The Restless Mind
How often is your mind invaded by the desire to engage in sensuality on a daily basis?
In the last few days my mind has been constantly badgered by the thought of wanting to eat a kebab, and I got to say its been unpleasant resisting it.
In my life so far, until I came across the Dhamma, I had been following my desires with the concept that achieving the desired sense object was where satisfaction and happiness was.
This desire to have a kebab gave me an opportunity to reflect on the dhamma, and here are a few thoughts.
There is no object outside of the mind which has an agenda in this world, for example, the kebab has no intention of wanting to be eaten or appearing desirable. The mind is where this is all created. It is the minds projection onto the kebab which makes the kebab appear irresistible and desirable. The body also has no role in wanting to have the kebab…since its just a body, an amalgamation of biological processes and chemical reactions. It will take whatever is eaten, process it and repackage it, that’s all. But the wanting is created at the level of the mind. The mind wants the kebab but its the body which receives it. How unfortunate is that!
Secondly there is a view that fulfilling these desires through engaging in sensuality is how you can enjoy the world, and so that is what we do everyday. A moment isn’t given to question the nature of a desire when it arises, instead we follow it till we achieve the desired sense object. The only problem is that we have been constantly deceiving ourselves thinking that the satisfaction was in the desired sense object.
But take a moment to think about this… when a desire arises, what would happen if you didn’t follow through in achieving the desired sense object?
You would start to feel the mental pressure build within and it becomes very unpleasant. This very unpleasant state puts you into a negative net mental state and so when you finally achieve that desired sense object, the relief of the pressure is masked as satisfying or happiness. The longer the mental pressure brews, the greater the relief. Thus desire is unpleasant in its very nature which is really the reason why we are constantly seeking the desired goal (for the relief, but we think that is happiness). Resisting a desire makes this unpleasant nature more apparent, you start to lose concentration and focus.
But fulfilling these sensual desires are also not the answer because what would happen if one day you were to lose one of the senses e.g. you got into an accident which caused the damage to some of your facial structures and you ended up losing the sense of taste! Now this would be a dire situation because you will now have to deal with the unpleasant desire of wanting to experience tasty food but you no longer have the sense of taste to experience it, that is, you can no longer can relieve yourself of the mental pressure.
The more we go down the route of escaping the pressure by relieving through sense objects, the more we convince and strengthen the view that the sense objects is the solution. It is not a solution but merely a Band-Aid masquerading as a one stop solution.
Keen to hear some your thoughts on this!
Just a thought…
Imagine this for a second. You have a brain tumour growing in your head but you have no clue of its existence, but you have been experiencing some new headaches recently. The headaches have been a bother so you took some Panadol to bring some immediate relief. It comes again soon after the panadol wears off, and you take another one. You just start to accept this as the way of things.
Consider this.. how many panadols are you taking on a daily basis?
When you experience restlessness of the mind, when its overcome by a desire, what do you do? You take a panadol. You do what is necessary to get rid of this unpleasant feeling. The panadol represents the course of action that is taken to achieve the desired sensual object. For e.g. wanting the kebab is the headache, and getting the kebab is the panadol. Just like using a panadol to treat a headache with an underlying sinister cause, this metaphorical use of panadol for the minds vexation is also not the solution. Because… it will come again.
When gripped by desire, there is a sense of hopelessness and need to succumb to the desire. When the headache strikes, at that point in time, you can’t think about all the things that need to be done to get to the bottom of it, all you can think at the moment, is how I can get rid of it. And it would not be helpful to forget about the headache after taking the panadol fooling yourself into thinking that its all done and dusted. This is the opportunistic time to go and investigate and find out why is this happening?
To prevent the next headache coming, you need to do all the work before to be prepared. Just like with creating an action plan and executing it well, it needs to be practiced when the problem isn’t there. If desire strikes, how useful is an action plan that has not been practiced with before? In the downtime, contemplating on the nature of the desire is the action plan, so that when it comes, you are better equipped than unknowingly popping another panadol.
So true, it is really easy to give in to our cravings and desires. Something I have recently started doing is mindful and purposeful eating. Bhante taught us that this is also a form of meditation. First I try to distinguish if it is a true hunger (in which case it is necessary that I eat) or something else e.g. boredom, or emotional triggers like stress or feeling low (in these cases, realise that no amount of food is going to bring true solutions to the problems). When I do eat, I contemplate on what Bhante taught about perceiving/sensing colours, smell, taste, sound, texture, temperature etc of the food in the mind. I am slowly noticing that the more I practice this, the more I can focus on eating food for the purpose of satisfying the hunger. Gradually, I start to believe that the taste, colours and smells do not exist in the food and so eating it is not going to bring me satisfaction for any cravings. So, I crave less over time! I think it can be applied to other outside worldly objects. Do you agree?