When "desire" is GOOD in Buddhism

The Buddha's [distinction] about "desire" that Western Buddhism gets wrong

The rare beauty of Native American men

(The Midnight Library) July 10, 2026: [Theravada] Buddhism is often described as a tradition that teaches us to eliminate "desire." This is one of the most persistent misreadings in the history of the Western encounter with Eastern philosophy.

The ancient Pali canon makes a precise distinction between two words that, in English, may both be rendered as "desire," but they are almost opposites.

Tanha is compulsive "craving" driven by a sense of lack — whereas chanda is "aspiration" driven by genuine vision.

The Buddha actively encouraged chanda ("desire," "aspiration," "will," "intention") while working to release tanha ("desire," "craving," lit. "thirst").

Professor of Neuroscience Dr. Wolfram Schultz, MD, at Cambridge University, England, documented that the dopamine reward system produces more activation in anticipation (wanting) than in satisfaction (getting) — confirming the structural mechanism of tanha (craving) 2,600 years after the Buddha described it.

• Dr. Robert Sapolsky: Behave

The Craving Mind (Dr. Judson Brewer)

Neuroscientist and psychiatrist Dr. Judson Brewer, MD, who studies the default mode network at Brown University confirmed in The Craving Mind (2017) that mindful [dispassionate detached attention to what is happening in the present moment without moving towards the pleasant, away from the unpleasant, or being confused/bored by the neutral] observation of craving interrupts the compulsive cycle measurably.

• Tara Brach: Meditation teacher, psychologist, author

Radical Acceptance (Dr. Tara Brach, PhD)

Three Buddhist practices drawn directly from the Pali canon: The R.A.I.N. practice, the aspiration question, and the satiation experiment.

• Recognize, name what is present
• Allow, do not react (chase, act on, suppress, check out, do not crave, resist, or go dull in boredom/confusion), let it be present (radical acceptance)
• Investigate, what does it feel like, where is it located in the body, what is its texture?
• Nurture, bring kindness to the experience, not to the craving itself but to the part of you experiencing it
• "This practice interrupts the automatic cycle of trigger to craving to behavior and creates a gap in which choice becomes possible."
• "Prof. Brewer's research has confirmed that this gap created through mindful [dispassionate, equanimous, attentive, vigilant, wakeful, unbiased] observation of craving measurably reduces the compulsive quality of tanha [craving, addiction, obsession, compulsion] over time."

"The Craving Mind"

(Clear Mountain Monastery Project) The Craving Mind and the Default

Mode [Network]’s Addiction to Self | Dr. Judson Brewer. MD, PhD

• 

  Beauty is more than skin deep!

  BIO: Dr. Judson Brewer, MD, PhD (aka "Dr. Jud"), is a New York Times best-selling author and pioneering psychiatrist blending cutting-edge neuroscience with 20+ years of Buddhist mindfulness training. A leader in the science of habit change, he is director of research at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center and has held positions at MIT, Yale U., and UMass. Dr. Jud developed app-based programs like Mindshift Recovery, Unwinding Anxiety, Eat Right Now, and Craving to Quit, clinically proven to treat anxiety, addiction, and emotional eating. He’s the author of The Craving Mind, Unwinding Anxiety, and The Hunger Habit, and co-founder of the nonprofit Mindshift Recovery. He is also a collaborator with Clear Mountaineers and medical researchers Dori Rosenberg and Dave Arterburn. More

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"The Rewarded Brain"

(Cambridge Philosophical Society) The Rewarded Brain | A V Hill Lecture

Handsome American Indian

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• The Midnight Library @TheRealMidnight...) July 10, 2026; Dr. Wolfram Schultz; Dr. Judson Brewer; Dr. Tara Brach; Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Desire can be "good" in Buddhism?

Don't look at my bikini butt, okay, you perverts? It's just flesh for sitting on toilet seats.*

.

Good (beneficial) "desire"

I want to meditate now to make progress.

Chanda: "intention," "desire," "will." 1. As an ethically neutral psychological term, in the sense of "intention," it is one of those general mental concomitants or factors (cetasika, Table II) taught in the Abhidhamma (the "Dhamma in Ultimate Terms"), the moral quality of which is determined by the character of the volition (cetanā) associated with it.

