Sense Desire

We exist and move in the world of sense contacts, and yet often we neglect to examine this relationship very deeply, or it becomes just another way to judge ourselves. Can we challenge our assumptions, habits and views and inquire caringly in this area in order to open to a more profound and unexpected freedom?

The theme I would like to explore this morning is a little bit difficult. So there is plenty in the Dharma, plenty in the Buddha's teachings that is challenging, that is difficult for us. And the theme is sense desire. So it's one of those things anyone sort of picking up the volumes of the Buddha's discourses, of the Buddha's talks -- it's very difficult not to come across the references to sense pleasure and sense desire. It's totally littered throughout the discourses. It's also very, very difficult to overlook the fact that, as far as the Buddha and his teaching is concerned, it doesn't have very good press. He's not a big fan of sense desire. And one can kind of look at that and say, "Well, most of the discourses in the Buddha's time, most of the discourses at that time were directed towards monastics, monks and nuns." And at that time, in India at that time, it was very clear: if you were interested in awakening, if you were interested in nibbāna, if that's what you wanted, you basically became a monk or a nun. And for lay people, the teachings were different. They weren't aimed at awakening, weren't really aimed at nibbāna -- for the most part.

Today, we have a different situation. We've got a different situation. Most people practising today are lay people. Some of the lay people practising are interested in awakening. Not everyone -- and I'm very aware of that; for some people, that's just not something in their, you know, sights at all, in their aspiration at all -- but some people really are interested in awakening and still a lay person. It's very easy, with this topic of sense desire, to just kind of skim it as a subject, and react in a couple of sort of quick ways, without really giving it a full airing. So if we are practising, and if we're lay people, and we are interested -- if we are interested in opening our lives to a really kind of radical level of freedom, if there is that interest for us, then this is an area that we need to question, probe, explore a little bit. We don't actually talk that much about it, and there are reasons for that.

Sometimes this word "renunciation" is actually not used. It's not even used that much in teaching circles. It gets re-translated as "letting go" or something, which sounds a lot more user-friendly and a lot more polite. And there's a little bit of a sense of "these Buddhist killjoys." Maybe, you know, we're going to spoil the fun or drain all the colour out of life.

But if you look at the teachings of the Buddha and how he talks about sense pleasure, it's quite dramatic images: a tiny drop of honey on a razor's edge, trying to lick it off. Ouch! Holding a big, burning torch in front of your face and running into a headlong wind, and all the flames burning your face. A tiny little bird, with a tiny morsel of flesh of a worm that it's got, and bigger birds hunting, trying to get that little bit of flesh off the little bird, and prepared to kill the little bird.^[1] So these are not nice, fluffy little images. In a way, the Buddha's being very harsh. He's saying, "Wake up! Wake up!" There's a danger here that it's very easy to overlook, very easy to blind ourselves to.

And that word "danger" is probably one of the most common words he uses in relationship to sense desire: danger, seeing the danger in sense desire. And there's a passage he said a practitioner should think in this way: "I have seen the misery of sense pleasures." Strong language! "I've seen the misery of sense pleasures." We don't usually think of it this way: "I have seen the security involved in renouncing them." Note that word, "security": "I have seen the security involved in renouncing them. So now I will go. I will go on into the struggle. This is, to my heart, delight. This is where my heart finds bliss." Very strong language, very strong teaching.

One of my teachers, Ajaan Geoff, has an image: trading candy for gold. He uses this quite a lot. And you know, it's pretty clear: basically, the sense pleasures are like candy. They're like sugar. Why grab that? Why get consumed in grabbing that when there's gold available to us? A little bit implicit in that image is this similarity, almost, with children. It's as if we are children on the path, and the way a small child will go for the sugar, and doesn't understand that it's actually not good -- not good for the teeth, etc. So in a way, we are also children, in this respect. Sometimes we don't understand what's best for us.

So Ajahn Chah, one of the famous great Thai forest masters of the last century, he had a monastery in north-western Thailand -- a very, very bare-bones kind of monastery. There were a lot of Westerners there. And there was one meal a day at this monastery. And sometimes the lay people would bring, would try and make it really nice for the monks. They would bring this lovely food for the one meal, for the monks, their one meal a day. And the food would arrive and be laid out, and Ajahn Chah would come along and look at it and say, "It's too nice. Take it back." And you know, that teacher, Ajahn Chah, if you've seen pictures of him, he's very sort of cuddly. He's like a big teddy bear and everything. But there's a very strong teaching here. [6:37]

So for some people, this issue around sense desire is actually really at the centre of their dukkha. It's at the centre of their suffering. There is addiction. There is a relationship with sense pleasure that has become all-consuming, to the point where we are not available for the rest of life. We're not available for relationships. We're not available to other things in life, to our aspirations, to work, etc. And for some people that is the case. For other people it also registers as something very important, but only because there's some relationship with some form of sense pleasure that's affecting the health in some way. And often it's around food and around weight. And that brings it into the centre of our attention. Or, occasionally, we might engage in something or indulge in something to the point where, you know, we've eaten so much whatever that we just, we fall asleep. Or something's happening and we actually get sick.

