Why is DESIRE, craving, greed, lust bad?

Roger Waters (lyrics) Pink Floyd, from the soundtrack to the movie The Wall (genius.com); Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly

Now listen up, Crew. We are going to explain Buddhism so Westerners can get it.

LYRICS: "What Shall We Do Now"?

I can think of one thing to do to cheer up.

What shall we use to fill the empty spaces where waves of hunger roar? Shall we set out across this sea of faces in search of more and more applause?

Shall we buy a new guitar? Shall we drive a more powerful car? Shall we work straight through the night? Shall we get into fights? Leave the lights on? Drop bombs? Do tours of the East? Contract diseases? Bury bones?

Break up homes? Send flowers by phone? Take to drink? Go to shrinks? Give up meat? Rarely sleep? Keep people as pets? Train dogs? Race rats? Fill the attic with cash? Bury treasure? Store up leisure? But never relax at all with our backs to the wall?

Maybe sex or violence is the answer?

Get undressed. Just get undressed.

As Westerners speaking English, we hear that "all existence is suffering" and say, "It isn't." It isn't. But that's not what it means, is not what the Buddha was saying.

Of course there's pleasure! Why else would anyone hang around in samsara if it were all miserable all the time? We'd renounce pleasure-seeking and find a way out. But as it is, we aren't even looking for a way out because we do not see the true nature of existence.

"All existence is beset by disappointment, unsatisfactoriness, and will never be able to fulfill us." That's what the first ennobling truth means. We may not like it, we may not believe it, we may not want it to be true, but seeing how and why it's true leads in the direction of enlightenment.

As Westerners speaking English, we hear the second truth: "The cause of suffering is desire" and say, "It isn't." It isn't. The ultimate cause of suffering is ignorance, which is in part expressed as desire (craving, yearning, attachment, clinging to things) and aversion to things (fear, hate, anger, resentment, aversion) that bring about our disappointment. Not understanding, we react, and that makes it suffering.

This is NOT what I thought you'd suggest.

We're sad. We don't see that the things we're chasing are (by nature fundamentally) incapable of fulfilling us, incapable of satisfying the craving they engender, incapable of curing the disease of endless wanting. 

Why, then, did the Buddha single out desire (tanha, "craving") as the cause of suffering/disappointment?

It is not because he was against desire. It was because in the dozen causal links of Dependent Origination that answer "Why do we suffer?" he saw that desire is the weak link.

It is where we can exercise some influence to break free of the cycle and bring about the end of all suffering, all disappointment, and discover the ultimate bliss of nirvana.

That's the article in brief. Feel free to stop reading now.

WARNING: Rated R. Adult scenes not suitable for minds not yet free of lust. For it is said, "After the ecstasy, the laundry": "Don't Leave Me Now" (Pink Floyd song from The Wall)

A problem of translation

Then he did taketh up his staff and [sighed out].

The problem with Buddhism in the West is a largely one of translation. The historical Buddha's Dharma (Doctrine or Teachings) may be boiled down to the Four Ennobling Truths.

They are ennobling because "noble" is a translation of Aryan or "enlightened." Penetrating these four statements, which are an ancient medical approach to any ailment for which a physician might be summoned to diagnose and render a prognosis, leads to awakening (bodhi).

If ignorance (avijja, delusion, moha, illusion, maya, wrong view, ditthi) is the ultimate problem, the ultimate source of all suffering and unhappiness, the solution is awakening.

But how does a human or deva, like me or that one over there, awaken from this illusory experience of the world (maya)?

I know I look like the Buddha, but I'm Mahavira

The renunciate Siddhartha Gautama (formerly a Scythian/Shakyian prince living west of proto-India in Gandhara/Kapilavatthu a.k.a. Bamiyan) posed this question to himself, "Why do we suffer?"

"Suffering" is a poor translation of the term dukkha, which in Pali and Sanskrit has a range of meanings not captured by our English "suffering." It means disappointment, unfulfillment, wonky, uncertain, wobbly, unsatisfactory, ill, woe, lamentation (crying), and all the negative side of emotions, pain (dukkhata).

Imagine the wheel of a cart off center, off kilter, giving a bumpy ride to anyone on the cart.

There's a flipside. It's called sukha (happiness, joy, pleasure, the range of pleasant sensations and emotions).

The renunciate Siddhartha knew all about sensual pleasure because, as a rich, healthy, beautiful prince for 29 years, he had lived a sheltered life of extreme indulgence, hedonism, and sensuality with troupes of dancing girls and musicians, a harem, palaces, family, friends, and a beautiful wife he married when both were 16.

Moreover, he had music, sports, arts, diversions, the best education money could buy (tutored by Brahmins), wealth, a white pony of his own (named Kanthaka), soma (haoma), and anything he desired was given to him by his father and loving stepmother.

This gummy solves all my problems. Sort of.

It all FAILED to satisfy him, satiate him, fulfill him. If it could have, it would have. He realized it never would because it never could. So he left it all behind. He left it to find something that might be able to. He followed the example of a Scythian wandering ascetic he had seen, shaved and dressed in simple saffron robes (stitched from cast off rags). Why leave it all behind?

There's something beyond the five senses: something supersensual, the blissful, a pleasure not dependent on sensuality but on our sixth sense, the mind.

That's it! I'll make my dad proud of me!

For example, if we win an award, acclaim, or hear that our children or students have succeeded, we experience pleasure and satisfaction beyond the senses. We are happy, thrilled, elated, but it's not through any of the five senses being stimulated so much as the sixth, the mind, the thought of what it means.

We will endure much hardship for such pleasure. For years, Prince Siddhartha experienced sensual pleasure, being raised to rule the extended clan (the janapada), worrying that he might not become a good leader, learning all the arts and sciences of his day.

He's back, Son! That's holy man's your father.

When he discovered -- on a fateful journey outside of the palace walls -- was the reality for average humans, non-royals, commoners: a life of toil, aging, sickness, and death. He was shocked into a sober assessment how he should live the remainder of his life. He was 29. By 35, he was awakened, and for 45 years he traveled far and wide to make known the path to the end of all suffering he found. He came right back to his people -- the Scythians (of Saka, Kapilavatthu) -- his parents, his former wife, his child, his tribe -- and gave them a gift better than any to be found in all the world of gods (devas) and humans: The Path.

• Poorly translating his life story, most of us have been left with the idea that he selfishly left wife and child and went East to "find himself." He went to find a cure for suffering for his family and people. He found it, he came back, and he gave it to them. His wife became enlightened, his father became enlightened, his stepmother became the world's first Buddhist nun, his son became the world's youngest Buddhist wandering ascetic at age 7, his many cousins and relatives and fellow Scythians became monks and nuns, awakening in no long time.

That's life -- birth, aging, and death (followed by rebirth, re-aging, and re-death again and again)? His own life had been much better than most yet didn't satisfy him. How must their lives be without such indulgences, pleasures, pastimes, and the power to influence others?

However it is, exalted or impoverished, it all comes to an end in death and loss of all that is beloved? No one escapes this fate (except the awakened).

Worse yet, we are reborn countless times experiencing the results of our deeds (karma), skillful and unskillful, producing agony and pleasure, all in a ceaseless round of ignorance and redeath.

Wandering through samsara

That's life, not just for us as humans but the gods (devas of all kinds and levels) and those on the "downward path" (animals, hungry ghosts, demons, and hellions -- nirayas), stuck in miserable planes of existence for unimaginably long periods of time.

Boasting of our youth, beauty, influence, wealth, possessions, and radiance when happy, lamenting our age, ugliness, insignificance, poverty, and dimness when miserable, going from state to state ever in search of pleasure here, pleasure there, never able to find fulfillment or peace anywhere.

In talking about the four truths that lead to awakening, the Awakened One, the Buddha, the former wandering ascetic Siddhartha, realized these four were the truths to pursue, think about, realize, and penetrate:

1. All states are disappointing (dukkha).
2. All disappointment has a cause (desire).
3. There is a cessation of all dukkha (nirvana).
4. There is a path that leads to this.

Why? Why not think about and pursue our four new Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal truths:

• Some state is fulfilling.
• That state has a reason.
• It is possible to achieve it.
• This is the way to achieve it.

We're only saying the same thing, of course, but with a positive spin that makes much more sense in English. If we had an ancient medical tradition of laying out four statements about one's condition, we'd follow that. But we don't. We just have positive spin.

• Nirvana, not being a state, is fulfilling.
• Reaching it is the cause of being there.
• Such a thing is possible.
• What is the way to it? The Ennobling Eightfold Path, just like the Buddha said.

People (Westerners) get so caught up on pondering and arguing, debating and mistranslating these Four Truths that we fail to set off on REALIZING them.

