2010.05.06 01:00 - Renunciation

Comments are by Zen Arado. No one showed up, so I am putting up some extracts about coping with desires by Ken Mc Leod from a recent Tricycle article that I found very interesting.

" What causes me to suffer? Wanting. Renunciation, then, means not so much giving up things, desires, or a way of life, but giving up desiring itself....

The mechanism of desire is based on a belief: I am incomplete as I am now. Desire is misdirected yearning that tries to correct the imbalance created by that belief....

THE FIRST KEY is to stop seeking security....

THE SECOND KEY is to let go of expectations for emotional fulfillment. 

THE THIRD KEY is to know the groundlessness of experience itself: no one to be, nowhere to go....

You practice internal renunciation by moving into the experience of desire, instead of trying to fulfill or suppress it.

Pick something you want: a physical object, a relationship, or some form of recognition. Let the feeling of desire arise. Experience how it arises in your body, feel all the emotions it triggers, and let all the stories it tells just be there. Don’t be distracted. Don’t try to control the experience. Don’t work at anything. If you discover another level of yearning, move into that. When you move into the desire completely, a shift takes place and you know it as just an arising in experience. Now look at the object of your desire again. What has changed?

By going into the experience of desire itself, rather than acting on it, you let go of the belief that you are incomplete....

Full article:  http://www.tricycle.com/special-sect...esire?page=0,2