The Commentary explains it as "a wish to do" (kattu-kamyatā-chanda). If intensified, it acts also as a "predominance condition" (see paccaya 3).

• 

  OK, now shut up, Nerd (iStock)

  First things first, a definition of terms: What is "good" (wholesome, skillful, profitable), and what is "bad" (unwholesome, unskillful, leading to an increase in suffering when eventually the karma ripens and fruits into karmic-results even though an act may seem to serve to bring about an increase in pleasant feeling now)?

2. As an evil quality it has the meaning of "desire," and is frequently coupled with terms for "sensuality," "greed," and so on, for instance: kāma-cchanda, "sensuous desire," one of the Five Hindrances (nīvarana); chanda-rāga, "lustful desire" (kāma). It is one of the Four Wrong Paths (agati, motivated by greed/chanda, hate/dosa, delusion/moha, or fear/bhaya).

3. As a good quality, it is a wholesome (kusala) will, motive, or zeal (dhamma-chanda) and occurs, for example, in the formula of the Four Right Efforts (padhāna): "The meditator rouses will (chandam janeti)..." If intensified, it becomes one of the Four Roads to Power (iddhipāda).

Bad (harmful) "desire"

Oh, hells yeah, look at that butt!

Tanhā (lit. "thirst"): "craving," the chief root of suffering [behind ignorance], and of the ever-continuing cycle of rebirths [known as samsara].

"What, O meditators, is the origin of suffering (disappointment, unsatisfactoriness, off-kilter woe)? It is this craving that gives rise to ever-fresh rebirths and, bound up with [sensual] pleasure and lust, now here, now there, [continues wandering on, trying] to find ever fresh delight.

"It is [threefold:] sensual craving (kāma-tanhā), craving for [eternal] existence (bhava-tanhā), and craving for non-existence (vibhava-tanhā)'' (D.22).

Tanhā is the eighth link in the formula of the Dependent Origination (paticcasamuppāda). Compare also at the kinds of "truth" (sacca).

Corresponding to the six sense-objects, there are six kinds of craving, craving for:

1. visible objects (sights),
2. sounds (auditory experiences),
3. fragrances (aromas),
4. tastes (flavors),
5. tactile impressions (bodily contact),
6. mental impressions (rūpa-, sadda-, gandha-, rasa-, photthabba-, dhamma-tanhā). (M.9; D.15)

Corresponding to the threefold existence, there are three kinds:

1. craving for sensual existence (kāma-tanhā),
2. craving for fine-material existence (rūpa-tanhā) [in the many celestial/dimensional "heavenly" (sagga, deva-lokas) realms],
3. craving for immaterial existence (arūpa-tanhā) [in the four formless worlds] (D.33).

If I can't get butts, I'll scarf dopamine-chocolate

There are 18 "thought-channels of craving" (tanhā-vicarita) induced internally, and 18 induced externally; and as occurring in past, present, and future, which total 108. (See A. IV, 199; Vibh., Ch. 17 Khuddakavatthu-Vibhanga).

According to Dependent Origination, craving is conditioned by feeling; on this see DN 22 (section on the Second Ennobling Truth).

As for "craving for [continued or eternal] existence" (bhava-tanhā), it is said (A.X.62):

"No first beginning of the craving for [continued] existence can be perceived, O, meditators, before which it was not and after which it came to be. But it can he perceived that craving for existence has its specific [cause and] condition. I say, O, meditators, that craving for existence also has its condition that feeds it (sāharam) and is not [subsisting] without it. And what is that condition? It is 'ignorance,' one must reply."

Will robo-toilets or -dogs fix world?

(The Daily Show) Tech Yeah! AI actress film, "robo-toilets"? | Grace K

*Deposit used chocolate here.

Craving for [continued] existence and ignorance are called "the outstanding causes that lead to happy and unhappy destinies (courses of existence)."

(See The Path of Purification, Vis.M. XVII, 36-42).

The most frequent synonyms of tanhā are rāga ("lust," "greed," "passion") and lobha ("greed"). See the "roots" of good and evil, the skillful and the unskillful, at mūla).