But for the majority of people, let's say, it's actually not the most pressing problem. It's not felt or perceived as the most pressing problem. It's really not. And what I would say, given the kind of demographics that show up at these kind of places, without generalizing too much, on the whole, the problem, the difficulty, the torment that most people suffer with is around self-view, around the view of the self, and the self-worth, and the self-esteem, and the way we define ourselves and imprison ourselves in those definitions. It's actually not the most pressing issue.

But it's not irrelevant. It's really not irrelevant. So I totally want to honour that it's not the most pressing thing. But it's not irrelevant. And sometimes it's interesting, its kind of status in our lives. So we're in a room with our hands in the cookie jar, and someone walks in. There's a little bit of shame; the face gets a little bit red or something. Or the chocolate cupboard. And I know some of you know what I'm talking about. [laughter] There's a little bit of shame. But it's not that big a deal. Or we joke about it. We joke about our little indulgences.

But how important is it to us, this business of sense pleasure? It's actually extremely important to us. Partly we don't realize it as dukkha because so much is available to us in the West. I can walk out of this room and have so much. It is very important to us, and sometimes just -- you know, even at Gaia House. It's a meditation centre, a Buddhist meditation centre. Sometimes it's just, with the staff, and in the staff dining room, how much attention and importance is given to food? And the appreciation expressed, which is lovely. But it's almost like it's not okay if the food isn't tasty. It's not okay. Even sometimes amongst teachers, and just as a whole, [it's] taken for granted that it's not okay if the food isn't tasty. And I just kind of want to ask: why not? Why is it important that the food is tasty? Why is it not okay if it doesn't taste good?

Sometimes, there's a relationship to sense desire -- and we see this, if we're honest with ourselves -- there's a kind of numbing. We use something (sometimes sex, sometimes food, sometimes whatever it is, alcohol, whatever), and it's that we just want to numb a little bit. There's something going on that we just don't want to feel. And we see that in ourselves, and it's kind of okay. It's okay. But oftentimes -- the point I'm making is, we don't actually see it as a problem. On one hand, we don't see it as a problem. On the other hand, we've got this sense of "should," and this incredible weight of self-judgment and "should" about it. And these either shuttle back and forth, or they sit in some kind of uneasy coexistence together. "I don't really see it as a problem, but especially if I'm trying to be spiritual, I really should address it in some kind of way."

Now, it's not my place, it's not anyone's place, I don't think, not anyone at all to be prescriptive about this. I'm not here to say anything like, "This is what you should give up, and this is what you shouldn't, and da-da-da," or anyone else at all. No one can say that for you. Absolutely no one can say that for you. What I'm much, much more concerned about, much more concerned is: is this alive? Is it alive for you? Because often it's actually not. It's just shuttling back and forth: "I mean, it's not really a problem ... and I should. Not really a problem ... and I should." But is it alive as an open exploration, as an experimentation? Oftentimes, people on long retreats come to me and say, "How much should I sleep? Should I not eat tea?" It's not for me to say. What I care about is, is it alive? Is there a fearlessness to the investigation? Because often it's fear that stops us even going into this. [12:00]

So please, if you just remember one thing from this talk, remember that the self-view and the self-judge is actually a priority. If approaching this just brings up all that, just leave it. Just leave it. That's actually the priority for almost everyone. It's the way we bind our self: the self-view, and self-judgment. And even in the levels of awakening, it's the self-view that gets dissolved first, before one even really takes a good cut at sense desire, etc.

So this self-view and judge that can easily come into these kind of explorations -- I've spent a little time over the years with addicts, different kinds of addicts, and spent, in different capacities, time with different kind of addicts. How often shame and this self-judge is part of what's -- it's actually part of the addictive cycle. One indulges in something, you know, carries out the addictive behaviour, whatever. And then there's shame. And that shame sends more energy into the loop. It's almost like, to escape the shame, it just goes round, it just circles round. So, really important to see this: shame as part of the addictive cycle, self-shame. And even if we can't really call ourselves addicts, the judge, the pressure, the "should," coming at this issue from that will backfire. It will backfire.

