Many people in the yoga world these days seem to be confused
about desire and its relationship to spirituality. A lot of yogis are under the
impression that the more you desire, the less spiritual you are, and the more
you grow spiritually, the less you'll desire. According to this logic, sincere
yogis should strive to detach themselves from all desires and one day get to the
point where they want nothing at all. But do the teachings of yoga really
suggest that all desire comes from our "lower nature" or that all our
urges must be written off as non-spiritual? Is desire, in the context of
spirituality, at best the equivalent of a dog chasing its tail, and at worst, a
pathway to spiritual bankruptcy?
To get some clarity on this
issue, it may help to ask yourself why you began yoga in the first place. The
answer, of course, is desire: You wanted something. Maybe you wanted to get rid
of a nagging pain in your lower back or loosen your chronically tight shoulders;
maybe a health care professional suggested you do yoga to help you slow down and
de-stress.
Perhaps you were seeking to
ease some emotional pain or heartache; perhaps you hoped to find more equanimity
so you'd be less likely to snap at your children or an annoying coworker. Maybe
you even longed for more internal silence so you could hear the quiet voice of
intuition and conscience.
More than 2000 years ago,
the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most beloved and elegant Indian sacred texts,
recognized that there were four major reasons that people sought out yoga. From
lowest to highest, the Gita ranked these into four categories: the desire to
reduce pain, the desire to feel better, the desire to gain power (internal and
external) over our lives, and finally, the desire to achieve spiritual
discrimination.
Clearly, the Gita implies
that desire and the spiritual life are not mutually exclusive. In fact,
aspiration is always a necessary step before you can realize a better pose, a
better breath, a better you.
Consider the legacies left
by Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Mother Teresa, none of whom
could be called unimpassioned. Each demonstrated how an individual can better
the world simply through the power of aspiration and will. All noble acts—and
all works of art, both great and not so great—arise out of a deep and
sometimes powerful urge. Throughout history, many highly spiritually realized
men and women have left keen evidence that a close relationship to God makes one
anything but passive and unproductive.
In nature desire is
all-pervasive. Note the zeal of salmon swimming upstream to spawn, the growth of
giant redwoods reaching for sunlight, the drive of birds migrating thousands of
miles.
Below the level of our
perception, the material plane is entirely based on molecular and subatomic
attraction and repulsion. Desire is the motivating force that endows all beings
with the gift of life. After all, neither you nor I would be here if it weren't
for the desire of our parents and the attraction between one egg and one sperm.
The Dharma of Desire
In part, the current
widespread disdain toward desire among yogis may come from a somewhat unbalanced
focus on certain classical teachings. For example, Patanjali, the revered father
of classical yoga, made it clear that ragas and dveshas (likes and
dislikes) are two of the five kleshas (the fundamental restrictions that
cause suffering) and are born from avidya (ignorance or misapprehension
of our true nature). And the fourth patriarch of Zen neatly summed up today's
prevailing attitudes toward desire and spirituality: "The Great Way is easy
for those who have no preferences." But a deeper look into the classical
teachings reveals a sophisticated and nuanced approach to understanding desire.
According to the
Vedas—the
source of yoga science and philosophy, as well as an inspiration for Buddhist
teachings — desire is so inextricably interwoven with who you are that if
aspiration were ever to completely end, so would your life. Vedic wisdom says
that Atman (Soul or Self) has two aspects. On the one hand, it needs or
wants nothing and is a constant emanation and revelation of the Absolute; it is
inseparable from and equivalent to the source of everything. But this paramatman
(supreme soul) describes only half of the story.
Soul also has a second
aspect called the jivamatman (individual soul). Jivamatman is your karmic
blueprint, containing your precise and particular blend of spirit and matter
(spirit's version of no two thumb prints being exactly alike).
Jiva
determines the time and place of your birth, as well as the parents that best
allow you to further your evolution so you can play out your role in the
infinite web of divine will. The jivamatman dictates your singular strengths and
weaknesses, and, at the deepest levels, your aspirations or desires. The jiva is
the seed of your Dharma (purpose), of who you are meant to be. Just as a
cucumber seed's Dharma is to be a cucumber plant, every one of us has our own
Dharma or destiny, a calling to fully bloom as a unique expression of the
Divine.
