The Seductions of Healthy Desires: Getting What You Want Without Burning Out with Rick Hanson

I offer these every week along with a guided meditation. Just click the uh subscribe link below to be notified through YouTube when I post the latest recording. Or if you'd like to join us live, which would be great, uh just go into the description section below and follow the link along to be able to sign up for free. I'd like to talk about something that is close to me personally and um I think might be useful for you as well. And I'm going to start with a question. The question is, however, including feel free to interpret it your own way. What is your core practice as you move through your day and things happen? Uh what do you what's your sort of home base in practice? What do you attempt to do as you move through the day or or return to or keep in mind? So, what's your core practice? What's uh what's central for you? Now, it's okay if you feel kind of put on the spot by me. Well, oh, that'd be a good idea, Rick. Core practice. What a good idea to have something central for you. It's really fine. You know, I'm seeing a lot of great stuff in here already. Coming back to your heart, witnessing beauty, uh you know, slowing down. That's a really good one. Uh for me, too. uh go to openness, gratitude, beautiful. So it's sort of I'm asking in a way and and not just the and I'm asking you what the words of it are for you, but also the feeling of it. What's the sense of your kind of baseline or home base of practice? What do you do? What do you what do you attempt to sustain in general? And then in particular, what are what are your initial moves when you've gotten rattled? I was talking with someone earlier today and uh I started kind of revving up with some exas exasperation about a situation uh we were both dealing with and someone else who was involved in that situation. And really quickly, I I can tell you within definitely 10 seconds or less, I was aware of that revving up and I just paused to settle back in again. And that for me is a pretty central core practice to be aware of getting contracted and pressured and revved up, particularly if anger or some subtle version of anger like exasperation is in the mix and also getting kind of tunnel visioned. Very characteristic of the red zone. Slow it down. Step back. come back to center. Not unique to me, I'm sure. It's just an example of a core practice. All right. So, let's just pause for a moment as you reflect on this and see if there's any wisdom coming up inside you about this core practice. It could be a well-earned, you know, pat on the back like, "Yeah, good on you. You've you've acquired some good habits. Good for you." Right? Beautiful. Acknowledging that in yourself is really important. Um, to paraphrase a a Buddhist teaching, find gladness in your goodness. Find gladness in your goodness. Appreciate yourself. It's really good. Much as you might appreciate another person with similar characteristics, there might be other kinds of wisdom like, huh, I need to remember that more often. I think Tar Brock quotes a proverb as the most the most important thing to remember is to remember the most important thing, whatever that is for you. I think our core practice is foundational. It's the origin point from which acts of thought, word and deed radiate. So raising the level in some sense of that origin point is one of the most beneficial things we can do because its effects are are all pervading including in your own experience moment to moment to moment. So that might be another kind of wisdom for you. Oh, I need to remember that core practice more. Or it might be helpful for you to have more of a felt sense of it in your body. Like like you're good. Let's say a top- down executive function kind of located behind the forehead loosely. Uh instructions to yourself. Okay. Every committee needs a needs a chair unless it's, you know, an anarchist committee. uh although arguably they really need a chair but anyway uh inside our mind we have that sort of executive function giving ourselves instruction often with represented in language. Okay. So, you're reminding yourself, slow down. Let's say, well, what's the feeling of slowing down in your body? And what feels good about the feeling of slowing down in your body? Or you might say to yourself, remember that they're having a hard day, too. That's good. Okay. What's the feeling in your body? of knowing that they are having a hard day too. Right? So knowing what are what is your core practice which can evolve over time or can have different aspects to it. Um there tends to be a kind of core to the core of your core practice. Knowing what it is is good. Reflecting on it is good. And developing an embodied sense of it that is enjoyable is good. So that it becomes increasingly reinforced in you and habitual. All of which is good. So now I want to talk about a particular aspect of core practice and I'm going to relate that to our three primary biological needs. This is a framework that others have used. I've developed it quite a bit. There are other frameworks for needs like Maslo's hierarchies and so on. Uh in this biological framework essentially all living creatures uh plants in their own way as well have three basic needs that could be labeled as safety, satisfaction and connection. These are umbrella terms. So in terms of our need for safety, a person's core practice might be summarized as calm strength, resourcing