Renunciation, I think, needs the kind of fuel and the juice of a noble aspiration, of a sense that it's really serving something beautiful, of it's opening up a sense of possibility. It's supporting a sense of possibility our life. Without that, without the beauty of that aspiration, it just becomes very brittle, and very cold, and kind of closes our heart. Now this, actually, is one of the fears associated with renunciation: that if I don't kind of allow the fullness of my sense desire, that I will dry up inside, that I will somehow be repressing something. Can be quite a strong fear. Or interestingly, that I'm somehow boring as a person, as a personality, if I don't have strong sense desire. People say, "Oh, I loooove chicken korma. And I loooove mashed potatoes." Or, "I loooove," you know, this and that. It's almost like a little bit of self-identity behind the sort of claim of it being something -- it's almost like we're identifying, "We are passionate. I'm passionate. I loooove chicken korma." [laughs] It's a real question here! Does strong sense desire and indulgence in it -- does that feed our passion as human beings? Does it feed our aliveness [as] human beings? Or does it mute it? [15:23] This is a really important question.

Sometimes the relation with sense desire is -- and very understandable, and very human -- is that we're seeking comfort. We're seeking comfort from sense pleasure. Sometimes that comfort is emotional comfort. We're feeling vulnerable. We're feeling a little bit bruised from life, or from whatever it is, some interaction, etc. We seek emotional comfort in mashed potatoes, in some kind of food, in some kind of self-pampering, you know. And this is very understandable, at one level. It's very understandable, very normal, very human. And it's quite a common phrase nowadays to talk about retail therapy. And it's like, as if that's somehow going to address some deep hole in us.

Oftentimes as well, there's a relationship with this question of sense desire and renunciation. What immediately comes for many people is a sense of, "There will be deprivation." We associate it with deprivation. We associate renunciation with deprivation. Even just yesterday, I was too late at lunch. Coming -- and there was nothing left but a few little bits of cauliflower. [laughs] And so I went into the managers' dining room, and someone said, "Oh, that's so sad! That looks so sad!" And actually, it wasn't sad at all. There was no sadness there. Long-term retreatants tell me this often. Building the joy, the heart is opening in joy, they go into the hall late, into the dining hall late, and there's nothing there. But there's joy. It doesn't make any difference.

And sometimes we hear about renunciation -- it's like, "This is all I've got." We don't often think this, but it's a feeling: "This is all I've got, is my sense pleasure, and now you're -- someone's saying, 'I'll take it away.'" So really a questioning -- it's an ongoing question for us as human beings. Do we deeply, deeply know how to take care of ourselves? Deeply -- do we know that? Do we understand that? It's a really, really important question: do I deeply know how to take care of myself in life?

There was this ad. I mean, it started years ago, this ad. Think it's L'Oréal, is it? "Because you're worth it." Is it L'Oréal? Does anyone know? Yeah? And it's still going. And sometimes the sense of self-worth, as well, somehow gets plugged into this whole movement towards sense desire, and sort of non-consideration of renunciation. "Because you're worth it." Somehow it's tied in, in some strange way, with the sense of self-esteem. Does it need to be? Do we know, also, how to take care of our sense of self-worth, our sense of self-esteem, really, deeply, truly?

The Buddha has this beautiful stanza from a longer piece, and it's: "Ah! So happily we live, we who have no attachments. We shall feast on joy, as do the Radiant Gods."^[2]

Renunciation -- questioning, even, our sense desire -- is actually, probably, a horrific prospect. It's a horrific prospect if we don't have a sense of deep well-being inside, if we don't have that resource, and that reservoir of inner well-being that I've touched on in a couple of talks. And I find myself, almost every talk, mentioning the importance of it. It's a horrific prospect. We need a sense of inner resource from which to let go. We need a sense of deep reservoir inside, as a sort of ballast, a sort of -- what's the word? -- lever with which to let go. It's impossible, or very, very difficult to feel a sense of impoverishment inside, and then to try and let go of our relationship with sense desire. We need resources to let go. And like many, many things in the Dharma, the causality is mutual. The more we let go, the more we find a sense of inner resource coming.

And it's ironic -- I feel, a little bit -- it's ironic in the Western Dharma, as Dharma's coming into the West, something's got flipped a little bit in the Dharma teaching. Oftentimes, meditators have a real fear, a real fear of becoming attached to meditation experiences of joy, or bliss, or happiness, or love, or peace, or whatever. There's a real fear of being attached to meditation experiences, and actually zero fear of attachment to sense to desire -- completely backwards of what the Buddha taught! Actually, he really encouraged indulgence -- and he uses the word, "My disciples are 'addicted' to the pleasure of meditation. And that's okay," he said.^[3] [laughs] And sense desire gets very bad press.

