- A Solution to the Paradox
of Desire in Buddhism
- A. L. Herman
If one of the chief aims, if not the only aim, of Buddhism is the cessation of desire and
desiring then two questions immediately arise: first, what is the nature of this desire
that is to be eliminated? and, second, how does one go about the business of eliminating
it? Both questions are central not only to the Buddhist and even the Hindu traditions but
to any philosophy or religion that holds that desire per se is a barrier to ultimate human
happiness. Furthermore, all of these traditions face the same paradox in their endeavors
to explain the process of the elimination of desire, namely, the paradox of desire.
If I desire to cease desiring then I have
not ceased all desire after all; I have merely replaced one species of desiring by
another. The paradox of desire points to the practical contradiction or frustration
involved in the desire to stop all desiring and states simply that those who desire to
stop all desiring will never be successful.
"Desire" can be taken to mean
any lusting or craving after that which one does not now possess. Desiring generally
entails wanting any object or condition that is absent at the time of the wanting. But
desiring may also entail any wanting, needing, or wishing for what one already has, for
example, wanting the present object or condition to continue into the future. One of the
strong emotions that fuels desire, therefore, is the fear of not attaining what is
presently absent or the fear of losing what is honestly at hand. In either case it is the
fear of the absence or the threatened absence of an object or condition that produces
desire, and the greater the fear of not achieving or not retaining the object or
condition, the more intense is the desire. Thus anxiety and fear play a major role in
defining the nature and intensity of desire.
Intense desires are called
"lusts" while weaker desires are called "needs." Desires for sex and
property may be called "lusts" while desires for food, shelter, and clothing may
be called "needs." But these categories can change with the circumstances. For
example, if I regularly enjoy the sexual attentions of my four wives, my lusts may shrivel
to near zero. In fact satisfying my lusts as well as satisfying my desires, in general,
are surely bona fide ways of eliminating desire, at least temporarily. For example, the
hedonist has found a way to attaining the control and cessation of desire; he simply gives
in to all of them and this method works as long as his body and mind remain active and
healthy. Further, if I am starving and naked, my desire for food and clothing ceases to be
merely a need and may in fact become a lust. The Marxists and the other contemporary
economic levelers have found ways to attain the cessation of desire by redistributing the
economic goods of our society; and this method, too, works as long as there are sufficient
goods to be leveled.
The Buddhists have discovered, however,
that neither hedonism nor leveling gets at the root cause of desiring. The satisfaction of
desire does not prevent desire for other absent objects or conditions from arising in the
future. The Buddhist solution does not lie in manipulating external objects, but rather it
lies in manipulating internal states of consciousness by cutting off the fuel of desire
and by blowing out the flame of desire, once and for all. But such manipulation of
internal and subjective states of consciousness brings us back once again to the paradox
of desire.
To solve the paradox of desire, we must
turn our attention to the nature of desire itself, and to the several kinds of desire
involved in desiring and to its cessation.
Let me begin by distinguishing between
three types of desire to which the paradox of desire seems to be pointing. First, there is
the most important desire, namely, the desire for desirelessness, ("desire(1)").
Second, there is the desire in desirelessness, namely, the desire we are trying to
eliminate ("desire(2)''). Finally, there is the desire that is the result of desiring
desirelessness, that is, the type of desire that the desire, for desire (2) lessness
produces ("desire(3)"). Thus, the first of four premises of the paradox of
desire states:
1. Desire (1), for desire (2) lessness leads to desire (3).
Desire (1) may be intense (a lust), or it may be weak (a need), depending on the
perseverance, passion, and history of the devotee. Desire (2) is the desire that we have
been speaking of above, namely, the lusts, cravings, and needs of ordinary existence that
lead to the suffering and misery that the Buddha spoke to so eloquently. The condition
that desire (1) attempts to achieve, of course, is the eradication of this desire,. But
this desire (1) for desire(2) lessness leads in turn to desire (3), a species of desire
that is merely the result of the juxtaposition of the two previous desires. The question
that remains to be answered now, of course, is: what is the nature of desire (3)?
The paradox of desire would lead us to
believe that desire, is not ultimately different from desire(2) and that the resultant
desire, desire(3), is also not ultimately different from desire(2). Hence, the paradox of
desire assumes that no matter what I do I can never completely eliminate some species or
other of desire(2), that is, the desire that we wanted to eliminate in the first place. Of
course, one way out of the paradox would be to argue strenuously that desire(1) and
desire(3) are ultimately different from desire(2); or, more to the point, that desire(1)
or desire(3) are not desires at all, or not really bad desires, but rather good and useful
desires. But we reject this, primarily because the Buddhists themselves seem to reject it:
desire, by whatever subscripts it happens to be disguised, is still desire.
