The Problem of Desire in Early Buddhism
Dharma Notes #5
In the last installment of Dharma Notes, I surveyed the contexts and meanings of ignorance in early Buddhist sources and sketched out a theory that the concept of ignorance as the root of suffering may have been introduced into Buddhism from outside sources, perhaps Greek in origin. This was not to downplay the importance of ignorance in Buddhism at all — ignorance became a central theme of Buddhist thought over time. It would be difficult to remove it and make Buddhism “make sense” as it has come down to us through history. Much more could be written about it.
Today, however, I want to turn to another fundamental problem in Buddhist thought: Desire. This is a big topic to try to summarize in a single essay. Like ignorance, desire is a concept that is found throughout Buddhist literature.
What I will do in this essay is select a couple related texts on this topic. I’ll begin with the verses of SN 1.34 and its SĀ parallels. Then, I will move on to AN 6.63 and MĀ 111, which provide us with a more structured commentary on the problem. (Hopefully,) this will cover the basics of how early Buddhism considered desire to be a root problem of life and how they proposed to deal with it.
Desire as the Root of Suffering in the Nasanti Sutta
The idea of desire encompasses a number of related terms in early Buddhist sources that represent different aspects of the problem caused by desire. This range of related ideas is explored in the verses of SN 1.34. In particular, the difference between something that is desirable and the desire for is distinguished. It’s a point often made in Buddhist discussions of desire. The problem for them is not exposure to desirable experiences, but the internal desire that creates an addiction to them. The objects of desire have no power when we don’t want them.
A good example of this is a desert like chocolate cake. (Assuming we like chocolate!) A person who hasn’t had any cake in a long time might be delighted to see it, much less have a piece. They might like it so much, they eat a quarter or half of the cake. Then, they might start feeling queasy. The desire for the cake disappears like a mirage, and suddenly the cake is just another thing sitting on the table. It might even make our stomach turn over just to look at it or think about taking another bite. The attractiveness of the cake isn’t inherent in it. It’s the result of our liking it and wanting to eat it.
When Buddhists describe this kind of problem, they do so in a general way that describes the psychological process of encountering the cake, enjoying the cake, thinking about chocolate cakes, forming attachments and emotional reactions to particular kinds of cakes (do we have a cake or not? or does someone else have a cake or not?), doing things that are maybe not so wise because of how cake makes us feel or our jealosies about other people’s cakes, and finally ending up with bad experiences and even trauma. Maybe we get into arguments about cakes or end up in jail for stealing someone’s cake. Maybe we start baking cakes, but it turns out we aren’t any good at it. Or perhaps we develop a digestive problem that causes us to feel sick after we eat cake. The possibilities are endless, really. At some point, we may be forced to realize that getting carried away by cakes is not so wise. We have to discipline ourselves to bring the desire for it under control.
The Nasanti sutta (which means “there aren’t any [desirable things that are permanent]” roughly) was a composition that brings together a set verses on the subject from a pool of early verse teachings, judging by the diverse set of parallels it has. But it serves the purpose of summing up the basic problem of desire well. As is the common theme in SN 1, a deva approaches the Buddha at night to ask him a question in verse, and the Buddha gives him some teaching or advice in verse.
I want to start with the second verse in SN 1.34 because it’s nearly identical to a verse in SĀ 25.75 (1285), and it could be called the thesis of the problem of desire. In Chinese, it reads:
欲生諸煩惱，
欲為生苦本，
調伏煩惱者，
眾苦則調伏。
Desire produces the afflictions;
Desire is the root of suffering.
Someone who controls the afflictions
Controls their myriad sufferings.The parallel to this verse in SN 1.34 doesn’t appear to be maintained well, for it has been collapsed into three lines, and the first and second couplet have different meters. It’s also set off as a separate quotation from the rest of the Buddha’s reply to the gods initial verse. It might be that it was inserted at some point because it seems apropos to the passage. Whatever the case, if we divide its first line into two, it matches the Chinese well.
It reads (using Sujato’s English with minor changes):
“Chandajaṁ aghaṁ Chandajaṁ dukkhaṁ, Chandavinayā aghavinayo; Aghavinayā dukkhavinayo”ti. “Misery is born of desire; Suffering is born of desire; When desire is removed, misery is removed; When misery is removed, suffering is removed.”