We've somehow flipped that completely. And it's not because one leads to nibbāna, like sense desire leads to nibbāna, leads to awakening, and meditation experiences don't. The Buddha said it's the other way round, in terms of where they lead. The reason is actually because of availability, and that we get sense desires, sense pleasure -- it's completely available to us as human beings in the West. You know, certain demographic of human beings, it's completely available. And meditation experiences, less so. It's more difficult for us. So we've judged something because of the current availability, based on just what's kind of given to us in our life, without doing much about it. The pleasure of meditation as a resource, a long-term resource in life, is much more possible, is much more accessible to us as lay people than we might think, or than we might hear. It's much more possible. There are plenty of people I work with who are developing, and have developed that real sense of inner resource in life. And they're all lay people. And they take it with them through their life, and they meet life from that place, and it's a different prospect. And there does come a time when we let go of that, but it actually happens very organically, just like something outgrowing a skin. For the most part, it's really not a big deal. [22:19]

So oftentimes, a person will say, and many people say, "But I want to be connected. I want to be connected to life. I want to be connected to the senses. I want to be connected to the earth, etc." And this is really, really important. And for a lot of people, it's the reason they practise. It's interesting hearing from people why -- I'm always interested to hear why people practise. This is often a really big reason, a primary reason: "I want to be connected." And that absolutely is an important reason to practise, especially a practice like this, insight meditation. We want to be connected. And it's important that we're connected. And so, the emphasis on mindfulness, on wakefulness, on presence, on bare attention -- which Catherine talked about the other [day] -- meeting life directly, free of the filters.

This is the foundation of this path of insight meditation. It's absolutely the foundation. And it brings with it -- and I can totally see this from my own early years of practice; I was really disconnected from my body, from my emotions, from a lot of stuff. And through just consistent working at the mindfulness and the bare attention, connection came. Disconnection disappeared. And the senses actually come alive. And a lot of people report this. As we put energy into the mindfulness, the senses come alive -- beautiful thing, absolutely beautiful thing. We move from disconnection into more connection. And the senses come alive. Very, very important, but not, not, not the whole path -- never, never would be the whole path. I'm going to come back to that later.

And it's important, and partly because of this, that we really, really make sure that we're allowing an investigation of all this, that we're not prejudging, like I said at the beginning, skimming into one answer or another with this, that really, really, the investigation is alive. We're really allowing an investigation of this whole area: sense pleasure, sense desire, and renunciation, the whole thing. We're really allowing an investigation of sense pleasure itself. Otherwise, how are we going to know? We're always going to have some suspicion if we don't kind of go there.

One practitioner I work with -- we were talking about this recently. And he was talking about, "Oh, this indulgence just kind of takes over me." And again, he was having this uncomfortable shuttling back and forth between the judging, the "should," and the giving in to the indulgence, the going back and forth. And just saying, go ahead and indulge, but do it with 100 per cent fullness of presence. Really, really allow it, but really watch, and watch closely. And just see if you can let go of the judge. Really allow yourself to do it, out of interest, with complete fullness, fullness of attention.

If we do that, what will become clear, what should become clear at a certain point is that there are, for us as human beings, there are available to us different kinds of happiness. We can say there are many different kinds of happiness that, as a human being, I can know and experience and feel -- many, many different kinds, a whole spectrum and range there. And this begins to become obvious. So some sense pleasure or other -- there is a happiness in that. Don't pretend that there isn't. But also just see that there are many different kinds. And begin exploring them. Can we become, can we be connoisseurs of happiness? You know, the way some people are connoisseurs of wine, and they know this wine and that wine -- same thing with happiness, with joy.

Very, very important teaching of the Buddha -- he says: "If, by giving up a lesser happiness, one could experience greater happiness, a wise person would renounce the lesser to behold the greater" -- would renounce the lesser to enjoy the greater.^[4] Very, very important teaching. That's actually the principle of renunciation. It's the purpose of renunciation. It moves towards joy.

So, can we actually go into the pleasure? And you can try this at lunch, if you want. Go into the pleasure, and sense the pleasure totally, absolutely, totally giving ourselves to it. Sense it totally. In that, sensing the loveliness, sensing the pleasure, what we'll also notice is, we will sense its limits. We will sense its limits. We will sense its brevity. How short-lived the pleasure, its finiteness. And if the attention is really alive, and you can see this even when a morsel of food is in the mouth -- it's already in the mouth, we're already experiencing the pleasure of it, and if the attention is subtle, you can pick up on -- there's a subtle sense of desperation, just quiet. It's very subtle. Food is already in the mouth. We're already experiencing the pleasure, and there's still the desperation there. Can we open to the totality of that and see that?

