Allow me, to the best of my ability to clear up some ideas about an enlightened being.  An enlightened being desires nothing.  They do not need to. There is no need to repress anything either. If a Buddha was in human form, the Buddha would not become cold but the body the Buddha inhabited may feel cold and the Buddha would recognize this and simply put on more clothes.

In order to become enlightened, in the philosophical school that I follow, there is a specific path that needs to be followed by folks like us who have this wish. It is a long path requiring much study and work. The purpose of this path is to learn to relearn how our mind works and how we interact with and view the world.

First one must sincerely desire to be free from suffering and the cyclic world of samsara in which we all live – that’s called renunciation. Then one has to cultivate the complete and ever present wish to help all sentient beings be free of suffering. – that’s called bodhichitta Then one must train one’s mind to be able to concentrate and meditate clearly, calmly and deeply for great periods of time – that’s called Samadhi. Once one has Samadhi, one must meditate on the true nature of existence and understand how things truly exist.  The way things truly exist we call “emptiness”.  Then we meditate until we have a direct non conceptual view of emptiness. After that though we still have a long way to go to reach enlightenment.  

Once we have a direct non conceptual view of emptiness, the real work on our mind begins.  It is here that we then go deeper and deeper into meditation in order to understand and then remove the subtler obscurations of our mind that tell us that the things we desire actually exist. We learn and come to truly understand through this meditation that the things we crave do not exist in the way we currently think they do. We become more and more familiar with how we grasp at things and expect them to be what we have been believing all our lives they really are and see instead that things we desire are nothing more than what we label them to be and that they have no inherent qualities from their own side.  We are simply imputing our desires on things that are nothing more than a group of dependently arising causes and conditions.  

There are ten levels of deepening awareness that one must go through to completely eliminate all our subtlest thoughts that things exist as we think they do now, of having any desire for things and so forth.  Once we get to the tenth realization, we finally become enlightened.

So you see that those who become enlightened have learned that there is nothing to desire and therefore have no desires.

Once a being reaches enlightenment, he has as part of his nature, the three kayas or three bodies.  As IU currently understand them, one body is the form that all of us in our pure essence exist in once we become buddhas – we hang around in that form in total bliss and complete wisdom and understanding of all things.  Then there is the mind form that is the mind part of the Buddha.   The third form is the form that can manifest into a way that we can see – a form body.

A Buddha can manifest as a dog or a person or a bird or anything they choose for the purpose of helping other sentient beings. In the manifested form a Buddha can either simply appear in a situation, do something to help someone and disappear back to the pure essence body.  Or a Buddha can take a rebirth and live an entire life as one person for the benefit of helping one or many sentient beings.

As far as an enlightened person, or Buddha eating, if the Buddha is inhabiting a human body for a length of time, he has to take care of the body he or she inhabits.  So for that reason a Buddha would eat.  They would not eat because there would be any specific pleasure in the act of eating nor would they enjoy the taste of one food over another.  The Buddha would have no desire to eat.  But just like the Buddha would have to wear clothes in a human form, a Buddha would have to eat too. But there would be no desire for anything, as the Buddha is complete as he or she is.

I hope this helps to clarify some of your questions. If not, don’t hesitate to ask further questions.