Mirror of Zen Blog

Guru Rinpoche On the Essence of Desire

When someone asked my Teacher, the Great Zen Master Seung Sahn, why he insisted on doing his daily 1000 frustrations no matter what, he said, “Have a human body, have a place of karma.” Even despite his supreme awakening, he knew that the possession of these five senses created a breeding ground for attachment to those senses, and led to the clouding that comes from these senses, especially when they arise instinctually or we follow them habitually. Just one quick look at his Wikipedia page entry tells you about the recorded truth buried in his ultra-pithy statement. Possession a very healthy and highly-sensitized human body, I also have desire – – many desires. I also experience the arising of passions, the maintenance of passions in the field of both conscious and unconscious experience, the grasping after the objects of those passions, perhaps the momentary attainment of those passions, and the passing of those passions back into the empty space from which they have risen. Nearly anyone who knows me is aware that I do not always avoid or suppress or deny or cut off mechanistically every single impulse of the desire for good taste, good smell, good sound (and especially silence!), good sensations of the body, and relaxing thoughts of the mind.

These precious words of guru Rimic, she speak to the matter of sexual desire, and I find them to be extraordinarily clear and even useful. But these words do not only apply to sexual desire alone – – that is merely the strongest, most primal of them all, and perhaps the only one which is acted on in a purely Elective fashion. (It is definitely something which we can live without, yet our entire DNA and evolutionary force urges us into them by blind momentum, Schopenhauer’s description of the blind force of “the Will to live.”

I know, for a fact that my teacher needed to face these energies himself, up to end, including what gauche speaks about. The public record is clearer about this than I would otherwise wish it to be! And yet, in his full humanity, he gave I know, for a fact that my teacher needed to face these energies himself, up to end, including what gauche speaks about. The public record is clearer about this then I would otherwise wish it to be! And yet, in his full humanity, he gave agency to an expression of this which also causes me to admire him — Oh! — so much the more! Reading these timeless insights by Guru Rinpoche, words are given to a deeper expression of my Teacher’s infinite mind, and his use of expedient means to reach the minds of sentient beings.

And this is where I stand, too, for whatever it is worth. In case you are ever wondering…

Images: @olddog108

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