[image: Inline image 1] Lama Yongden
All scriptures are based on desire, wanting, and what to do about it; what it does to you, and what you do back. It is natural for those who are reflective to want to understand the parables found in World Scripture concerning desire and to compare these with their own life experiences. Often this leads to frustration when one finds that he or she cannot actually read their own adopted religious scriptures in their native language, thus a few parables and key phrases must be overheard at a camp-meet. Go figure. Several years ago I thought I'd like to be a scholar who could write a teach about spiritual paths or a historian of comparative religions. So, after I learned how to meditate I started reading a few books in order to better understand what it was that I was doing. I read MMY's commentary on Bhagavad Gita; I read some yoga sutras and some Tibetan Buddhist books, including "Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines" by W.Y. Evans-Wentz and "The Secret Doctrine" by H.P. Blavatsky. In order to be be an expert on spiritual paths you've got to be able to read the scriptures. At the beginning level of scholarship you'd probably have to be able to read and maybe write, at least a half-dozen languages - Sanskrit, Greek, German, or Chinese, or even Tibetan! However, the answer to desire or to wanting cannot be found in any scriptures. And why? Because the answer to wanting can only be found in wanting itself. After much reflection on my part, I'd like to take this opportunity to report on my solution to the problem of wanting and it's cousin, desire. It is obviously counter-productive to desire to be enlightened more than one is going to be enlightened. Desiring more than one is going to get leads to frustration, lamentation, and grief. Are we agreed so far? It is impossible to to stop desiring, and at a more subtle level, it is fruitless to want to stop desiring more than one is going to stop desiring, relative to wanting to stop wanting. Bahm notes:, "these practical difficulties do not invalidate the principle of wanting to attain a state of desirelessness, they merely indicate desire's universality, the subtlety with which it operates, the reason why it is commonly misunderstood, and the need for a special meditation to bring it into manageable operation." Base desire also works subtly, not merely because desires are emotively imprecise, but especially because the desire to prevent desiring more than will be attained is itself unconsciously desired too much. For whenever one desires to stop 'desiring more than will be attained', this additional, deeper desire also becomes a desire for more stopping than will be attained. Thus this additional, deeper desire requires its own additional, still deeper desire to stop desiring more stopping than will be attained. You are not going to get any more enlightenment than you are going to get. When you realize this, you will be free and there won't be any more stress. Any time there is stress there is wanting - even if it is wanting less stress. The answer to this riddle is actually very simple when you think about it. All you have to do is sit down,close your eyes and feel the body as a whole. Then all you have to is just Be. Just be your Self. It's that simple. This sitting to Be IS enlightenment - all you are going to get. According to Bahm, "He who finally gives up trying to solve the problem of frustration, thereby becoming willing to accept his desires and frustrations for what they are, finds the problem solved." Work cited: 'Philosophy of the Buddha' by A. J. Bahm Collier, 1962 'Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines' by W.Y. Evans-Wentz Oxford University Press, USA; 2 edition (December 31, 1967) 'The Secret Doctrine' by H.P. Blavatsky Cambridge Library Collection, 2011
