Meditations on Desire, Ice Cream, and Freedom

Buddhist teaching asserts that desire is the cause of all suffering. This principle is so fundamental that Siddhartha Gautama made it part of the very first sermon he preached after his long vigil under the Bodhi tree where he is said to have attained enlightenment. He made it one of the Four Noble Truths that describe reality. The more time I spend with this idea, the truer it becomes to me.

What does it mean to desire? To me, it means to want what you haven't got. Food, drink, sex, excitement, power, wealth: sure, but those are the easy ones. We can be just as consumed by our desire for health, a happy family, long lives for loved ones, peace. Desire is natural and can be motivating. We may desire success in business or athletics. Maybe we want to write that novel or make that pilgrimage or lead a revolution. The question is, once the book has been published, the marathon run, or the government transformed, are we any better off? We may be smarter, richer, more confident, more respected, and those are all good things. But will accomplishing our goals make us more free? Or will we weep with frustration like Alexander the Great when he realized, "There are no worlds left to conquer?"

So what's the solution? Can we be free from suffering? Maybe, but there is a trap waiting. Our thirst for freedom from desire, is itself a kind desire. Far from freeing ourselves from slavery, we have simply found another master. Wanting to let go just isn't enough, because that very wanting causes us to suffer disappointment when we fail. I am reminded of Paul's brilliand ad maddening letter to the Church in Rome. 

Paul's dilemma was a brutal one: 

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. (Rom 7:14,15)

The problem tortured him;  

Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Romans 7:24 NRSV)

Paul's answer was to exhort us to find salvation in the Spirit, turning our backs on the things of the flesh. I am new to all this Eastern stuff, and won't presume to say how the Buddha might have responded to the old preacher's cry for help, but Paul and I are old friends, and I can imagine mustering the nerve to follow the Apostle's answer with a question of my own. "Dear Paul, having loosed the bondage of fleshly desires, how will you free yourself from slavery to spiritual ones" Won't they bring you as much  frustration as you suffer now, my poor, wretched brother?"

My impression is that Paul did not suffer fools gladly, and might have been a little put out by a heretical time-traveler interrupting his train of thought in such a familiar manner, just as he was revving up to that grand climax at the end of Chapter 8. I'll have to be satisfied without his answer, but I can reflect a little on my own.

A dilemma is often a choice between two difficult things: a lesser of two evils kind of thing. It is  a charging bull whose horns offer no really satisfying solution. It seems to me that a toreador's best choice when faced with a charging bull is to elude the horns entirely. What if a pilgrim chose not to a) do battle with fleshly desire, or to b) surrender to some other, more spiritual one, but rather chose c): to accept desire as part of the ever flowing, ever changing stream of things as they are? Rather than trying to defeat the bull by letting it gore me with either horn, what if I stand aside and watch it run past?

Sooner or later, the damned thing is bound to get tired, or at least bored.

My question - and lord knows I've taken long enough to get around to it - is this: what if suffering doesn't come from my desire, but from the things I do to try to satisfy it? Am I fat because I want ice cream, or because I eat ice cream? The simple and obvious answer is that my actions lead to my suffering. It's the beautifully Newtonian principle of karma - cause leads to equal and opposite effect. I know that my uncomfortable craving will pass in time. I can sit with that temporary discomfort while it lasts, or I can ignore the laws of thermodynamics and karma and bury my craving under a few scoops full of mint chocolate chip. And tomorrow, I will be a little bit fatter and hungry again. 

Look, I'm fully aware that there is nothing profound here. I'm not trying to be profound. Frankly, I'm feeling old and tired and haven't the energy to be deep. But I am contemplating a kernel of truth I find simple and beautiful. I have is a fascinated curiosity about life as it is. It pleases me to be alive, and to draw the world in like breath. And I wonder at all the things I can do with that breath as I hold it and return it to the universe. 

Maybe that's all any of us can really do. Breathe in life, and breathe out... What?... Kindness?... Cruelty?... Mercy?... Vengeance?...Fear?... Love? Or, maybe just Compassion. Maybe just a breath that says, "I see you. I accept you. I think you are valuable and beautiful and am sorry when things go hard for you and I am so very happy when they are light and easy." Maybe that's the key that unlocks the chains of desire: to see, accept, and love the deeply flawed, perfect creature who shares our breath for a time.

I see you. I love you. I am grateful for you. And we are free.

And if once in a while we share a whiff of mint chocolate chip - I don't see much harm in that, either.

Father and Son

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a  man;
So be it when I grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

William Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up," 1802.

I don't expect to hear from you this Father's Day. That's not your fault. Old men can travel through time as easily as boys ride their bikes to the swimming pool. You haven't learned that magic yet. (But you will!)

Besides, you never really got to know me, even though I know and love you with all my heart. As I grow old, I am coming to love you more each day. This morning, as I meditated with Sophie, (whom you would have adored,) we thought of you and so many of the things you lived through. 

