The Fruit of Desire
If we are present enough we can see the dharma in the most mundane of moments.
Changing Seasons
Well, summer is upon us, and I see everything around me expanding, rising, blossoming, flourishing—all of the words typically associated with this season. One of my favorite things about this time of year is that you start to see a change in the available produce selection. Summer fruits are outstanding.
Impulse Costco Buy
Cherries are one of these outstanding summer fruits I enjoy. I recently picked up some at Costco out of the blue. You know how they put random things in random places and then change the order of the things you usually buy, so you are forced to find new stuff? Fast forward to the other day when I was eating a handful of those randomly purchased cherries, popping them in my mouth at an uncomfortable pace, until I recognized what was happening. That is when It dawned on me how we create our suffering. Suffering is the delta between our expectations and the nature of all things. Because I was mindlessly eating the cherries, attempting to keep the great taste of them going, I was avoiding the inevitable end of them. I was on a roll a rhythm. It felt good, and I wanted it to stay feeling good; that’s how things we desire work. We do whatever we can to keep the joy of the thing present, trying to avoid the end of it, even though we know it will come to an end as a matter of natural cause and effect.
It is as if we choose to suffer or think we are more intelligent than suffering itself.
Trappings of Desire
When we enjoy anything from cherries to sex, we want to do more of it, and if left to our own devices, we would drown in our desires. Ok, maybe that is just me. Then we reach our hand in the container for a cherry, and it’s empty, or we encounter a situation where we cannot feed our particular desires. In an instant, we feel discomfort, sadness, or whatever adjective best describes the problem. If you study Buddhist talks or texts, it is often mentioned that joy and pain are on a continuum, two sides of the same coin bound within one another.
To desire something is to suffer for it.
I recognized what I was doing when eating those cherries and slowed down to savor each bite until I finished them. I just appreciated the taste, texture, smell, sounds, mouthfeel, coolness, and the act of being present in eating them, knowing that this moment would soon end, and that is ok. There's a lot to be said for that instead of going to our standard patterns of trying to continue to do things that feed our desires, a bottomless pit in which we are subject to being trapped.
Freedom Is Always Present
I am not advocating for a life free of desire; I am saying that I understand the price of being trapped in my desires and work to mitigate that actively.
To mindlessly be lost in your desires is to run into the arms of suffering with a loving embrace.
Instead of taking this path known to cause pain and suffering, you can find the middle way, relax in the moment, appreciate it for what it is, and know that when it leaves. You don't need to cling or hold on to that. It will probably come back anyway in some different or new variation, but it is the clinging to the idea that it needs to come back for you to be fulfilled that you must release. This changing, fleeting experience of desire is not the sole equal measure of your happiness. Can you be good either way? If we can start to pay attention, there is no moment better than the one right in front of us to reveal the truth about reality; all it requires is your attention.
Side note: I didn’t eat the entire box of cherries in one sitting. I stopped after about five or ten. When I grabbed another handful the following morning, I smiled. I’ll probably never eat cherries again without thinking about how desire, wants, and greed work, and I’m okay with that because we all need reminders.