The correspondence between the Chinese and Pali is remarkable, but the translations to English obscure it because a couple keywords can be read in different ways. 煩惱 and P. agha both can mean “misery, feeling troubled,” but 煩惱 typically translates S. kleśa. I therefore would translate it as “affliction” or “vexation.” Also, P. vinaya can mean “to remove” or “to discipline or train.” Sujato chose the first reading, but the Chinese translator read it as “to discipline or control” (調伏). I chose to render the Chinese as “control” in the context of controlling one’s afflictions in order to control the suffering they generate.
Assuming this pseudo-verse was inserted into SN 1.34 makes sense because the first two verses would otherwise have the kind of parallelism that we’d expect from this genre of verse text, in which a question gets a reply using the same keywords. Below is how these verses would read without the added verse between them. (The second of these verses is featured in AN 6.63 where it illustrates the Buddha’s analysis of sensual pleasure. We will look at that passage shortly.)
They read (adapted from Sujato’s English with implied context in brackets):
“Na santi kāmā manujesu niccā, Santīdha kamanīyāni yesu baddho; Yesu pamatto apunāgamanaṁ, Anāgantā puriso maccudheyyā”ti. “Among humans there are no sensual pleasures that are permanent. Here [in heaven] there are sensuous things, bound to which, Drunk on which, there’s no going back there [to the human world]. That person doesn’t return to the realm of death [once born here].” “Na te kāmā yāni citrāni loke, Saṅkapparāgo purisassa kāmo; Tiṭṭhanti citrāni tatheva loke, Athettha dhīrā vinayanti chandaṁ. “The world’s pretty things aren’t sensual pleasures. Greedy intention is a person’s sensual pleasure. The world’s pretty things stay just as they are, but the attentive remove desire for them.
The first verse is from the point of view of a deva who considers himself immortal making an observation about the human world. This god is wondering aloud about how on Earth human sensual pleasures are impermanent, but the gods enjoy them as immortal beings in heaven. The implication is that humans ought to aim for deliverance in the heavens, which was a common idea in other religions.
The second verse was the beginning of the Buddha’s reply, which is that attractive things are not where desire lies. Rather, it is in the mind of the person who is attached to them. He reinterprets P. kāma to mean “lust” rather than the “object of desire.” He will argue in the next verses that humans who remove their desire for desirable things achieve a truer liberation than birth in heaven.
This distinction between the inner desire and external object of desire is made in other Buddhist texts. Buddhist authors felt the need to be explicitly address it when they often leave their thinking implied. It’s easy to believe that the addictiveness of pleasurable things and experiences lies in the objects of desire themselves, that they have some inherent power over our minds and behavior. The Buddhist said, “Not so! The problems lies within one’s mind, not with external things.”
The Buddha continues this line of thought in the next two verses:
Kodhaṁ jahe vippajaheyya mānaṁ,
Saṁyojanaṁ sabbamatikkameyya;
Taṁ nāmarūpasmimasajjamānaṁ,
Akiñcanaṁ nānupatanti dukkhā.
Give up anger, get rid of conceit,
And get past all the fetters.
Not clinging to name and form,
Pains don’t plague the one with nothing.
Pahāsi saṅkhaṁ na vimānamajjhagā,
Acchecchi taṇhaṁ idha nāmarūpe;
Taṁ chinnaganthaṁ anighaṁ nirāsaṁ,
Pariyesamānā nājjhagamuṁ;
Devā manussā idha vā huraṁ vā,
Saggesu vā sabbanivesanesū”ti.
Assessment was given up, conceit rejected;
Craving for name and form was cut off right here.
They cut the ties, untroubled, with no need for hope.
Though gods and humans search for them
In this world and the world beyond, they never find them,
Not in heaven nor in any abode.” This is the Buddhist rebuttal to the idea that one is freed from death by being reborn in heaven. When attachment to one’s existence (nāmarūpa) is itself let go, rebirth is ended, and one cannot be found in heaven or on Earth anymore. This level of detachment, however, requires that one eliminate the negative effects of attachment to sensual desires, which here are given as anger, conceit, and all the other fetters. When these things are discarded, clinging to oneself also stops, and then there is no more reason for suffering to plague a person.
These verses have only vague parallels in the Chinese translations of SĀ, which is because in the parallels to SN 1.34, the verses are the Buddha’s answer to a series of different questions put to him. There is mention of overcoming anger, desire, and the fetters, which then leads to not being attached to one’s existence in SĀ2-283, but SĀ 25.75 (1285) is much briefer and doesn’t mention nāmarūpa.
