The Philosophy of Desire in the Buddhist Pali Canon

David Webster

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781134279401
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhism

David Webster explores the notion of desire as found in the Buddhist Pali Canon. Beginning by addressing the idea of a 'paradox of desire', whereby we must desire to end desire, the varieties of desire that are articulated in the Pali texts are examined. A range of views of desire, as found in Western thought, are presented as well as Hindu and Jain approaches. An exploration of the concept of ditthi (view or opinion) is also provided, exploring the way in which 'holding views' can be seen as analogous to the process of desiring. Other subjects investigated include the mind-body relationship, the range of Pali terms for desire, and desire's positive spiritual value. A comparative exploration of the various approaches completes the work.

1 DESIRE IN WESTERN THOUGHT

I shall go down
to the lovers’ well
And wash this wound
that will not heal
beloved soul
what shall you see
nothing at all
yet eye to eye
depths of non-being
perhaps too clear
my desire dying
as I desire.¹

Introduction

This chapter has something of a mountain to climb. It may seem a foolhardy expedition, given the looming bulk of the Western philosophical canon; indeed, it probably contains enough tomes of metaphysical and analytic speculation to build an actual mountain. Nonetheless, others might suggest that the quantity within this great body of thought given over to the explicit consideration of desire would amount to only a modest molehill.

Some have gone as far as to suggest that the whole approach of this philosophical canon is opposed to engaging with desire, seeing it as the antithesis of the philosophical telos:

No doubt the bulk of the Western tradition has sustained skepticism toward the philosophical possibilities of desire, and desire has been figured time and again as philosophy’s Other. As immediate, arbitrary, purposeless, and animal, desire is that which requires to be gotten beyond; it threatens to undermine the postures of indifference and dispassion which have in various modalities conditioned philosophical thinking.²

This does not mean that Western philosophy leaves the subject unexamined, but is in line with the manner in which we find it treated. As I discovered when I began researching this chapter, much of what has been written consists of asides, digressions and adjuncts to the matter ostensibly under scrutiny. This is not universal, and combining the direct engagements and the sideways glances provides a significant quantity of material. In reviewing this material, I have two primary purposes.

First, I aim to clarify the notion of desire. Is it an impulse, an emotion, a sub-class of willing? Is it a sublimation or expression of our genes’ reproductive imperative? These issues pervade this chapter. In a way, the word ‘desire’ is a curse to Western thinkers – it means too much and too little. On one level it is a simple mental attraction to an object, while on a broader view it could be applied to all mental states – for all mental states might be said to take an object, and an attractor–repellent relationship to that object.

Within this chapter, this diversity of interpretation of the very nature of desire is revealed. Furthermore, I show here the work that ‘desire’ – as a concept³ – is made to do. For the Stoics it is part of a futile striving that needs to be reined in, in the work of Deleuze it forms part of a critique of capitalism, in Nietzsche it is, in part, an element of breaking free from ‘herd’ morality, and more.

As we shall see, analyses in Buddhism also have very specific ends to which the theories of desire are orientated.⁴ Indeed, if we wanted to examine the motives of those writing on desire, we would find as much diversity as we do in definitions of desire.

The second aim of this chapter is to find ways of theorising desire. Ways of locating desire within conceptual schemes are one thing – but we do need to be alert to the dangers pointed out by Nietzsche of our ‘Will-to-system’.⁵ My goal is more to demonstrate the existence of these discourses of desire. What I will show is that in the West there are numerous ways in which desire is conceptualised. We might go so far as to argue that there exist competing models of desire, and we shall see that some more contemporary writers look back with scorn and suspicion on some of the ways ‘desire’ has been viewed in the past.

One aspect of Western thought I do not seek to engage with in detail is what Patrick Fuery calls ‘a radical politicisation of desire’,⁶ in the work of writers such as Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. These writers engage with the ways in which desire can be said to be ‘socially constructed’, and the manner in which sexual desire is related to issues of gender and sexuality. I have to set aside these discourses, partly for reasons of space, and partly because my focus here is already fairly wide, and would be in danger of becoming overly diffuse were I to permit myself to extend it any further.

Another noteworthy feature of Western writing on desire is just how much of it seems to feel that a discussion of desire is the same thing as a discussion of sexual desire. A number of texts consulted in the process of this research seemed to view ‘desire’ as synonymous with sexual desire.⁷ For this, perhaps we are to blame Freud.⁸ He seems, at least in the popular imagination, to be partly responsible for the view that all desire is sublimated sexual lust.