• Karma: Ten Courses of Wholesome and Unwholesome Action
• The Roots of Good and Evil (Buddhist Publication Society, Wheel Series 251/252/253)
• Will Tilly Norwood be the new Gal "IDF Zionist" Gadot?
• Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary via palikanon.com (chanda and tanhā); Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

The more beautiful game: Buddhist sports?

(FOX Sports) England's Jude Bellingham unstoppable against Norway | Black Bellingham

• (FOX Sports) Norway vs. England highlights 🌎🏆 2026 FIFA World Cup™ | Quarterfinals
• (Chris Colin) England fans react as England wins against Norway: World Cup 2026

• 

  Will US welcome Black soccer star Bellingham?

  The 2026 FIFA World Cup final will be the last match of the 2026 World Cup, the 23rd edition of FIFA's competition for men's national soccer (association football) teams. The match is scheduled to be played at MetLife Stadium at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey, near New York City, on July 19, 2026, and will see this country [England] go up against [France?]... More

The JOY of victory for England!

(News Central) England supporters celebrate dramatic victory over Norway

The AGONY for Norway

THE AGONY: Norway's go-ahead goal disallowed by VAR: Earling

Haaland said to have commited foul on England's Elliot Anderson

'All Trump touches dies': US soccer

(Raw America) Trump furious was World Cup memes go mega-viral

World Cup violence and rioting

(VERTEX) Morocco loses, Europe explodes! Riots rock London, Am-

sterdam, beyond after FIFA World Cup game after England wins

Israel destroys Palestine (without ball)

Football is my religion: chanting

(TVE) 'Wonderwall' (Oasis) chanted in Miami by England fans: Norway loses

(FOX TV via gitz6666) The Simpsons soccer riot

(StuntPegg) My first time watching and cheering for my nation at a World Cup game

(Brodie Brazil) World Cup tension between Telemundo and FOX

What if there were alternative UK spectacles?

Novel Writing - Working Class Playwright - Oscar Wilde

The Cup (a Tibetan Buddhist film from Bhutan in Indian Himalayas)

Buddhist sports: The Cup

Bhutan's submission: The Cup

While the soccer World Cup is being played in France, two young Tibetan refugees arrive at a monastery (lamasery) boarding school in exile in India. Its atmosphere of serene contemplation is somewhat disrupted by soccer fever, the chief instigator being a young student, the soccer (association football) fanatic Orgyen. Prevented by various circumstances from seeing The Cup finals on television in a nearby village, Orgyen sets out to organize the rental of a TV set for the Buddhist monastery. All the quiet contemplatives become loud sports enthusiasts instead, whose behavior borders on worldly hooliganism.

The Cup stars: Orgyen Tobgyal, Neten Chokling, Jamyang Lodro. Directed by Khyentse Norbu. Executive produced by Jeremy Thomas. Twitter: @recordedpicture

Monty Python's "Philosophy Football" coming to FOX Sports?

Abuse of the Buddhist term "mindfulness"

(Natasha Yehenara) Psychology's corporate takeover of Buddhist mindfulness (sati)

• "Mindfulness" defined by Ven. Analayo Bhikkhu
• The field of psychology appropriated (hijacked) the Buddhist term "mindfulness" (originally sati but now just "awareness" or "paying attention")
• Anyone who thinks it was a commonplace practice in ancient India during the time of the Buddha should look up the Hindu definition of sati, which reveals it used to mean throwing a wife on the pyre when her husband died 😲
• The great work of Jon Kabbat-Zin to help therapists led to the unexpected disconnection of the practice with anything, as if it could be a standalone endeavor
• "Bare attention" is a component of sati, but it must be coupled with dispassionate (unbiased) looking on, free of greed, hatred, and delusion (wanting, aversion, and confusion)
• What is one to be mindful of to advance to insight, realization, and awakening? The Buddha pointed at four things: body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects. What does this mean? Psychology cannot tell us, but the Dhamma can
• Who needs Dhamma when we have a corporate bottom line to advance, productivity to raise, and mental health symptoms to abate?
• Why call it "mindfulness," Psychology? Why not pick a new name for what you've turned this into?