themselves uh as a as a home base, as a refuge for dealing with threats and things that make them be unsafe or feel unsafe or both. Calm strength would be a kind of core practice related to issues of anxiety for the need for connection. Connection um a core practice there would be various aspects of the lovely things that people have been saying in the chat having to do with the heart. Opening the heart, strengthening the heart, um having heart for yourself, having heart for others. That could be a core practice. Start with the heart. Okay. And then we have uh the need for satisfaction, achieving goals, being successful, finding pleasures, expressing our own nature, actualizing oursel, getting rewards of various kinds. For that a core practice is contentment. Feeling already full even as we move into the next moment. Contentment. Contentment I have come to learn is a really underrated virtue. It's pretty clear that you know we there are threats out there. The world is shaky. It's weird. Threat level orange. All that. Okay. We need to find calm strength. I need to manage my anxieties. Seems pretty straightforward. Uh relationships. Relationships, right? What's the line from Jean Paul Sart? Hell is other people. So relationships, right? We got to work on our relationships. Thought about that. But contentment seems kind of nambby pami or something like like yeah contentment boy I have really come to appreciate how profound and powerful it is and it goes right to the heart of uh the Buddha's wisdom in the four noble truths or as it's more accurately put truths of the noble ones or truths for those who are noble. noble by practice, not by uh birth, not by cast or class. So, uh contentment, what helps us feel content? Well, we feel content when we experience that uh there's an enoughness in the moment. We feel already full. With contentment, we can still pursue wholesome goals, with wholesome means while being at peace with the results. Those are the three keys right there. Pursuing wholesome goals with wholesome means while being at peace with the results. And right there is a certainly a blueprint or a checklist for yourself. Another kind of fearless and searching inventory. Are your um you know goals wholesome and are you pursuing them with wholesome means? And are you at peace with the results? You could ask yourself that. So what I want to say about this is that I want to contrast uh this is a bit of a dive into the second noble truth. The second noble truth the first noble truth in Buddhism is typically described in pi a key language of early Buddhism as tanha t or pom duka first noble truth du k ha. There is some controversy about what dooka really is. Um a good summary I've encountered uh in the traditions is that Duke has three aspects. It's the fact that sometimes experiences are unpleasant. It's also a fact that pleasant experiences all end or change into something else. And it's a fact that all experiences and broadly most phenomena in the universe are made of parts that are connected and changing processes and relationships lacking independence and lacking essence. Therefore, no single experience can be possessed uh as a permanent source of lasting happiness. That's dooka. There is no end to dooka. That is a fact of life. It's when we apply the second noble truth of craving tanha to duca that suffering begins. Duca with tanha is suffering. Dooka without tanha is inner peace. It's conditions rising and falling. Things happen. Now living in in the middle of duca with without tanha is the journey of a lifetime. And it that journey gets subtler and more granular the further along you go. And uh it's a it's a journey that's good in the beginning, the middle and the end as the Buddha taught. So in this life it's clear that sometimes we crave. So I would say in my example earlier today talking with my friend about somebody else and I was getting exasperated. Uh that would be a kind of craving. I mean, it's one thing to crave a breath of air if you're drowning or to crave, you know, that shot of heroin if you're addicted. Um, most of our craving is pretty, you know, subtle. And so to be aware of it, it's really useful to to mark it with a sense of contraction in your body, a sense of pressure, insistence. You know this must change. I must get that. You must regard me in this way. Craving. Craving. In the story I told of before our formal beginning tonight of my own adventures in public speaking early on. I was craving uh that people would be impressed by me and craving that the cool kids at the head table going all the way back to grade school 50 years earlier would want me. That's a kind of craving. Craving has insistence in it. On the other hand, this is really important. In addition to tanha, there is chandi. D H A N D H A I think. And that's wholesome desire. I wish you well. That's wholesome desire. Uh if you're thirsty, the body needs some water. That's a wholesome desire. If you're if you're musically talented or have other talents, the expression of those talents is a wholesome desire. the the love you want to give in your heart is a wholesome desire. Very often uh some of the greatest pains are to have that love bottled up becoming stagnant even with people who won't receive it or punish you for giving it or frankly are very small vehicles very small vessels rather for so much of the love you have. There's a lot we could say about that. But the giving of it is wholesome. We can get