Last night, reading Ryokan, I came across, “With little desire, all is sufficient.” Over the years I’ve heard myself say often, “As long as you want something, you’re a victim.” To want something other than this/here/now, we have to become a someone “outside” life as is. That process IS suffering. Turning over one’s wellbeing to an illusion that lives in “something wrong” and “not enough” is bound to place one squarely in victimhood.
Recently I heard myself phrase the same idea as “wanting nothing, everything satisfies.” If I don’t leave satisfaction to follow ego around in dissatisfaction, whatever is is the best there is or could be, and, as such, what is is utterly satisfying.
What egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate would like to do with each of these, of course, is to focus on the wanting/desire as a problem we must overcome or feel bad about not overcoming. But that, not surprisingly, misses the point. The wanting/desiring is simply what happens when a human being identifies with ego. Attempting to stop wanting/desiring guarantees a fruitless, frustrating romp into suffering, holding fast the imaginary hand of an illusion of a self.
“I” have a habit of believing I am ego. I get no signals that what I believe to be true isn’t. So, “who I am” lives in a constant conversation about how everything is that it shouldn’t be and how, stated or unstated, if I were different I’d have the life I want. Every bit of it untrue.
Blessedly, practice shows us the alternative to that dismal unreality, and it’s so marvelously simple. When we give all our attention to what is—what IS, not a karmic story about what is—we quickly find ourselves wanting what is. The experience of wanting what is is what we call gratitude.
Good to know wanting/desire never was the problem, isn’t it? Important to realize all we need do is be sure that what we want will result in what we want.
In gasshō,
Cheri