Ep. 149 – Desire: The Driving Force of Samsara

Insight Hour with Joseph Goldstein

Be Here Now Network

Joseph Goldstein, Mindfulness, Vipassana, Buddhism, Insightmeditation, Meditation, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 864 Ratings

🗓️ 11 January 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Joseph Goldstein explores the tendency of desire, how we can understand this driving force of Samsara, and how we can practice being free of it.

“Desire is not an insignificant conditioning in us, and it takes many forms. And it’s really not the form or even the object that’s terribly important or interesting. It’s that force, it’s that energy, it’s that habit pattern of wanting. When we don’t see it, when we’re caught, when we’re identified with that wanting mind, it obscures the natural freedom of mind. It obscures the recognition of the open, empty, selfless nature of awareness.” – Joseph Goldstein

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In this episode, Joseph shares his insight on:

The clear, unobstructed nature of the mind, and how deeply habituated patterns such as desire can obscure our natural wisdom
The craving for sense pleasures
Desires that manifest in our meditation practice in the forms of the expecting mind, the comparing mind, and trying to hold on to a past experience
The desire for existence, and the craving for non-existence
How we can better understand the powerful conditioning of desire in all of its forms and free ourselves from identification with it

This dharma talk from January 3, 2005, at the Insight Meditation Society, was originally published on DharmaSeed.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Desire is not an insignificant conditioning in us and it takes many forms and it's really not the form or even the object that's terribly important or interesting.
0:16.0	It's that force, it's that energy, it's that habit pattern of wanting when we don't see it, when we're caught, when we're identified with that
0:27.7	wanting mind, it obscures the natural freedom of mind. It obscures the recognition of the open, empty,
0:39.2	selfless nature of awareness. Welcome to the Joseph Goldstein Insight Hour.
0:59.0	This podcast is an expression of our shared interest in self-discovery.
1:05.0	Join Joseph as he shares his deep knowledge of the path of mindfulness.
1:11.0	If you are interested in supporting this podcast, please go to be here now network
1:16.8	dot com slash Joseph. The nature of the mind is clear, it's lucid, it's unobstructed, it simply knows. That's the nature of consciousness. Its function is to know. But somehow we don't
1:50.1	recognize this great simplicity the empty open
1:56.4	selfless nature of awareness. We so often get distracted and caught up and seduced in a whole variety of ways.
2:10.0	We get lost in some deeply habituated patterns of thought and emotion, of desire and aversion of fear and doubt.
2:26.6	And often these patterns are so deeply ingrained,
2:30.2	they're so familiar to us.
2:40.0	There's so much of who we take ourselves to be that we don't see them clearly we don't see through them easily. So a practice is to develop a strength of mindfulness, a strength of investigation.
2:55.1	So we can begin to see these conditioning patterns in the mind that
3:01.3	are obscuring the natural innate wakefulness, the natural wisdom.
3:08.5	This is not easy to do.
3:12.3	The Buddha talked in one striking image, which most of you are probably familiar with.
3:19.2	He said it's more difficult to come to a full and deep and complete understanding of oneself
3:27.0	than to overcome single-handedly a thousand enemies a thousand different times. So just imagine
3:39.5	yourself. You know the Buddha was from the caste, so a lot of warrior images.
3:44.8	Imagine yourself on a battlefield surrounded by a thousand enemies.
	...

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