contracted sometimes, right? Wholesome and unh wholesome desire. Um Chand and craving can get mixed in together. Sometimes we can tease them apart. But whatever is is wholesome, is sweet, is norm, natural, loving, appropriate, beneficial, conducive to the welfare of yourself and others. Perfectly fine. perfectly fine. Right? So we have this distinction that's a useful one between craving which comes from a sense of a deficit or a disturbance in the meeting of an important need. That's the biological basis for craving which gets psychologically elaborated with neurologically complicated creatures like us. craving over here. Then over here we have all kinds of healthy wishes wishing that our children that children be fed. I have some strong wishes in that direction. Um now it's fairly straightforward especially if you're relatively mindful or if you've been engaged in practice to identify cravings of different kinds and because they tend to be really conspicuous like oh yeah there again sometimes they're conspicuous retroactively in the last minute or year you realize whoa I really gotten hijacked by that one they tend to be pretty evident It's the wholesome desires. It's chanda that especially you know as your practice develops and especially as your own life circumstances um are not so desperate. It's in wholesome desire that we have to be really careful about not becoming discontent. So for example, you may have like I do various goals and projects and tasks and stuff to do and they're tasks you got to get it done. Um it's there to do uh do the dishes. is there to do. The laundry is there to do. Have that conversation with someone. Uh I process a lot of emails every day. It's kind of how I a lot gets done. Sort of correspondence things. Do that. Uh get the words right. Uh sort something out. You know, that's normal, right? And the and while we're doing it, you may be experiencing no negative affect. One of again the hallmarks of tanha is negative a effect subtle or gross. You know anxiety, anger, frustration, uh disappointment, feeling hurt, feeling resentful, feeling, you know, mean, benchful, any and all of that hallmark. Um feeling paralyzed, feeling helpless, uh desparing, feeling dead in the water also aspects of um tanha craving. Chand is typically wholesome desire is typically accompanied with positive affect. We're enjoying it, right? There might be a little sense of, you know, irritation that you have to do something or frustration around the edges, but on the whole, you're liking it. You're getting something done. You're progressing. You're, you know, you're you're you're being rewarded along the way. Beautiful. But what's happening meanwhile? Meanwhile, very often when we pursue our wholesome desires, we are speeding up. We are revving up with increased activation of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. We're we're having a good time. We're enthusiastic. Uh we're we're really engaged. We're in flow. Duh. And we are really sustaining a revving up in the in the bodily machinery that we did not evolve to sustain minute after minute, hour after hour in the daily work life. Uh and including juggling, you know, home, family, occupation, and all the rest of that. We did not evolve to do that. Our huntergather ancestors for one slept a lot because that's how you conserve bodily resources so you don't need to eat so much and also how you kind of you know don't go out there where those predators could get you. They slept a lot. Uh typical hunter gather band will meet its daily needs and around four hours a day of effort. That's their workday. The rest of the time they kind of napped, sat in the shade, told stories, you know, hung out with their kids, made art, gossiped, picked the life lice off each other as a protein source. We don't do that, most of us. I don't in daily life. So, we're zooming zooming in a good cause. moving our career forward, getting the job done, organizing meetings, getting other people to do what they're supposed to be doing and they're not doing it. You know, we're doing that. Okay, there's a place for it. There's a place for it and it's not typically coming from that contracted negative a effect, saturated or infused uh place of craving. On the other hand, along the way, we are accumulating what's called alostatic load. We are accumulating the wear and tear of sustained sympathetic nervous system activation with related stress hormones like adrenaline, cortis and cortisol. And we often get really rewarded for sustaining that level of effort. People praise you. You get promoted. You make more money. You know, you're another book comes out. Vroom vroom vroom. And you can get caught up in it, right? And it's nice. You like it. It's good. Seems so good. And you're you're contributing to other people. You're really helping a lot of other people. And h what's happening to you along the way? Making this distinction between um tanha and chand is really helpful between craving and um uncontracted enjoyable effortfulness. It's a really useful distinction and it's also really useful to beware the seductions of chanda. to have your eyes open about their seductions, especially as householders, you know, wandering along the Serengeti plains. Yeah, there wasn't that much to pursue to want. Food was there or not. Game was there or not. Um there were things to be done or not. A lot of the time just hanging out trying to keep on going till the next day. uh in our