An Illusory Trap – 09.01.11

Excerpt:  “Buddhists say that there are three types of desire.  The first one, the lowest one, is the desire for pleasure.  Then they say that more refined minds realize that what the desire for pleasure really was, is the desire to be, and that that’s the real underlying intention of all the various particular desires and objects of demand and lust…  All of those objects that we think cause us pleasure actually do not, but they give us a sense that we are.  They give us a sense that we can control something out there “therefore I am”…  But of course the object is always a disappointment because you don’t really want that object.  It’s not it, and it doesn’t give you the truth of your being, and therefore it is always something that turns into pain rather than pleasure. And so the ego eventually settles for the equation “I am suffering therefore I am”…  But that doesn’t do it either because it [the ego] realizes that it is actually suffering because it is not, but it wants to get out of it suffering so the third kind of desire is the desire not to be…  This creates a paradox of who is desiring not to be.  The very fact of having the desire makes it seem that you are something, and therefore the desire necessarily fails in its effect…  All of this is the logic of Buddhism that attempts to provide a way out of the trap of desire, which is ultimately the trap of an illusory sort of being trying to make itself feel real and failing again and again repetitively, but because this being is unreal to start with there is really no reason to find a way out of a trap which is also an illusion…"  Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 01, 2011.