And even further, open more, and see how much hype, we could say -- does everyone understand that word, "hype"? To build something up, to paint it very glossy. How much hype there is around, that we do in our minds, and we do together socially around sense pleasure. "It's going to be great! It's going to be fantastic." And even if we don't say that consciously, we're building up the expectation, the image of what something's going to be. And again, let's just take lunch, for example -- you know, the invitation to really to give it fullness of exploration. Okay, put the food in the mouth ... mindfulness of the body ... chewing, chewing, chewing, chewing, chewing, bit of taste ... chewing, chewing, a bit of taste ... chewing, grasping, even though, as I said, the food's in the mouth ... a bit of taste. For those mathematically inclined, the "taste to chewing" ratio is pretty small. Really pay attention to it. It's a lot of work for not much payback. [laughter]

What we have is an image that "It's fantastic!" -- I don't know, whatever meal. What's your favourite meal at Gaia House? And it's going to, "Oh, mm! Fantastic." If you really pay attention -- it's an invitation -- really explore it, a lot of muscular work goes on for just these kind of dots of pleasure, dots of explosions of pleasure in the mouth -- and not even in the whole mouth, if you really pay attention. Just these little momentary bursts of pleasure. And what we do as human beings, we do this with unpleasant as well as pleasant: we join the dots. You know those dot-to-dot diagrams? Yeah? When you were a kid? We joined the dots, and then we got something. And it's an image.

Can sense pleasure withstand my full attention? If something's really worth something, it has to withstand my full attention. Can it repay my full attention? Again, if something has some depth to it, some substance to it, the more attention you give it, the more it repays that attention with its substance and its depth and its juice. So this is something, if we're interested in this, this is something that we need to see often, many, many times. It's not going to be that we're going to see it once and it makes a difference. And -- and I'll say this again, I'll repeat myself -- to the degree that we have enough inner resource, that will be the degree that the freedom comes. So we need to see it often, but we also need to have a lot of sense of inner reservoir, to really pry ourselves loose.

So can we, as practitioners, as human beings, be really passionately interested in joy, in happiness? Really take an interest in these different kinds of joy, and explore the kinds of happiness that are available to us, because it's a very wide range, as human beings, what is available to the heart. There are extraordinary happinesses available to us as human beings. Are we really passionately interested in exploring that? And not to ignore or deny that the joys, and the pleasures, the happiness of sense pleasure, to deny that they exist -- not to do that, not ignoring or denying it.

And if we explore this, another thing will become obvious. It's probably actually obvious at the moment. It's just that the coin hasn't dropped. And that is that the pleasantness or the unpleasantness, the pleasure or the displeasure, is not in the object. It's not in the object. It's actually dependent on the mind and the heart state, on the citta. It's dependent on the mind and the heart. So you can see, and I'm sure everyone has tasted, probably more than once, a state of mind, a state of heart where everything -- because of that state, because you're angry or agitated or irritated or something's pressing on consciousness -- everything is tinged with unpleasantness. The heart is colouring perception.

One evening, we've booked a fantastic meal at a great restaurant, you know, the best, Le Cordon Bleu, whatever restaurant. And we've had an argument with our partner, and somehow, it can't get resolved in time. And there we sit across from each other ... [laughter] staring icily over the port or whatever. And it's like, it depends on the mind. Or there's some issue in our life, and we haven't let it go yet. And wherever we are, whatever's going on -- or even with another person, lovely; sometimes even sex -- just something actually becomes an unpleasant experience, because there's something else in the way that's doing something in the mind. [33:34] Clearly, from that, it makes more sense to care for the mind and the heart.

If we bring this kind of passion and fullness of investigation to this area, some questions begin to kind of filter down and become very important. And they're questions like, what actually is my life about? It's not a vague question. I don't mean that in a vague way. What actually is my life about -- meaning, what am I giving the most energy to in my life? What am I most frequently assenting to in my life, agreeing to? What inner movements -- some of you were here for the opening talk. We talked about the movement of intentionality. Which ones am I assenting to the most? What is being followed? What is my life about? Life ends in death. That much is clear. And either death is an ending -- that's it -- and in which case, the question is, given the total finiteness and brevity of what's going on, what do I want to be following, moment to moment? So we can have big ideals, nice words, but moment to moment, what's happening?

Or, death is not an end, and there's rebirth, and this whole business just goes round and round again. It's the original meaning of saṃsāra: this endless, endless looping of experiences, pleasant or unpleasant or neither, and the chasing of the experiences. And it's an endless stream of pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, pleasant, unpleasant, neutral -- forever. [laughter] Now, at first, we could think, "Thank goodness. It's not all over at death." But when we start looking at it that way ...