household or lives with all the glittering possibilities, you know, bombarded. Want this, want that, want this, want that. Yum, yum. Your life will be so much better. And by the way, take this medication to really tune your mood along the way. Yeah, that's the modern life. And I I'm in the modern life. I get it. Um, so we have to be especially on the ball and aware of the seductions of wholesome desire, particularly over a long lifespan. Sometimes, and I've been there, you just have to go, okay, I'm going to work 10-hour days for the next six months, se six days a week to deal with something that I really care about to get this business off the ground, to finish this book, to compose this opera, something, okay? But over the long long haul of your lifespan, what are the seductions? as the Buddha put it basically in terms of the world's bait. What is the gratification of healthy desire? Um what is the danger and what is the escape? That's how he put it. The gratification, the danger, and the escape. Lovely haunting words coming down to us from over 2,000 years ago. So I've spoken about the gratification and some of the danger. What's the escape? Uh it's important to realize we're not suppressing things. We're just uh learning from the for me very profound proverb that wisdom is choosing a greater happiness over a lesser one. There is happiness to be sure in pursuing wholesome desires. The question becomes, is there available to you an even greater happiness in full contentment already? I'm not suggesting that we fail in our duties. A lot of our healthy desires take the form of fulfilling our duties. I'm not saying that. Sometimes it can take a while to make a transition. I'm in the middle of one in my own life. uh kind of disengaging from uh the marathon and the burn of healthy desire and moving into a simpler way of life. It's taking a while, but I'm I'm still on it. Uh and uh that said, the Buddha offered two practices in particular related to resting in contentment, resting in that greatest greater happiness rather than a lesser one. Uh the first of these is found in um the wise intention element of the eight-fold path. This is typically the second element uh listed of the eight-fold path. And that wise intention includes the intention for non-harming okay others and oneself. Nonharming first of all do no harm non-harming. And then in particular, which is so interesting, the Buddha calls out um our relationships and talks about the intention of not ill will. In other words, not building up that case inside that wants to hurt and punish even destroy other people or re or develops enmity toward them. I mean, it's one thing to have a grievance to feel genuinely wronged. uh and to take a moral stance that you wronged me or to take a moral stance that you wronged those other people. Absolutely. Um but that if we're watchful and mindful of does not need to become ill will, enmity, malice toward other people. So that's the second aspect of wise intention. All right, that's worth looking at. And it's a slippery slope from grievance to resentment to ill will. Notice where you are on that slippery slope. I've I've fallen all the way to the bottom more than once. Okay. What's the third element? It's typically translated as renunciation. Now how do we understand that word renunciation especially in a tradition that uh at its core in the beginning especially was monastic renunciation and and people would formally renounce property possessions. They would give their practice over to the community. They would renounce sexuality. They just renounce entertainments, renounce eating meals, you know, late in the afternoon or evening. Renounce, renounce, renounce. They would deliberately let it go in order to clear the decks, clear the space for their own particular practice. And as a training, because when you renounce uh those things, the craving, the habits of craving become very apparent. You know, you want that stuff. No, can't have it. I really want it. Oh no, I've renounced it. You know, becomes really apparent. You learn a lot about your own mind in that process. So there's a there's a value in that as a means to an end. As householders who are not taking monastic vows, who still own property, deal with money, enjoy sense pleasures, what do we um how do we do what do we do? Right? And that's where a second word that comes down to us uh has a lot of impact and the word is uh translated as relinquish. You relinquish. Renounce has a kind of pushing away quality to it. I renounce it, you know. Okay. Um, relinquish means a letting go and we relinquish for the sake we relinquish. Why do we why is it there to be relinquished in the first place? Because we like it. And if it's in the category of healthy desire, our liking of it is healthy. It it's it's okay. It's a good thing. We relinquish it for the sake of a greater happiness. a higher happiness. And so you might ask yourself um what would it serve you to let go of to relinquish even formally that is one of your healthier is one of your healthy desires. But when you look at it, there's a higher happiness to be found through relinquishing it. And when you look closely at it, the sustained effort toward that healthy desire over the long haul is just you're paying a price for it. It's got a lot of cost to it. This topic of relinquishment is particularly pointed if you consider some key relationships. All right? For example, we often can for healthy desire reasons be