Some practioners may encounter challenges when approaching the slippery phenomenon of desire. How can we understand the types of desire in our own experience? Can the concepts we as practioners invent related to our experiences of desire be used to help each other to investigate our own experience of desire and be better placed to abandon. Are these inquiries premature should we more often focus on the first noble truth?
Desire (chanda) is essential. Not only in the general sense addressed in SN 51.15:
They formerly had the desire to attain perfection, but when they attained perfection the corresponding desire faded away.
…but also in the more strict sense of AN 4.13 and AN 10.51, among many others. Another well-known sutta on the topic is AN 4.159, whereby Ananda instructs a mischievous nun to abandon craving by means of craving (conceit by means of conceit). So, even though there is a basic sensual element for the ordinary person to contend with at the outset when attempting to set up the goal to strive for, the above are not in the direction of coarse sensual desire (kāmacchanda).
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From the Buddha’s own progression we see suffering as the initial experience sparking search. Having seen suffering, the impulse is to remove it. Later followed isolation from companions and the purification of mind in removing sensuality, ill-will, and harmfulness. This involves personal investigation; it is only when something is understood it is permanently removed, which is the factor of insight:
“As I noticed that it leads to my own affliction, it subsided. As I noticed that it leads to the affliction of others… to the affliction of both… it obstructs discernment, promotes vexation, & does not lead to Unbinding, it subsided. Whenever thinking imbued with sensuality had arisen, I simply abandoned it, dispelled it, wiped it out of existence.”—Majhima Nikaya 19
From the same period the Buddha-to-be points out the essential replacement by alternative pleasure, both insight and tranquillity are necessary:
“I myself, before my Awakening, when I was still an unawakened bodhisatta, saw as it actually was with right discernment that sensuality is of much stress, much despair, & greater drawbacks, but as long as I had not attained a rapture & pleasure apart from sensuality, apart from unskillful mental qualities, or something more peaceful than that, I did not claim that I could not be tempted by sensuality. But when I saw as it actually was with right discernment that sensuality is of much stress, much despair, & greater drawbacks, and I had attained a rapture & pleasure apart from sensuality, apart from unskillful mental qualities, or something more peaceful than that, that was when I claimed that I could not be tempted by sensuality.”—Majhima Nikaya 14
Thoughts of sensuality are classed as a moderate impurity, and this overall progressive removal can be investigated further in study of the fetters:
"There are these gross impurities in gold: dirty sand, gravel, & grit. The dirt-washer or his apprentice, having placed [the gold] in a vat, washes it again & again until he has washed them away.
"When he is rid of them, there remain the moderate impurities in the gold: coarse sand & fine grit. He washes the gold again & again until he has washed them away.
“When he is rid of them, there remain the fine impurities in the gold: fine sand & black dust. The dirt-washer or his apprentice washes the gold again & again until he has washed them away.”
[…]
“In the same way, there are these gross impurities in a monk intent on heightened mind: misconduct in body, speech, & mind. These the monk — aware & able by nature — abandons, dispels, wipes out of existence. When he is rid of them, there remain in him the moderate impurities: thoughts of sensuality, ill will, & harmfulness. These he abandons, dispels, wipes out of existence. When he is rid of them there remain in him the fine impurities: thoughts of his caste, thoughts of his home district, thoughts related to not wanting to be despised. These he abandons, dispels, wipes out of existence.” Anguttara Nikaya 3.100
The first level are transgressions through the body. The moderate level involves removal of thoughts. Desire for improvement in the practice is a fine impurity, so is a necessity throughout until the final stage.
The strategies for removal of desire are found in the four endeavours of right effort:
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/waytoend.html#ch5
Thankyou for going to the effort of replying to my post. Sadhu!