Either way, what is my life about? What's pulling me? What is really pulling me? So is it that really, in my life, for the most part, what I deeply care about, my aspirations, my deep principles are pulling me? Or is it pleasure that's pulling me? We can see, sometimes, you can see if you meet an older person, or as people grow over the decades, you can see how characters get shaped over the years. And this is an important factor in what shapes character. It's like, how much, as human beings, are we living true to what we really, really believe in deeply and care about? And how much are we kind of being pulled off that, not really settling on that, not really yoking ourselves to that? We're being pulled off that because of pleasure, and just being pulled into chasing something. And you can see: someone who's lived close, rooted in their truth, the sense of that person -- there's a power there. I don't mean power over other people. I mean an internal power. There's a strength. There's an integrity. And in the opposite, that those qualities are not there. There's often a kind of sense of vagueness or scatteredness or a little bit of weakness, fearfulness.

None of this is to judge. And please, I'll say what I said earlier in the talk, none of this is to judge. It's really not about that. It's rather about -- can we hear it not as something to judge, but rather, what do I want to honour? What do I most deeply want to honour? Which part of my being do I most deeply want to honour in this life? It's about honouring something. It's not about judging.

One of my teachers, Ajaan Geoff, used to say that not to practise renunciation, not to practise restraint is like, it's training ourselves in hunger. It's building our hunger. We're just feeding our hunger over and over. [37:54] We have to look at the effects of things in the Dharma. Dharma, a big part of it is looking at the effects of things. So a real question is, for us, when is something nourishment, like true nourishment, and when is something indulgence? And we tell by the effects. We can tell by the effects on the heart, on the mind. So if, for example, with sound or music or something, there is music, or one can listen to music, and the effect it has on the being is it energizes and it opens and it touches the heart, and it makes something, it helps something beautiful to open. And there are other relationships with music, let's say, where that's not really what's going on. It's on in the background in a way that's just numbing the consciousness a little bit -- Muzak.

We see, by the effects, when the Buddha took his rice milk before the awakening, the five ascetics thought that was indulgence. But it actually opened something for the Buddha. So the pleasant and the unpleasant is actually secondary. Pleasant and unpleasant is secondary. We need to look at the effects.

Tibetan teacher Togme Sangpo said: "Sense pleasures are like saltwater. The more we indulge, the more we thirst." You have look at what the effect is. Conversely, we can see, sometimes you can see this in your meditation: when the mind is gathered in meditation, it's a little bit quiet, and there's a kind of collectedness to the mind, you can experience that moment, see if you can see it and feel it, see it and actually feel it as a freedom, as a release. One is, in that time, when the mind is gathered here and not spinning outwards, it's actually a freedom. It's a release from sense desire. And to actually experience that as release.

A lot of voices in the culture don't want us to make that connection, that there's a freedom in renouncing sense desire. In a way, the economy a little bit rests on, you know, feeding consumerism, not seeing the freedom, the release in putting it down, letting it go, unhooking. How many ads have you seen advertising renunciation? [laughter] I've never seen -- I don't know. Maybe I have, but I don't remember it. I probably would remember it. I don't remember it.

Another really important question is: what's the effect? What's the effect of sense desire on my heart, on my capacity as a human being to love? Really important question. Now, listening to a talk like this -- and I'm sure a talk like this is landing in very different places in the hall; that's fine. What's the effect? Can seem like this business of sense desire has no connection with my heart's capacity to love. What have they got to do with each other? And we say, "What I really want from the Dharma is an open heart. I want my heart to open. And this kind of talk, or a talk about sense desire, or a teaching about sense desire has nothing to do with that. I want my heart to open. I want an open heart." The Mettā Sutta, the sutta on loving-kindness, begins (paraphrasing), if you want to open your heart, if you want a heart skilled in goodness, if you want to know that, you should be (and now, direct quote) "contented and easily satisfied." Continues to say: "Frugal in your ways" -- very clear connection there.

Another passage of the Buddha: "Whoever has turned to renunciation, turned to non-attachment of the mind is filled with an all-embracing love, and freed from thirsting after life" -- or it could say, "thirsting after becoming." There's a very clear relationship here. And the beautiful thing is we can actually see that. Again, if there's enough mindfulness, if the mindfulness has a certain degree of subtlety -- not that big a deal, but a certain degree of subtlety, can actually see, when there's grasping after sense pleasures, if you pay attention in a delicate way to the heart area, the area of the heart centre, you actually feel it close. You feel it close in the movement of grasping towards sense pleasure. And you may feel, as you practise letting go of that, it actually opens. We can feel this opening and closing of the heart centre. It's very clear. It's a very clear chain of connection. Actually, you can see it in others too. You can see it in others.

So is it possible to make a distinction between, we could say, pleasure on one hand -- and, difficult with words now -- but pleasure on the one hand, and, say, spiritual joy -- and I'm not really happy with both those words, but -- spiritual joy on the other hand? Meaning, am I doing this thing, engaging in this thing just for the sake of the momentary feeling of sense pleasure? Or is there something in my connection, in my engagement, that's opening me to a sense of connection, to a sense of wonder, to a sense of the vast mystery of things, the incredible diversity of things, the uniqueness of each moment? So one is opening the heart, and one is not. There is a difference there. There's a difference in movement. Can we begin to discern these?