Ego (buddhism podcast) The Buddha didn't teach us only to be "present." He taught us to remember (recollection, memory, bearing in mind, the faculty of sati)

On the road to Berkeley like Benji (The Graduate)

Personally, in college at UC Berkeley many years ago, I took a "Buddhist Psychology" course in the department and was so excited to finally be able to learn what "cognition" meant and what the Buddha had to say about all these psychological things. Our assigned textbook, written by a psychologist, was called Mindfulness. "All right," I thought, "I'm finally going to advance in my practice and being in college is going to help me. Imagine my surprise when, as I read, I did not recognize what was being called "mindfulness." It did not align with all the translated ancient texts I had read and was continuing to read from the Buddhist Publication Society and the Pali Text Society. A few years in the future I would even visit BPS Editor Bhikkhu Bodhi in Kandy, Sri Lanka, to ask him about all this.

The Art and Science of Mindfulness

Not yet having him as a direct resource, except through his translations and BPS newsletter messages, I asked my professor in class about how I was left perplexed by reading our textbook. She looked at me and shrugged, "Of course! This "mindfulness" isn't the Buddha's mindfulness. It is psychology's," she explained. I looked around and many students were nodding their heads in agreement. "There are two mindfulnesses?!" I balked. "There are now" was the implicit answer. "Does Berkeley know about this? Why is this class called Buddhist psychology if all we're going to talk about is Western psychology?" She winked because she was subverting the system and introducing Buddhist ideas back into class, but we had to know that the new mindfulness had been taken, changed, and applied in rigorous scientific ways to the behavioral sciences, therapy, counseling, and the mental health field. Sure, it wasn't the Buddha's mindfulness, but that's because it had to be stripped of all spirituality and/or religiosity to get by the gatekeepers of the university system. What a gyp.

• The Art and Science of Mindfulness: Integrating Mindfulness Into Psychology and the Helping Professions (Shauna L, Shapiro, Linda E. Carlson
• Amazon.com: psychology mindfulness textbooks

Why 'meditation' feels hard (Dr. Ricard)

(Study Buddhism) Why "meditation" [striving, straining, struggling to get into absorption] feels so hard (and what to do about it) | [Western scientist and Vajrayana Buddhist lama] Ven. Matthieu Ricard [known as "the happiest person in the world"*]. "There is no Samsara 2.0."

Who is he?

Sure, I'm happy, but the happiest?

Matthieu Ricard (French matjø ʁikaʁ, Nepali माथ्यु रिका, born Feb. 15, 1946) is a French Nepalese writer, photographer, translator, and Buddhist monk (lama) who resides at Shechen Tennyi Dargyeling Monastery in Nepal.

Dr. Matthieu Ricard grew up among the personalities and ideas of French intellectual circles. He received a PhD degree in molecular genetics from the Pasteur Institute in 1972.

He then decided to avoid a common scientific career and instead did the daring thing and took up the practice of Tibetan Buddhism (Vajrayana Bon), living mainly in the Himalayas.

Matthieu Ricard is a board member of the Mind and Life Institute. He received the French National Order of Merit for his humanitarian work in the East with Karuna-Shechen, the non-profit organization he co-founded in 2000 with Rabjam Rinpoche.

Since 1989, he has acted as the French interpreter for the 14th Dalai Lama. Since 2010, he has been traveling and giving a series of talks with and assisting in teachings by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, the incarnation of Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche....

*Matthieu Ricard has been called the "happiest person in the world" [4, 5]. Why?

It is because Matthieu Ricard was a volunteer subject in a study performed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison on happiness. He scored significantly above the average of hundreds of volunteers [4].

Matthieu Ricard, however, has called the label "absurd" and untrue [6, 7]. More

DMT dangers, risks: Trickster elf entities

(OurTimelessWisdom) DMT: Risk vs. Reward: the cost of seeing what we are not ready to see:

Illustrated Field Guide to DMT Entities: Machine Elves,
Tricksters, Teachers, Other Interdimensional Beings

• Animated Entities:) on Reddit: r/DMT

Rupert Sheldrake on elves, visions

(The Institute of Art and Ideas) Why do we see elves on DMT? | Rupert

Sheldrake (on morphic resonance, cultural collective memory)

DMT entity mystery breaks science: What are they? | Dr. Andrew Gallimore

The DMT entity mystery that breaks science: What are these beings?