very consumed with or engaged with um caring for or um trying to help people in our life. You know, an adult child. It's very common. um you know perhaps a friend that we've drifted away from and um you know they just won't accept our help even though it's good help and they ought to accept it but they won't. Um you know maybe we're with people and we've tried to convince them of certain things maybe politically or otherwise and they're just not they're not going to budge. Maybe we've been trying to get a good project off the ground. Maybe you've been trying to um uh you know change something in your in your kids' school that they're just not going to budge or maybe in your family system. And is there a place for relinquishing that healthy desire? Paradoxically, naming to yourself that it's been a healthy desire can help you relinquish it. You know, there's a kind of it's it's a kind of self-compassion because there can be a loss. There can be a grief initially in relinquishing something and you just you kind of give up about it. It may not happen and if it does it and you're not going to try to make it happen anymore. Kind of a relinquishing there. What might be a healthy kind of relinquishing for you? And how might honoring the wholesomeness of your desire and tuning into a sense of contentment, knowing what it feels like to feel content already. So if you kind of imagine this desire you've been pursuing, then second step, tune into a sense of contentment in general. Know what contentment feels like. And then look at that healthy desire and ask yourself, is it best for me to relinquish it to give it back to the universe? I give up about it. So in some my talk which has had a plan believe it or not uh has been to start with a question about what is your core practice or both in everyday life that you sustain and in particular you draw on or try to return to when things are wobbling all over the place for you or you're getting rattled. What is that? And then I started talking about different aspects of that core practice related to our three primary needs for safety and connection and satisfaction. And then I focused in on a core practice relating to our need for satisfaction, which is the practice of contentment. To be content, we really need to keep our eyes out for craving. craving. The second noble truth which is characterized exper often experientially with a sense of pressure, insistence, contraction, you know, tunnel vision, strong sense of self. Got to have it. That is the enemy of contentment. Craving is the enemy of contentment. Then also though around contentment we have to take a look at wholesome desire. There's a lot of healthy desire. It's fine. And for householders there's a lot a lot of healthy desire that's available to us. And still to what extent does the pursuit of those healthy desires particularly over time and the effort involved in that to what extent does that undermine your contentment? And um one way to look at this and to help yourself is to ask yourself what's the price you've paid for pursuing you know legitimate desires including let's say moral desires to try to stick up for other people or to uh rage against the machine quote unquote. Um, okay. What have been the costs of the alostatic load of that sustained effort, sustained sympathetic nervous system overdrive over time again and again and again? What's been the cost of that for you? And in your innermost being, is there a growing wisdom that it would be good for you to let go of these forms of lesser happiness or at least a form, one of them, one form of lesser happiness for the sake of a greater happiness. And to do that you can consider both renunciation which has a certain muscular quality to it and you can consider uh the feeling in your body even the gesture of relinquishment of letting go of release. Somewhat like in the meditation we did. Opening out with the exhalation, relinquishing the breath itself into everything. Knowing the physicality, the embodiment of that gesture, even the psychological gesture of relinquishment as an entry into and a portal into and a path into uh a deeper sense of contentment in daily life. Uh what is a greater happiness? You decide for yourself. Um, you know, is feeling content more important to you than feeling jacked up? And you know, if you think about, okay, I want to be jacked up six hours a day, but not seven. Okay, that would be your firm, your form of greater happiness. You decide what is your greater happiness. I like the word feeling content. you know contentment seems kind of fuzzy but I know what uh content and can you even say to yourself sometimes I am content uh in this moment as it is now it's really important around that contentment can be sadness can be disappointment and it's interesting to explore how to actually rest in we could say the center of your being or the core of You're being in a genuine sense of feeling content in the present with anxiety or or loss around it. That's very interesting exploration and I think and I think it's very possible certainly I experience it or can experience it to feel fundamentally content if you step back. Can you even find a way to look at your life as a whole, especially as you get older, and go, you know, won some, lost some, and I'm truly content. Can you find that sense? And if not yet, what's between you and that? And practice with that and so forth. But that it's a deep question. Can you uh go? Yeah. Thank you.