The remainder of SN 1.34 praises of those who revere the liberated person, i.e. the arhat.
Further Analysis in the Nibbedhika Sutta
As I mentioned earlier, one of the verses in SN 1.34 also appears in AN 6.63, and that sutta has a parallel in the form of MĀ 111. These texts take up the same subject in a different way. Rather than presenting their message as a poetic dialogue between the Buddha and a god, they take an analytical approach. This approach was popular in both the Abhidharma and Vinaya texts that seek to pin down the nature of things or situations with a series of questions and answers. These questions and answers are usually not part of a narrative but record oral lessons given to students. There is a more academic feel to such texts.
Both these texts present an analysis of six topics: Sensual desires, feelings, perceptions, contaminants, deeds, and suffering. The analysis of each topic includes six questions: What the topic is, its source, its distinctions, its result, what ceases it, and the path that leads to its cessation. Thus, each of these topics are one step or component of a problem to be ended.
AN 6.63 begins with sensual desires, which makes sense when they are understood as the objects of desire rather than desire itself. These objects are sensory in nature, and so perceiving them with the senses causes feelings to arise. Feelings cause perceptions, perceptions lead to contaminants, which are mental defilements. Being contaminated, one does morally charged deeds, which leads to suffering in the form of consequences and rebirth. This chain of causation isn’t stated in the text, but it’s easy to see it as such given other suttas like SN 1.34. In this arrangement, sensual pleasures lead to suffering when one’s mind is contaminated by desire.
MĀ 111 has a slightly different arrangement that swaps the contaminants with the sensual desires. In that reading, being contaminated leads to feelings, which lead to perceptions. Perceptions then lead to sensual desires, and those objects of desire lead to moral charged actions and suffering. It doesn’t make quite a much sense as AN 6.63, but there is a logic that emerges from that series of subjects that could describe the way desire leads to suffering, too.
Another thing to note is that the analysis of each topic appears to be along the lines of the four noble truths (the topic, its source, its cessation, and the path to its cessation), but two more ways of analyzing them have been added. Perhaps this was done for symmetry: Six topics analyzed in six ways.
The analysis of sensual desires in AN 6.63 is as follows:
The five sensual desires (or objects of desire) are desirable sights, sounds, odors, flavors, and touches. Thus, they are tangible things experienced with the five senses. That these five kinds of sensual desires are not actual desire but objects of desire is made clear by quoting the verse from SN 1.34:
The world’s pretty things aren’t sensual pleasures.
Greedy intention is a person’s sensual pleasure.
The world’s pretty things stay just as they are,
But the attentive remove desire for them.The source of sensual pleasures is said to be contact — which would mean that these pleasures refer to the pleasures that are actually encountered and experienced, not all external objects that are desirable. Contact refers to the coming together of external things and the senses to produce a conscious experience, ideas, and reactions.
The distinctions of sensual pleasures are along the lines of the five senses. And it is true that when we are attached to pleasurable things, we usually focus on one particular sense at a time. Something is beautiful, feels amazing, or has a delicious flavor, etc.
The results of sensual pleasures refers to the results of actions motivated or inspired by those sensual pleasures, which lead to rebirth.
They are ceased by the end of contact, which would imply attainment of nirvāṇa. When one is no longer in the world, these experiences cease to happen. And that is accomplished by the spiritual training outlined by the eightfold path.
The analysis of the next five topics, from feeling to suffering, are very similar to this in AN 6.63. There are a few notable differences with MĀ 111 that can be attributed to sectarian differences. As an example, the definition of perceptions is usually four in MĀ, which are perceptions that are small, large, measureless, and nothingness. This differs from the Theravāda sutta definition that typically lists out six sensory perceptions instead. In other cases, the differences seem more likely to be happenstance, which is evidence of the long oral history of these texts. An example of this is the definition of suffering, which is taken from the chain of dependent origination in AN 6.63 and from the first noble truth in MĀ 111. There is no great import to differences like these, but it shows how there was some abritrariness to which roughly equivalent definitions were chosen in texts like these.
This covers the problem of desire as a source of suffering in SN 1.34 and AN 6.63 and their parallels. There’s certain more to say about the topic, so I think I will continue it in the next Dharma Notes essay. In that one, I will turn to the role of desire and attachment as a driver of social instability and conflict in Buddhist myth and philosophy.
Until then, take care everyone!