This realm that we live in is a desire realm. Desire is natural to this realm. It is what keeps things moving. This realm of sensory experience – of pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness – is just the way it is. So desire is not really the problem. Ignorance is the problem — not understanding things as they really are. We begin to recognize that grasping these desires causes suffering. We actually recognize, then, that suffering has a cause. It is not the body, the sense world, the conditions themselves that are the cause of suffering; it is the grasping of conditions that is the cause.
It is very important to reflect on this. We easily blame conditions for our suffering: "You! You said something to me that really made me suffer. It’s because I can’t get what I want that I’m suffering. I want something and I can’t get it, so I’m really suffering." Or, perhaps I am very attached to an idea of what I should become and I can’t stand myself the way I am. Then I want to become this perfect ideal!
Wanting to become something, wanting to get rid of something, wanting sensory gratification — these three kinds of desire and the grasping of these three kinds of desire, are what we can reflect upon.
That which is aware of desire — mindfulness — is not desire, is it? Desire is a mental object that you can observe; you can be a silent witness to desire. If you
are desire, there is no way you can possibly have perspective on it. But because you are not desire, it is something that you can observe and learn from.
First we can observe desire, then the grasping, and then comes the insight of letting go. Letting go of desire isn’t getting rid of it. We are not resisting desire, getting rid of it; we are just letting it be what it is. Desire is desire! Let it be that way. If we understand it, we know it; we know the feeling of it; we know when it is present; we know when it is absent. This is
knowing, direct
knowing.
(More of the chapter at the link below)
https://www.amaravati.org/dhamma-boo...t-realization/