Now, I'm not sure about time. I wanted to talk about sex a little bit. [laughs] Someone whispering, "Go for it!" up front! [laughter] I will do, but then I just ask your patience. I might go a little bit over an hour. We don't often talk about sex in the Dharma, and I'm actually not going to talk a lot about it. I was teaching in America a while ago, and sitting around the table, and there were a lot of teachers around the table, having lunch. And something had come up -- I won't go into it -- something had come up, and it was around people -- it's hard to explain, but it was around people viewing sexuality as kind of part of the path in a certain way. And it wasn't that skilful. But it was just interesting to see, a very quick reaction from a lot of people was, "That's completely wrong. And the Buddha taught" -- and I remember one teacher saying, "How can that ...? The Buddha taught the end of craving, and the end of craving sense desire!" And it was immediate reaction. And in the very next breath or mouthful, actually, said, "This is a fantastic meal. This is my favourite meal." [laughter]

And it was almost like one form of sense desire was not okay, really not okay, just immediately. And another form was really okay. It didn't feel right at the moment, but I actually didn't say anything at that moment. Didn't feel totally comfortable with that, and we actually don't talk much about it. And I don't think the retreat format is the best place to talk about it, so that's why I'm not going to go into it that much. But a lot of the similar questions kind of come in. If we, in relationship to sexuality -- is it authentic? This is a strange word, but is it authentic, our sexual desire? Is it coming from a deep place? And what's actually feeding sense desire in general?

Sexuality is very rich, and very deep, and very complex. Sometimes, sexual desire comes up, and we're using it because there's something we don't want to be with. And we're using sex in that way. Sometimes, we use it because what we're actually after is wanting to feel wanted. We want to feel wanted, and the sex is part of getting that. Sometimes -- and these are all just highlighting some not-so-great reasons, but sometimes, it's our self-image. How much of our sexuality is wrapped up with our self-image? And then we're actually engaging in sexuality, and there's something about reinforcing a certain self-image -- of being attractive, of being desirable, of being sexy, of perceiving ourselves in a certain way, because we feel others perceive us in a certain way. Sometimes it's just that there's boredom, and it leads to sexual desire.

Those were all kind of negativities, but on the other hand, am I blocking some life energy, the sexual energy? Am I blocking something that's actually very authentic, a very deep facet of life energy? It's something very beautiful. Am I, as a practitioner, even using, maybe, spiritual teachings to kind of block that? You get two ends of this. Or, am I stoking up, and again, feeding something which is a little bit not so authentic? There's a lot to it. What is sex serving? What is it serving? Because it can serve a lot of different things in our life. It can serve a lot of different things. What is it serving? And the same kind of questions: what are its effects? What does it lead to? Does it lead to the opening of the heart, the loving, the connection, or does it not? And when does it, and when does it not? [48:40] Actually, that's all I'm going to say about that.

Going back to what I was talking about earlier, this sense of wanting connection, so a person practising, and relating to this question of sense desire, because of the question of connection -- so absolutely, yes, we want to be connected. We want to be connected. We want to be connected to the earth. We want to be connected to the senses and to life in that way. But if we want to be connected, we can't just say yes to the pleasant. Oftentimes, people use this as a bit of an excuse to lean towards the pleasant. So yes, be connected. But then you have to include -- we have to include the unpleasant and the humdrum, boring neutral. So as much interest in the cold, rainy day, which we seem to be getting a lot of at the moment -- the cold, rainy day, the pain in the body, the tasteless food, the sitting in the body, and there are just ordinary sensations. As much interest in the everyday, in the ordinary, and even the unpleasant as there is in the pleasant.

So there's this famous Zen story -- it has a few different versions -- of a Zen master, and somehow he's contrived to find himself hanging off a cliff. Many of you will know this story. And he's hanging on to a vine that's keeping him from plunging. And there are different variations of it. And in one, if I get it right, in one variation, a couple of mice come, and they start gnawing at the vine. So somehow, it's impossible, and it's clear he's going to fall, that he's got no choice. And a strawberry is growing right there. And his last conscious moment: reaches over, takes the strawberry, puts it in the mouth -- "Ahhh, delicious!" -- and then plummets to his death.

