Letting go of Desire (Ajahn Sumedho)

Ajahn Sumedho, "Letting Go of Desire (wisdomlib.org) edited by Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

The arising of ill (dukkha, disappointment, unsatisfactoriness, suffering) is due to the grasping of desires.

The insight is that there is this origin or arising of desire and it is wisest to let go of it. This Second Noble Truth is the insight-knowledge (wisdom) to renounce, abandon, and let go.

Some people think that all the Buddha or the Western Theravada monk Ajahn Sumedho teaches is, "Whatever happens, let go." But the Teaching  (the Buddha's Dharma) involves a real investigation of suffering; the insight of letting go occurs through understanding (right view).

The desire to be rid of desire...

So letting go does NOT come from a desire to get rid of suffering. That is not letting go, is it? The "desire to get rid of" (vibhava tanha) is quite subtle. but wanting to get rid of our defilements is another kind of desire.

Letting go is not a getting rid of or putting down with any aversion (dosa, hate or anger).

Letting go means to be able to be with what is displeasing without dwelling in aversion because aversion is an attachment.

• Three Kinds of Desire (Ajahn Sumedho)

If we have a lot of aversion, we will still be attached. Fear, aversion -- all this is grasping and clinging (upadana). Dispassion is acceptance and awareness of things as they are, not creating anything, letting go of the aversion to what is ugly or unpleasant.

So letting go is not a trick phrase coined as a way of dismissing things. But rather, it is a deep insight into the nature of things.

Letting go, therefore, is being able to bear with something unpleasant and not getting caught up with annoyance, anger, and aversion (all manifestations of dosa).

Dispassion is not depression. How many of us dismiss and refuse to acknowledge the unpleasantness of the functions of our own bodies? There are certain functions of the human body that are anything but beautiful, which in polite society we do not mention.

We use all kinds of euphemisms and ways of politely excusing ourselves at the appropriate moment, because one does not want the perception of ourselves as connected to those repulsive functions.

We want to present an image connected with something pleasing, interesting, and attractive. We want our photographs taken with flowers in an attractive setting, not on the toilet picking our nose. We want to disguise the natural processes of corporeal life (the oozing of this wet sack of a body), to cover up the wrinkling skin, dye the hair, do everything to make ourselves look more healthy and youthful because unhealthy aging is unattractive.

As we get older we tend to lose what is beautiful and attractive  (health and vitality). Our reflection is to be really aware of illness and dying (aging and death), what is attractive and unattractive: the way things are in this realm of sensory consciousness.

The stench of the foul as the body festers

Being an entity with sense organs that contact objects -- which can be anything from the most beautiful and pleasing to the most hideous (asubha, foul) and displeasing -- we experience feelings.

Feeling or sensation (vedana) entails the dualism of the pleasant, the painful, and the indifferent (the neutral or neither pleasant nor unpleasant). This applies to all six senses:

1. tasting
2. touching
3. seeing
4. hearing
5. smelling
6. thinking.

So vedana, I use that particular word, that khandha (aggregate), as the concept for all that attraction/repulsion.

We are experiencing vedana inasmuch as we are aware of the pleasant, painful, beautiful, ugly, and neutral through the body or what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or think. Even memories can be attractive.

We can have memories that are pleasing, unpleasant, or neutral. And if we are heedless and operate from ignorance (avijja, i.e., the view of self) with the unquestioned assumption that "I am," the attractive, the unattractive, and neutral is interpreted with desire.

I want the beautiful, I want the pleasant, I want to be happy and successful. I want to be praised, I want to be appreciated, I want to be loved. I do not want to be persecuted, unhappy, sick, looked down on, or criticized. I do not want ugly things around me. I do not want to look at the ugly/repulsive or to be around the unpleasant.

Squeeze me and I pee like a baby.

Consider the functions of our body. We all know that these functions are just part of nature, but we do not want to think of them as being "mine." I have to urinate, but one would not want to be known in history as "Sumedho the Urinator."

"Ajahn Sumedho the Abbot of Amaravati," that's all right. When I write my autobiography, it will be filled with things like the fact that I was a disciple of Ajahn Chah, about how sensitive I was as a little child, innocent and pure -- maybe a little mischievous now and then because I don't want to be seen as a Kewpie doll (pee on cue).

But in most biographies the unpleasant functions of the body are just dismissed. We are not to go around thinking we should identify with these functions but to begin to just notice the tendency to not want to be bothered with them, to not pay attention and observe a lot of what is part of our life, the way things really are.

In mindfulness (sati) then, we are opening our mind to this, to the whole of life, which includes the beautiful, the ugly, the pleasing, the painful, and the neutral.

Stephen Cope: “The impulse to eschew the unpleasant leads to avoidance...” (quotefancy.com)

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So in our reflection upon the causal links of dependent origination (paticca-samuppada, the conditional-arising of things), we see that it is connected to the Second Noble Truth.

This is where the sequence craving (tanha), clinging (upadana), becoming (bhava) is most helpful as a means of investigating grasping.

"Grasping" in this sense can mean grasping because of attraction or because of aversion, trying to hold on to or to get rid of.

Going to parties is stuff, so I stay in.

Grasping with aversion is pushing away -- like when we take hold of something to throw it away. Running away is clinging (upadana, not-renouncing, not letting go), as well as trying to get hold of the beautiful, and possess it and keep it.

[We squirm and revolve in Mara's grip because we are constantly] Seeking after the desirable and trying to get rid of the undesirable.

The more we contemplate and investigate clinging/upadana, the more the insight arises... More

"Contemplation on disinterestedness regarding the whole world" (sabba-loke anabhirati-saññā) is described in A. X., 60 in the following words:

"If, Ananda, a meditator gives up tenacious clinging to the world, firm grasping, and one's biases and inclinations of the mind/heart, and turns away from these things, does not cling to them. This, Ananda, is called the 'contemplation on disinterestedness regarding the whole world'."