The point is that
aspiration is no more separate from your soul or essence than wet is from water.
Although it's true that a part of you remains permanently fulfilled and content,
needing or wanting nothing, another part, just as significant, is by its nature
striving. It is essential to embrace both these parts of Self equally. One is
not higher than the other. They are just different expressions of the
playfulness of the one presence that pervades the universe: the dance of dynamic
and static, of seen and seer, of Shakti (limitless creative power) and Shiva
(the static source of everything).
The Vedas teach that
there are four types of desires: artha, kama, dharma, and moksha.
Artha refers to the desire for material comfort. We all require shelter and
security (money, in our culture) to have the freedom to pursue our other needs.
Kama refers to pleasure: sensory gratification, comfort, and sensual intimacy
Dharma, as stated earlier, refers to our purpose—the answer we arrive at by
asking, "What am I here to do?"
Finally, moksha means
spiritual liberation, or freedom. This is the desire that underlies all others,
the desire to directly know your source. In order to achieve its unique destiny,
the individual soul whispers to us all the time through the spontaneous pull of
these four kinds of desires.
Desires Are Not Created Equal
If it’s true that you
need not necessarily give up the lease on your BMW, become celibate, and banish
all your desires to grow spiritually, why do teachings throughout the yoga
tradition insistently caution students to be so circumspect about desire?
Because not all desires are created equal. Desires don't all stream straight
from the soul, paving a direct path to enlightenment.
The problem with desires
isn't that we have them; the problem is that it is so difficult to discern those
that come from the soul and further your growth from those that are neutral or
that enmesh you more and more in confusion, conflict, or pain. How do we know
whether the source of a particular desire is soul or whether it is ego (the
self-image we create to compensate for the spiritual ignorance of not knowing
who we really are)?
How do we know whether the
urge to eat that piece of chocolate cake, to start that new relationship, to
stay home and not go to yoga class (maybe because of that piece of chocolate
cake), or to move across the world is soul leading us toward spiritual evolution
or ego distracting itself from the discomfort of its delusions?
This is a deep question,
one that philosophers have tried to answer for thousands of years. On the one
hand, it's easy to delude ourselves. This is one reason why a trustworthy
teacher, guiding us into appropriate practices, has always been presumed
essential to the path of yoga. After all, we all think we know what we want, but
few of us know what we need.
On the other hand, the yoga
tradition asserts that we should be careful about looking outside of ourselves
for answers. We should always remember that yoga is not so much a set of
philosophical answers; it is a means to achieve a certain quality of experience,
from which flows timeless wisdom and divine love.
The Necessity of Practice
The highest reason
for practicing yoga, as the Gita notes, is spiritual discrimination. In the
classical context, yoga has nothing to do with physical fitness. Yoga is a means
of purification, a way to separate awareness from the fluctuations of the
body-mind, gradually allowing you to see your reactive tendencies and bring them
under conscious control. As anyone who has practiced consistently for some time
can tell you, eventually your clarity and ease spontaneously increase; your life
naturally changes for the better; things, habits, and ideas that were less than
constructive fall away from your life, often without effort. More and more, what
we want becomes what the soul would have us pursue.
It's no wonder so much of
the Gita is dedicated to meditation. Yoga practice is meant to lead us to
meditation, where real knowing and truth reside. The last stage of meditation is
samadhi, which has been described as the state "where all one's
questions are answered.” The deepest questions about how to live won't be
resolved by intellect alone: It is only the silence of meditation, coupled with
the longing to serve a higher purpose, that allows us to be continuously led by
Spirit.
My concern is that many
yogis today, incredibly passionate and clear about what they want out of
physical practice, are much less comfortable, even conflicted, about having
desire elsewhere in their lives. This prejudice against desire has the potential
to breed confusion and self-doubt, as well as guilt, cynicism, and apathy.
But if desire is the sacred
fabric of nature, the force behind all creation and accomplishment, it is vital
that each of us who pursues a deeper knowledge of ourselves through yoga asks,
"What do I really desire?" The answers may be coming from a Source too
important to ignore.