It's interesting how we hear a story like that. Again, why not delight in the neutral? Why is it the pleasant that we take there? Why a strawberry? Why not a piece of cow dung? "Mm!" [laughter] Or the neutral: "Oh, look at that. Another grey sky!" [whistles] Sometimes people use the language of non-duality: "No, I'm into pleasantness because I'm into non-duality. I like being open to pleasantness because I'm into non-duality." But real non-duality is not making a duality between pleasant and unpleasant. There's as much interest and love and exploration of the unpleasant and the neutral as there is of the pleasant. If we can begin really, genuinely in our life opening things up in that way, as deeply interested in exploring the unpleasant and the neutral and the pleasant, then something may begin to be possible for us. Some other aspect may begin to be possible.

I've said a lot already, but I actually think the deepest problem with sense desire is something I haven't even mentioned yet. It's the deepest problem, and it's not often even -- it's not obvious, and it's not often mentioned. The deepest problem with sense desire is that it reinforces the seeming reality of what comes to us through the senses. It reinforces the seeming solidity of the world, the seeming inherent existence of things. It reinforces that. So the world of appearances, the world of the senses -- we're reinforcing that sense of it being something real and solid, and it's obscuring, hiding the emptiness of the world of appearances, and blocking a movement towards what might be, or we could say what is transcendent to the world of appearances. This is something not even popular, even in the Dharma world much any more.

What might there be that's actually transcendent [knocks on something three times] to all this, transcendent to the senses, transcendent to the mind? And if I'm just reinforcing sense desire, might I be -- to the degree that I do that -- shutting the door to seeing and understanding deeply the emptiness of the world of appearances, and going beyond that to something immensely more treasurable? So in deep Dharma teaching, the objects in the world, and the sense objects, the objects of the senses, are not reality. This is not reality in the ultimate sense. And chasing sense objects reinforces the non-seeing of that, reinforces us taking all this as reality.

To me, this is the deepest problem with it. This is the real thing, why it's such a big deal, because we don't suffer a lot in the West over not getting sense pleasures. We can keep getting them! There's not a lot of suffering involved. But something else might be blocked.

So we might want, as part of our path, "I want to be with, I want to open to life, the senses, connection, etc." Beautiful, but it's not the point of the path. It can't be the ultimate point of the path. Something very -- I don't know what the word is -- odd or mysterious happens to someone who's dedicated to this kind of practice. So we come to practice, and we start giving attention to our experience, giving attention to the things of the senses. And we give attention, we bring mindfulness to. And what happens, as I said before, is the senses start to come alive. The world starts to come alive for us. The grass actually looks greener. You can see it sometimes on retreat. We taste more. We experience more vividly. Life is more vivid. We become more connected. We feel more connected.

But as we go on in our path, if we're really dedicated to this, and we keep bringing a consistency of mindfulness, a fullness of mindfulness -- but even more than that, a non-reactivity as part of the mindfulness -- so part of what mindfulness means is a non-reactivity. It's letting go of our reactivity -- pushing away what we don't like, dragging towards us what we like. So as we keep bringing, we just keep bringing a consistent, full, non-reactive mindfulness to experience, something odd starts to happen. We began by experience getting more and more vivid, more and more there and present for us. It begins to reach a point where it begins to actually fade. Experience begins to blur, to dissolve, to become less substantial. It feels less substantial. All I'm doing is giving mindfulness in a very caring way, non-reactive mindfulness in a very caring way.

So if being with and being connected to and opening to is the point of my practice, I've got a problem there. I've got a real problem there, because it means that I can't actually have too much mindfulness, because I'm going to go beyond or through, in a way, objects. So I have to be careful not to practise too much. [laughs] There's a real problem there.

So often, oftentimes, I've heard, we hear, we might say as human beings, "I want to experience X, Y, Z before I die." And they've got a list. People have lists, often. "This is one of the things I want to do before I die." But in a way, saying that, feeling that, even, having that kind of view -- we haven't understood the nature of experience. We haven't understood deeply the nature of experience. So for the Buddha, and in the Dharma, experience is not to be pursued for itself, as an end in itself, but for where it leads, and the potential that through experience, insight -- through experience, through that insight, freedom and love. So it's leading to insight, to freedom, and love.

And you know, the thing is that, for us as human beings, for us as practitioners, as dedicated practitioners, we can taste something other, something totally other, something really other than all this, what comes to us through the senses. We can know something completely other than that, and the taste, the knowing of that something other, of the seeming reality of all this, as we taste that, the more we taste that, we are "unhooked," "unbound" is the Buddha's words. We let go naturally of all the places that we're hooked, including sense desire. And to the degree, again, that we let go of sense desire, the more possible it is that we taste this something other. And that something other, completely other, there's freedom there. It brings a freedom, a radical kind of freedom, a whole other level of freedom. And as tastes go, as tastes go, nothing compares. Nothing compares to that. There's nothing of that -- nothing in the realm of that. And this is available to us.

Let's have a little bit of quiet together.