Published by When I was a youth, around the age of 16, being a Christian, I felt the need to procure peace and understanding in Eastern philosophies. It’s funny that I never felt the need to travel abroad, neither was that much feasible for someone like me who lived in the North of Portugal these days. But I did read many books about far away countries, like Japan, especially those written by Venceslau de Morais, and others about countries such as India and China.
I remember I was taken by an intense need to understand life, death, happiness, inner peace, power and the nature of the Universe. These days I would read passages of the Bagavad Gita and The Upanishads, I would read an illuminating book on Raja Yoga which released me from the fear of death and made me realize that the Universe was infinite, I would read a compilation of the philosophy of Taoism and Confucianism and, to close, I would practice Hata Yoga breathing exercises, which were so energizing and Zen meditation which was so quieting.
The philosophy that most mesmerized me was Buddhism Zen and this because it promised inner peace and power over the world, which sounded so fascinating to me. I did have a great need for inner peace and liberation so I set myself to understand Buddhism and Zen.
The premiss for Buddhism is that, as a consequence of our many desires, we live limited lives tied up to the outcome of our desires and the material world, and we go from incarnation to incarnation endlessly and without ever finding rest.
According to Buddhism, to finally find peace and get out of the cycle of re-incarnation, one has to stop desiring. As simple as that: just stop desiring. I gave it a go and found it paralyzing: if I am reading a Buddhist book I have to desire to turn the page in order to continue, accepting that I desire to finish the book. If I need to get a glass of water I have to have to desire to get up and go to the kitchen to get the glass of water and I also have to desire to drink it. If you try not to desire for a few moments, as an exercise, I guess you will realize just how desire is so deeply entrenched in us and all our life.
Would I become illuminated by eliminating all these desires? I found it hard to understand Buddhism. I still remember one interview on ABC Radio a few years ago in which a converted European Buddhist monk related how he repeated “do not desire, do not desire” while walking through the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney, Australia. That’s Buddhism. I do not see it as belonging into the world. I think that Buddhists belong in monasteries where they can create environments conducing to the achievement of Buddhism’s faith.
And this lead me to get interested in Zen meditation. Buddhism Zen exists only in secluded monasteries in Japan where the monks dedicate themselves to achieve, on a permanent basis and away from the world, the objective of Buddhism: to release oneself from desire and attain peace and illumination.
This is pursued through long, arduous and constant meditation sessions where the monk aims at obtaining a state of mind of absolute emptiness and perfect stillness. This state brings peace to the Zen monk and, if persevered, it also brings illumination and liberation from the world, being this state called Za-Zen or Nirvana. What I remember well from my attempts at Zen meditation, and they were many and honest, is that it is extremely hard, as hard as living without desire.
Now-a-days I am a totally different person: I am profoundly religious in my Catholic faith and I ardently desire a quantity of things like loving and serving my neighbour, being successful professionally and financially, being a contributor to charities, etc. And I realize that all this is based and powered by desire, the desire Buddhism so emphatically condemns and tries to get rid of.
In fact, I realize that the whole of our Western tradition of reaching for happiness and realization is through the mastery of desire. We are not up to retire from the world, though some do so by entering monastic orders. We, mostly, are about to build something, to change the world for the better and to leave a monument to ourselves and our experience as immortal as possible.
We, indeed, have many desires which propel us into action. The self-made millionaire is a man who, at a certain point in time, took a few decisions and mercilessly pursued his desires until fulfillment. It is funny that sometimes, factually, it is not the money made, but the achievement that matters. And so many self-made millionaires donate most of their money.
We pursue happiness, fulfillment and liberation from the limitations of the world through being successful and that is powered by desire from the root. It is also funny, in this note, that sometimes we have, to be successful, to learn to desire, and to desire harder. Certainly, feeble desiring does not lead anyone into great results.
Fernando Monteiro
Tuesday, 30 August 2005