Another way out is simply to accept the
paradox of desire and then see what happens. And what happens involves us with two other
premises necessary to the paradox:
2. Desire (1) is a species of desire (2).
That is to say, desire (1) for the condition of desirelessness is really a desire (2),
pure and simple.
3. Desire (3) is a species of desire (2).
That is to say, ultimate desire (3) that results from desire (1) for desire (2) lessness
is also just another desire (2), pure and simple. But then the paradox is shown fully and
completely by this fourth and final step in the argument:
4.But if desire (1) and desire (3) are merely species of desire (2) then desire (2)
lessness is impossible.
Thus the paradox of desire which says that it is impossible to eliminate desire (2) since
it would continue to exist as either desire (1) or desire (3). The
"impossibility" spoken of here may be a logical impossibility, that is, it may
be self-contradictory to desire a condition of desirelessness, or it may be a practical
impossibility, that is, it may be self-frustrating to desire a condition of
desirelessness. In what follows I want to focus on this practical impossibility or
practical contradiction entailed by the paradox of desire and show that, for Buddhism,
this is a very salutary contradiction, indeed.
Realizing the practical contradiction that
desirelessness can never be attained, because desiring desirelessness produces desire,
leads to two consequences: in the first place realizing the contradiction produces
frustration in the devotee. Lusting after or needing that which is practically (that is,
in practice) impossible to attain produces frustration and with it misery and suffering.
The devotee has backed himself into a corner from which there is no practical way out.
If there is no practical way out, and if
the frustration that results is a sign of there being no way out, then of course it makes
no sense to advise devotees to stop desiring or to remove the objects of desire in order
to stop the desiring. What then can a devotee do? And what is the use of Buddhism if
it merely points out the contradictions, logical and practical, in the paradox of desire
and then leaves one in the paradox? In other words, even if we grant the contradictions in
the paradox of desire, what is to be done? The answer is: nothing is to be done; there is
nothing one can do because nothing can be done, and that is precisely what Maadhyamika
Mahaayaana Buddhism has been saying all along.
In the second place, realizing the
practical contradiction (that is, truly understanding the import of 4, herein, namely,
that there is no solution to the paradox Of desire) leads to nirvaa.na. Stated as a fifth
and final stage this conclusion would look like this:
5. Realizing the truth of 4 is tantamount to achieving nirvaa.na.
That is to say, seeing that there is no way out of the paradox of desire, understanding
that, as Maadhyamika Buddhism puts it, there is no way to nirvaa.na, no goal to be
desired or achieved, then one "lets go" of the way and the goal. And that
"letting go" leads to, or is, nirvaa.na: For once the devotee realizes that
there is nothing that he can do then there is nothing left to be done. Thus a
philosophical argument leads to rational insight and that insight leads to, or is,
nirvaa.na. "Letting go," after all, is the condition of desirelessness, and it
is achieved following the frustration of knowing that it cannot be achieved, that is, it
cannot be regarded as a goal to be striven for, worked for, sought after--in a word,
desired. Hence it is not a question of "damned if you do and damned if you
don't" but rather 'damned if you do but saved if you don't.' And that 'don't-ing' is
not the result of conscious lusting or needing. It is the result of giving up altogether.
The impatient critic might ask at this
juncture: what is the point of all the Buddhist texts, philosophies, theories, and
injunctions, if at the end we are told merely, 'Let it all go'? The point, of course, is
that these were all necessary to bring one to the realization that they are not at all
necessary to nirvaa.na-something the devotee could not know until he had been through all
the texts, philosophies, theories, and injunctions. As a child and before I could walk I
had to toddle (if that is what toddlers do), and before I could toddle I had to crawl. I
do not cry out with impatience, "Why did I have to crawl and toddle? Why could not I
have walked to begin with?" More to the point, the texts, philosophies, and
theories all helped to back me into the corner that I found myself in; in other words, the
paradox had to be experienced before escape from it was possible. The philosophic
realization was necessary before the rational insight was possible, and that rational
insight, namely, that there is no way out, was necessary before "letting go"
could occur, and "letting go" was necessary before nirvaa.na was possible. This
is not to suggest, of course, that this is the only way to nirvaa.na; the Mahaayaana
Buddhists have other "techniques" as well for the attainment of nirvaa.na:
Just as a child might not go through the
crawling and toddling stages but suddenly one day rise up from the cradle and
spontaneously walk, or, with the help of a parent a child might walk without going through
the crawling and toddling stages.
But this philosophic realization as a
solution to the paradox of desire is the method that ultimately passes through China in
the first or second centuries A.D. as a heritage from Maadhyamika or ‘Suunyavaada
Buddhism and finds its home eventually in Japan, somewhat altered and improved, where it
becomes known as Zen Buddhism.
(A. L. Herman is Professor of Philosophy at
the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.)
Transcribed for Buddhism
Today by Thich Nu Lien Hoa