Desires : A Study Guide, compiled by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

[Snowbird]

A new anthology has been published: Desires : A Study Guide, compiled by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

It’s available on the web, pdf, and ebook (epub/kindle).

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
  • Readings
  • Basic Principles
  • The First Noble Truth
  • The Second Noble Truth
  • Sensuality
  • Becoming & Non-becoming
  • The Fourth Noble Truth
  • The Third Noble Truth & Beyond

From the introduction:

All phenomena, the Buddha once said, are rooted in desire.
Everything we think, say, or do—every experience—comes from desire.
Even we come from desire. We were reborn into this life because of our
desire to be. Consciously or not, our desires keep redefining our sense
of who we are. Desire is how we take our place in the causal matrix of
space and time. The only thing not rooted in desire is nibbāna,
because it’s the end of all phenomena and lies even beyond the
Buddha’s use of the word “all.” But the path that takes you to nibbāna
is rooted in desire—in skillful desires. The path to liberation pushes
the limits of skillful desires to see how far they can go.

…

…Here are some of the arguments these voices may propose,
along with a few effective responses:

Trying to manipulate your desires like this is unnatural. Actually,
you’re already manipulating your desires all the time, when you
choose one desire over another, so you might as well learn to do it
skillfully. And there are plenty of people out there only too happy to
manipulate your desires for you—think of all the advertisements
clamoring for your attention—so it’s better to put the manipulation in
more trustworthy hands: your own.

Trying to change your desires is an attack on your very self. This
argument works only if you give your sense of self—which is really just
a grab bag of desires—more solidity than it deserves. You can turn the
argument on its head by noting that since your “self” is a perpetually
changing line-up of strategies for happiness, you might as well try
changing it in a direction more likely to achieve true happiness.

To think of “skillful” and “unskillful” desires is dualistic and
judgmental. You don’t want non-dualistic mechanics working on your
car, or non-dualistic surgeons operating on your brain. You want
people who can tell what’s skillful from what’s not. If you really value
your happiness, you’ll demand the same discernment in the person
most responsible for it: yourself.

It’s too goal-oriented. Just accept things as they are in the present.
Every desire tells you that things in the present are limited and
lacking. You either accept the desire or accept the lack. To accept both
at once is to deny that either has any real truth. To try to dwell
peacefully in the tension between the two—in a “path of no craving” to
be rid of either—is what the Buddha called limited equanimity, and
what one Thai forest master called the equanimity of a cow.

…

The PDF is 89 letter size pages, just to give you an idea of the size.