One Desire in Charge

The practice of meditation is for the purpose of purifying the mind. Some people don’t like to hear that their minds are impure. But the fact that there’s greed, aversion, and delusion—those are impurities. The fact that you’re suffering—that’s an impurity. We’re going to clean those things out.

And what do we use to clean them out? We use the desire for true happiness. Not all desires are bad. After all, chanda, the desire that lies at the base of concentration, is one of the bases for success. But you have to turn it into a determination. In other words, it’s not just an idle desire that comes and goes along with other desires that come and go. You have to make that the steady desire of the mind. Once that becomes a steady desire, then other parts of the mind take on a new cast. You see them from a new perspective.

Otherwise, our life is like a boat in a river where lots of different rivers are coming together. Sometimes the river from the north pushes us south, sometimes the river from the south pushes us to the north. Or we can make a comparison with the dust motes in the air. You see dust motes in a flash of sunlight. They move around, but there’s no real purpose to where they’re going. They just get bumped around. That’s the way it is with most people’s desires.

When you come to meditate, though, you take one desire and you put it in charge. Anything else has to go along with the flow of that desire if it’s going to be accepted. If it’s not in line with that desire, then you have to put it aside. This requires that you talk to yourself quite a bit as you meditate, to give yourself encouragement, to give yourself a steady sense of where you need to be. This is why we have to be mindful, to remember where we’re going—and ardent, making sure that we don’t suddenly shift direction. Because the mind can change direction faster than anything else.

So. Make sure you have a good desire in charge. And recognize it as a desire that’s your friend. Other desires may complain that it’s being harsh; it’s being unfeeling. But then where are they going to take you? Just spinning around, floating around, without any direction. Whereas if you can give yourself a good direction and stick with it, then life becomes a lot more meaningful. It’s not going to be easy. But it’s going to be good.