To attribute such a view to the writing of Freud is disingenuous, but he does seem to give the Id – in a move reflecting the Platonic tri-partite Soul – a significant and powerful sexual component. As Leslie Stevenson notes:

It is a vulgar misinterpretation of Freud to say that he traced all human behaviour to sexual motivations. What is true is that he gave sexuality a much wider scope in human life than had been formerly recognized.⁹

It is worth noting that Freud does not derive his theory exclusively from his clinical observations of those in mental distress. Indeed, R. C. Solomon claims:

It is not hard to appreciate the importance of Schopenhauer in Freud’s model of the mind.¹⁰ The libido is an only slightly personalized version of Schopenhauer’s Will, juxtaposed against a rational system of ideas.¹¹

This even extends to the ideal response to this deep-seated drive. The primal thrust of the libido, like the Schopenhauerian Will, is something we struggle to control – for fear of its potentially destructive effect on our lives. Solomon notes how Freud sees us as in need of a type of liberation from this base appetite:

he insists that we struggle against the libido and, through self-understanding, free ourselves from its power.¹²

Of course a Freudian analyst may not see the life of a bhikkhu as the best way to achieve this,¹³ and see their chastity as an attempt to achieve the repression of the libido rather than liberation from it.

In this project then, desire is not to be taken purely in a sexual context. Indeed, some thinkers might go as far as to suggest that all sexual lust is a sublimated form of a desire for power, or even a general desiring that has no inherent type of object, but that seeks expression through a variety of means. Such approaches may indeed be seen as being a form of Schopenhauer’s assertion that the general Will – which all our smaller acts of willing are examples of – is a prime force with no specific goal itself.¹⁴ This conception, though, is not universal; some see desire working the other way round. This is to see desire as brought about not by some deep inner yearning – from within – but rather as arising from perception. William Blake writes:

Man’s desires are limited by his perceptions; none can desire what he has not perceiv’d.
The desires & perceptions of man, untaught by anything but organs of sense, must be limited to objects of sense.¹⁵

This view may however be seen as relating to what we want, rather than why we want in the first place – and therefore there is no reason that the two views (desire as force arising from within, and the objects of desire arising from perception) need be seen as incompatible. We might argue that Freud, coloured by his clinical experience and personal preoccupations, lays a model over Schopenhauer.

Clearly these different writers are trying to do different things, but they do seem to have one aspect of mutual concern – ethics. Be it therapeutic – as Freud is and Schopenhauer aspires to be – or philosophical, religious or political, the moral status of desire has significance for us all. So pervasive in our consciousness is desire that even the driest of analytic philosophers cannot ultimately suppress this import. When an analytic philosopher seeks to portray their discussion of desire as a neutral, objective account of the relation of belief and intent, or to identify belief with either action or linguistic usage, they may succeed in eradicating all explicit references to ‘soft’ topics such as ethics and human lived experience. However, the answers to these driest of questions do have ethical implications. What and how we choose; how we have meta-desires, which do or do not over-ride first-order desires; how desire can become addiction; these are all issues which the conclusions of analytical investigation into desire will have consequences for, even if they are left unstated.

A final note though before I discuss these various views of desire, for most do seem to rely on a specific model of reality – a metaphysical backdrop to their notion of desire. This seems to represent the final victory of Heraclitus, in that nearly all writers on the topic concede the ever-changing nature of the world. Of course, we might question this assertion – what of the Platonic forms? By ‘world’, I am here referring (in a Kantian sense) to the phenomenal world – the world as the object of our lived experience. It is indeed Plato’s great integrationist project with regard to pre-Socratics such as Heraclitus and Parmenides¹⁶ that results in the idea of the forms. By having the forms take on the roles of permanence and stability, Plato is able to concede the world of experience to change and flux. The majority of the views presented in this chapter seem predicated on this belief in reality as flux, or at the very least subject to ch...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Desire, Morality and Approaches
• 1. Desire In Western Thought
• 2. Desire In Non-Buddhist Indian Religion
• 3. Buddhism and Desire: The Varieties of Desire
• 4. Buddhism and Desire: The Dynamics of Desire
• 5. Conclusion: Desire and the Transformation of Living
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography