Thread: The problem with desire

I seperate Desire from addiction. Addiction is a craving of the body, which interferes with my idealistic desires.

There is a difference between addiction and desire. From another perspective, the removal of desire is not very practical in the human sense, as the "desire" to be rid of all desire is also a desire. Some of our desires have kept us alive, and are therefore necessary while we are living in the world. Daoists speak of being "untouched by the dusts of the mundane world", which is similar to the Buddhist notion of "being in this world but not of it." Both of these are easily misconstrued, and the matter is not helped by the influence of Social Mind and most organized systems of religion. A complete lack of desire is also quite disempowering, and it is addiction/obsession that we should seek to subjugate.

There is also a large diverence between craving and addiction. I have times where things are craved and depending on if they are healthy for me (within my short list of foods that won't send me to the er) I'll decide to ignore or indulge with no consequence either way. Physical cravings that are accompanied with pain, etc. if they are not indulged are the addictions. Indulging the cravings (be they addictions or just temporary cravings) in small amounts will most often rid it from your mind. ex: Certain weeks all I can think about is chocolate. I've gone as far to zone out and buy it without conscious thought. It may seem I'm addicted to it by that behaviour, but once curse week is gone the need goes away. I also can alleviate the craving by consuming something else that has the nutrients my body needs at the time. I can also crave to eat/drink blood in vast quantities in an addiction like fashion during that week. An iron and iodine pill will take care of that craving if I can't make blood stew atm.

Desires being more mentally driven, things we want, are helpful in pushing us to move forward. My desire to be a known artist keeps me from just accepting my current job and do nothing with the art. I continue to get better and try to get into circles that will help me get to where I desire to be. If I didn't desire to be more then my days would be pretty dull.

Sometimes overindulgence will cause them to become listless and kill desire of them. That may be dangerous though. The other way would be to replace the addiction/obsession with something else... say your personal improvement.

Originally Posted by devakxes

Sometimes overindulgence will cause them to become listless and kill desire of them. That may be dangerous though. The other way would be to replace the addiction/obsession with something else... say your personal improvement.

In the folk novel "Seven Taoist Masters", one of the seven disciples needs to overcome his sex addiction in order to attain Dao and become an Immortal. So, he decides to live in a brothel as a means of accomplishing this. This is basically a "sink or swim" means of dealing with the problem, but can take care of it once and for all. On the other hand, since one is confronting the issue directly, the results can be not so good. Many times, our methods of clearing up our issues can make us feel good in the short term, but cause the issues to re-emerge down the road with a renewed strength.

Yes. Iza, you are correct. In reality, we can only do it for ourselves, and the reliance on other people for this only prolongs the matter and can make it worse.

There is also the concept of exorcism.
You'd need an intensly emotional state of being, then you would have to symbolically rid yourself of your addictions. After that, you would just have to keep aware and not give yourself to them until they fade.

And I agree, Ghost of Shaolin and Iza. Thus why I said it is dangerous. The mind also has this means of justifying itself. So we may end up seeing that we have to do something like end an addiction but then we think ''my life is too stressful and I need this to maintain sanity'' or some other excuse. Some people might think ''I am going to go and overindulge and end this addiction'' when really it is just an excuse to overindulge and keep the addiction.

Yep. Another shortcoming of "desire" is that it inhibits intuition.