They are not doctrines to believe or disbelieve. They are very real enlightenment-factors to realize. In realizing them, we awaken. We know and see directly for ourselves with no need of a teacher, guru, or anyone to rely on. We realize they have always been true. Only we were ignorant. When we awaken, there's no problem.

Problem Number 1 from an ignorant point of view -- the way most English translation blame "desire" (tanha, "craving," lit. "thirst") as the cause of all suffering. We don't even believe everything is disappointing and unfulfilling. We haven't lived enough, been rich enough, been hedonistic enough to know that for ourselves. It looks inviting.

Problem Number 2, okay, let's say it is all "suffering," which is nonsense because even sukha is disappointing. Isn't it? All sensual pleasure disappoints, leaves us unfulfilled and wanting more, fails to satisfy, fails to satiate, fails to cure the disease of desiring. That's clear enough, and people who have experienced a great deal of pleasure KNOW it. It's certain. It's just that there's nothing else. We don't have another option to pursue.

Prince Siddhartha didn't either, until he saw one in what that wandering ascetic (shramana) was doing, going about in ascetic rags, happy. What did he know? He at least knew the first escape, which was the bliss of meditative absorption. It took Siddhartha to find a real "escape to reality," because -- remember -- all of this is unreal, an illusion (maya). We are seeking Truth, Liberation, Total Freedom, Nirvana.

The way to that is twofold (calm and insight), fourfold (these four truths), eightfold (this Noble Eightfold Path that leads to realization of the Truth).

Back to Pink Floyd

There's a dark side of the moon. Just ask Pink.

How does this relate Roger Waters' band Pink Floyd? Waters was the second genius behind the band (the first being Syd). Waters wrote the lyrics and came up with most of the songs after the departure of Syd.

He had the help of four very talented British hippies, collectively called "The Pink Floyd Sound," shortened to Pink Floyd: Syd Barret, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright.

In the band's movie, The Wall, which Waters conceived of and wrote, there's a collective rockstar named "Pink." He's got it all. He doesn't have anything. Why? Because freedom is everything.

Pink is neither free of desire nor craving (clinging), ignorance, ego, malice, attachment, hatred, and so on. He's full of defilements, just like us, except in his case he's rich and powerful enough to act on getting it ALL.

What, in sensuous terms, is the "ALL"? (The Buddha mentioned it in The Fire Sermon). It is everything he wants whenever he wants it. Even that won't satisfy. Imagine that! That's MY dream, that's our dream, that's everyone's dream!

• We think we have many problems. We only have ONE problem. And that is that things are not as we would wish them to be. If we could just get over that one problem, then we'd be happy. But even then, because things are inherently incapable of satisfying, we wouldn't be happy for long. Therefore, if we could make an end of ignorance, craving, and aversion, we actually would be happy. Other words for these three things are greed, hatred, and delusion, the poisons of the mind/heart. The end of those is the beginning of nirvana.

Thanks for coming back, Dad. Call me Buddha, Rahul

If we only could have anything we wanted whenever we wanted it THEN we'd be happy. We wouldn't. Rockstars are miserable. They become drug addicts to feel pleasure, to be creative, to keep going with their insane schedules, to have egos big enough to endure the adoration, fame, love, and riches. It doesn't work. That doesn't stop us from wanting it.

After I hit the billion dollar lottery jackpot, know what I'm going to do? Become famous and adored. Then I'll be like Elon Musk with a guitar, on stage to the thunderous roar of applause, texting Taylor Swift after the show and asking her if she wants to come over to watch Netflix and chill. Wink, wink.

"It won't happen," you say. I say, "It doesn't matter. It wouldn't work anyway!" That's not the way to the end of disappointment, the end of ill. That saffron-robed Buddha is on to it. He knows the Way because he was that rockstar prince living in luxury all his youth. He renounced it when he saw -- directly by his own life experience -- that it would never work to fulfill and satisfy, to end the pain and bring stillness and peace. It would only get worse, as the common lot of humanity was experiencing, to say nothing of the animals, ghosts, and hellions, the demons, the jealous gods (asura or fallen devas), the brahmas living temporarily in glory and power.

Maybe sex is the solution? Not likely. Violence? Nope. Haven't had either? When you do, you'll see. It's not the way. Desire is not the way. Craving is not the way. Greed (lust) is not the way. Frustration is not the way. Anger is not the way. Delusion is not the way. Wrong view is not way. Ignorance is not the way. WHAT IS THE WAY?

Remember those four things to pursue, think about, to realize directly for oneself?