Desire, Impermanence and the Self
Various forms of desire—most essentially, the desire to live—are both natural and necessary to us as human beings. However, Shakyamuni Buddha perceived that being ruled by desires causes us to suffer. His key insight was to find within himself the means by which to know genuine satisfaction while escaping the domination of desires. In order for all people to do the same, he taught that we first need to understand two fundamental truths about life. The first is the impermanent nature of all things: everything in life is constantly changing and will eventually cease to exist. Secondly, he understood that nothing has a fixed identity or essence—each individual existence is dependent on and interwoven with all others. Suffering, the Buddha taught, derives essentially from our attachment to and reliance upon things and circumstances that are by nature ever-changing and impermanent.
“Of all the treasures that we possess, the most fundamental one is the profound dignity and depth of character we develop by basing our life on the dharma.”
As human beings we often live under the sway of these twin delusions: we want things to remain fixed and unchanged and we think we are able to control things that are outside of our control—other people, relationships, our children—as though they were extensions of ourselves. But to live in this way is to misunderstand the true nature of our own lives.
After all, even our bodies and minds—what seems most essentially “us”—change in ways that we ultimately cannot direct. In the process of aging, our health does not remain constant, nor does our vitality, nor our looks or abilities. Furthermore, when we die, we will inevitably be separated from our loved ones and possessions; all that is not truly “us” is stripped away.
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The Buddha taught that understanding the interdependent and transient nature of things is a way for us to overcome our mistaken views of the self that are at the root of desire and suffering.
If all these things are impermanent and subject to change, there is a deeper unchanging reality of life—the dharma or Law of life. Enlightenment in Buddhism consists of striving to align our lives with this Law.
What this means in practice is a life based on respect for the inherent dignity of our lives and the lives of others. It is to embrace and be enriched by difference, rather than to reject and deny it by imposing our values and standards upon others; to be open to change, rather than seek to control life and mold others according to our wishes and expectations. It is a life oriented above all toward the establishment of a rich inner state of life and the sharing of this deepest joy with others. The Buddha urged us to awaken to the fact that this state exists in our own lives, and taught that we can choose to manifest it in our day-to-day reality.
By “seeking the Law,” we overcome our tendency to be swayed by deluded impulses and forge a life of “absolute happiness”— described by Josei Toda, second president of the Soka Gakkai, as a state of life in which one’s sense of self and joy in being remains untouched by external circumstances.
Nichiren, the 13th-century monk upon whose teachings the philosophy of the SGI is based, recognized the value of wealth, physical health, intellect and skills. He wrote, however, that of all the treasures we possess, the most fundamental one is the profound dignity and depth of character we develop by basing our life on the dharma. These “treasures of the heart,” as he called them, are the most valuable treasure we can accumulate and are what endure through the cycles of birth and death.
As SGI President Ikeda has said, “A true sense of fulfillment or satisfaction can’t be found in chasing after money or possessions. The highest state of being is the enriched spiritual condition of desiring little and feeling satisfied, free from the control of desires. In other words, true happiness resides in accumulating treasures of the heart.”
Source: January 2013 issue of the SGI Quarterly