I wish I could have been there when you were small and so alone. I would have held you in my arms and told you, "It's OK. It's OK to be different and it's OK to want to find your own way. But it's OK to ask for help, too. You don't have to be the hero in every story." It took me a long time to learn that lesson. I wonder if hearing it from me would have made it easier for you.

I would have walked with you on the brick streets where we both grew up, and listened to your dreams and told you some of mine. I would have tried to explain how sadness, your kind of sadness, was a treasure. It made things hard for you, but it gave you a heart that could feel things that some other people missed. Your sadness, which felt like the end of the world sometimes, would always come and go, like waves on the beach, but it would teach you to care about people in a way that would make you very special, if you let it.

I could have told you that I understood what it was like to feel ashamed sometimes. To have secrets that you hope nobody will ever learn. I would have tried to show you that you were not alone, not even in your guilty darkness, and I would have told you how very proud I am of the way you always kept getting back up, even when life seemed determined to keep you down.

We would have talked about girls. I remember your first kiss and how amazed and confused you were under that streetlight in the snow. The softness of her mouth and the sparkle of snowflakes on her eyelashes. I wonder if I would start to get misty as you told me about all the thoughts and feelings you had on the long walk home that December night. Would you have laughed when I told you that almost 50 years later, girls are still as amazing and confusing to me as they were to you?

I have learned so much about so many things. Could I have helped you to be less afraid of life? To be more curious? To find your confidence and courage a little bit sooner? I don't know. I wish I could have tried. 

A strange thought just came to me. Could I have been a better father to you than our Dad was? It feels like I'm betraying him, even to ask. Dad loved you, and I believe he would love us both, if he were still alive. But Dad had his own life, his own father. He prepared me the best way he knew how. When he died, he left us to take care of each other. Maybe that's what being a Father really means. Preparing your children to become the best parents they can be. 

He was my teacher, my first, best teacher. I will always love him, but never be him. I will love you in my own way, but my love is built on the love he gave me. I'm glad I've lived long enough to realize what a rare gift that is. 

When I look at your picture, I don't really see myself. I see "Bobby." There aren't many people left who call me that these days. Strangers call me "Robert." Friends call me "Bob." A handful, random ones who love me dearly call me "Bobbo." I have no idea where that comes from, but it always tickles me. Believe it or not, there are people calling me "Mr. Bob" now. You can't imagine how much I love that. Or maybe of all the people in the world, you understand.

Mr. Wordsworth says that you are my father. And so you are. In many ways, I am what you made me. But I am your dad, too. Even if you can't know me, I am here to know you. To understand you. To accept and forgive and remember. I am here to love you. And I always will. Just as our Dad always loved us. Always. We are "bound each to each" in ways no one can see and nothing can undo. I hope that makes you feel a little less alone. Because I am grateful for you and so very proud of you.

I have an advantage that you don't, you see. I know your future. I know that you are going to do some horrible things, worse than you can imagine. You're going to hurt and fail people in ways that will make you wish you had never been born. You will be sicker and sadder and sorrier than anybody has a right to live through. But you will live. And in living, you will bring light and love and hope to lonely places and comfort to badly broken hearts. You won't be a star, but you be a helper. And on the days when despair seems like the only rational path, I hope that helps you, my beloved child.

Happy Father's Day, Bobby. I'm glad you found the strength to stick it out. We have so many adventures ahead of us. 

You done good, Kiddo.

#609: Bon appétit

Sitting quietly, my morning ritual. Moving gently on the glider rocker that Mom would have loved. Plate on my lap

And on that plate

Is the world.

The little circle of flaky bread claims to be a croissant, though I doubt any patissier would honor it with the name. Still, it is my breakfast, and deserves attention.

It connects me to eternity.

As I eat, my mind turns to the young cashier in the grocery store who sold it to me,

and the woman with the rack of frozen food who stocked them in the freezer where I found them. 

Someone loaded them off of a truck that another drove from a warehouse to the store. 

Creative people designed a box, developed graphics, invented machines to pack and preserve this little sandwich.

Engineers and chemists turned to forests and laboratories to create the ink the printer used to decorate the package. 

Somewhere, eggs and flour and salt and sugar were assembled in a recipe devised by artists whose medium is the food we eat. 

The flour was milled from wheat harvested by giant machines driven by people whose paths are guided by ancient skills, and by technologies that did not exist 5 years ago. 

The roots of that wheat stretch like loving arms into the soil to drink of her water and feast on her minerals. 

Matter that was created before Earth was formed lies just beneath her surface, ready to play its ever-changing role in the ever-changing universe.

Today, I will eat this little piece of eternity, and it will help me to live and move and be in the world. 

Some of it, I will use. Some, I will store. Tomorrow, I will return some of it to the earth where it will become a new part of creation. 

One day, I will do the same. My muscles and organs and breath and bones will return to the earth and sky and sea. Maybe I will help to feed a small part of a field of wheat. 

And in that shaft of grass or squirt of ink or drop of machine oil or somewhere else I cannot imagine, I will be born again.

Bon appétit.