(OurTimelessWisdom) The DMT Entity Mystery That Breaks Science: What Are These Beings? 👁️

DMT entity Machine Elf (Tricky Woo)

If these beings are real — science is over. Every time someone smokes DMT, that person meets the same thing: "machine elves," DMT entities. What are they? They are hyperdimensional beings who laugh, welcome you, trick you, and teach you. Who are they? And why do they act like they’ve known visitors forever?

🔍 This video rewires how we understand consciousness, intelligence, and the mind. In this rare, mind-bending interview, Dr. Andrew Gallimore — computational neurobiologist and the author of Alien Information Theory — breaks down the DMT entity mystery in full.

This is not fringe speculation. It is a direct challenge to neuroscience, physics, and the very Jungian idea of a "collective unconscious."

Andrew R Gallimore (Amazon)

🧩 DR. GALLIMORE EXPLORES:

🧠 Why the “just hallucinations” theory fails

📡 How the brain may be receiving data from “elsewhere”

👁️ Why everyone sees the same machine elves during DMT trips

📖 The earliest reports in DMT science, echoing Terence McKenna’s lectures

🃏 Their bizarre behavior -- part guide, part trickster

🔁 Why they say: “Welcome back! We’ve missed you!”

🧪 How to use DMT as a consciousness technology — not a drug

🌀 Why even Carl Jung’s archetypes might not go far enough to explain what’s happening

👇 To the question asked, “Why do we all see machine elves on DMT?” — this is the video that finally confronts it.

⏱️ CHAPTERS AND TIMESTAMPS

0:00 – The question Dr. Gallimore has wrestled with for 20 years

0:50 – Why hallucination theory collapses under scrutiny

1:36 – Brain as a receiver? A McKenna-style cosmic broadcast?

2:22 – Collective reports: same entities, same architecture

3:05 – First DMT entities documented (Szára, 1950s)

3:48 – Trickster intelligence and language-like behavior

4:33 – A lost home? The archetypal return motif

5:12 – “Welcome back…we’ve been watching.”

6:00 – DMT + technology = stable channel

6:49 – Dr. Gallimore’s plan echoes McKenna’s long-shot vision

7:35 – Beyond Jung, beyond hallucination: the unknown Other

💡 LEARN

• Why Dr. Gallimore's DMT interview challenges scientific materialism
• How these beings behave more like psycho-spiritual archetypes or alien intelligences
• How this experience echoes Jung’s individuation process — but in hyperspace
• Why this may be the beginning of a DMT technology consciousness study
• Where McKenna’s “language of the unconscious” meets 21st-century neuroscience

🧠 WHO IS DR. GALLIMORE?

Alien Information Theory

Dr. Andrew Gallimore is a computational neurobiologist, chemist, and author of Alien Information Theory. He has spent over 20 years studying how psychedelic (entheogenic) experiences — especially on DMT — interface with the structure of our reality, the unconscious mind, and the possible existence of non-human intelligences.

He is considered one of today’s leading experts on DMT, altered states, and the neuroscience of visionary experience.

It's plan A until Plan A works, until I die! #surreal

🎯 Subscribe for more videos unpacking the mind-bending intersection of Jung, McKenna, psychedelics, and deep consciousness science.

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• OurTimelessWisdom, June 29, 2025 (✪ Members first on June 28, 2025); Rupert Sheldrake; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly

I've had it with those d*mn hippies!

Is it the drugs? It's always the drugs!

(David Hoffman) 1967 stoned hippies tell all to a film crew on early reality TV television

(Simon Diego) Interview with 19-year-old modern homeless hippie girl fentanyl addict Real?

Finds GOD? Youth on acid (LSD)

(David Hoffman) Mom's heartbreak: Son finds God on LSD to mental ward

Ireland also suffered a scourge

(CR's Video Vaults) Punks, Goths, and Mods on Irish TV, 1983

Blame Robert Smith and the Cure

(Der schwarze Kanal) 1989: Goths, Vamps, CureHeads, Psychobillys

Are U.S. gutter punks any better?

• Documentarian David Hoffman (on David Silver's removal from TV due to Nancy Sinatra comments): patreon.com/allinaday
• LA's Adam-12 via PARKWOODECHO; Portlandia (CBC); Eds., Wisdom Quarterly