“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself; I am large-I contain multitudes.”
Walt Whitman
The quintessential American poet, Whitman, wrote “Song of Myself, 51’ and in it the famous stanza quote above. In this he meant, so I believe, an exhortation to all humans at all times, to not be simple. The call, to refuse to be simple, by accepting that we are multitudes, of many selves and many wants, not all of which cohere with each other is the foundation of said contradiction.
Contrary to the common implications that a self-contradicting person is ‘weak and vulnerable’, Whitman claims superiority of being by embracing his own ‘multitudes’.
And so, should we all.
Not superiority in front of someone or something, but in front of our own selves. The very fact of acceptance, embrace or containment of these many selves is a self-testament to the continuous growth and dynamism of our minds.
In a very deep sense, the archaic form of belief in a unitary entity (aka my ‘self’) that has both continuity and integrity across time is self-demeaning.
It is as if the complexity of our multiple inner realities (much before we encounter the multitude of outer realities) is too much to bear.
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
The so-called contradiction is everywhere, and all the time; it is the continuous presence of mind of a consciously self-aware being that necessitates this state of affairs. Of course, it can be controlled, suppressed or denied. Forcefully curbed, inhibited and bottled up. These temporary measures however will come only to the detriment of the evolving mind, creating instead a stunted personality, a ‘small minded’ character and critically a less intelligent, less perceptive and more rigid creature.
What is crucial here to realize is that a so-called secure self (denying its contradictory multitudes) is vulnerable to the chaotic stimuli of life. Moreover, accepting the multitudes of seemingly contradictions of feelings and sensations, ideas and thoughts, allows for the emergence of a mind, flexible and adaptable, resilient and critically open.
It is this very openness of mind that liberates intelligence for self-research and permeates self-reflection with a pleasure of beingness that no other process permits.
To the mind, the acceptance of our inner multitudes, the allowance of contradictions and the self-approval of our uniqueness is what liberates our desires and unleashes our intelligence.
These forces are indeed the crucial combination, the sacred mélange, that allow our commitment to mind liberation to be true and fruitful.
Of these, Desire is the least understood, nay, it is practically misunderstood…
“… I need you here and not here too.. “ ( a line I love from the following song- the text in full is worthwhile following)
The past is a grotesque animal — Of Montreal
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So…
Tanha — the misunderstanding of Desire
Desire- what a concept!
And to think that it is so misunderstood that instead of allowing for pleasure of beingness, it creates confusion, suffering and despair.
So much so, that we are historically admonished to refrain, or control or annihilate, or if all else fails maintain a semblance of control.
As if we could!
So, what’s the story with desire? and what is it?
Let me state at the onset that the view I will present of Desire is fundamentally different than everything I have ever heard or read about desire and is my own interpretation of the concept.
Therefore, proceed at your own risk. Furthermore, let it be on record that I admire many of the giants of thought that I will mention but I disagree with their understanding of desire. Not because they were wrong about the consequences of desire but because I believe that their thought didn’t go deep enough to realize the nature of desire.
Hegel may have been (in western philosophical thought at least) the closest when stating that desire is self-consciousness (1), I will maybe come to that in a different essay later.
I maintain that the pursuit of pleasure (based on the pursuit of survival ) is indeed fundamental, but the pleasure sought is the pleasure of being, its material ramifications being only a part , and a small one at that.
Freud was interestingly close when defining the forces of Eros and Thanatos, but even he didn’t come close to the foundational aspect of desire as again the pleasure (Bentham’s Hedonism) was quantified using the body as measure. I maintain that pleasure (Eros is only a small aspect of it) is not a force in itself but a subcategory of the emergent phenomenon of desire. In the mind and as Mind.
Buddhism offers a very wide array of understandings concerning the term Tanha and though it has been identified as Desire in the common sense of the word, the intense meaning of Tanha is fire. Fire as a designation of inner force or tendency. Though the Buddha identified Tanha as one (or The) causes of suffering and so the main attractor of samsara, it is my view that this applies to the concepts of craving and attachments, greed and ego-centeredness. Not to Tanha as such. Meaning not to the life motivating force that Tanha is. The fire of motivation.
In short, whilst Desire (or Tanha) is considered a negative, I understand Desire or Tanha to be the foundational force of motivation of life as Mind. In this case Tanha (Desire) is neither negative nor positive but a force in the mind.
Everybody wants to get rid of Tanha or Desire when the fact of the matter of mind is that without Tanha we would have no energy whatsoever to will a becoming of worth and value.
An aesthetically pleasing liberated mind.
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Two notes: Kama-Tanha is the concept associated with sexual/sensual craving. It has however been misunderstood as a negative in itself. It is the associated attachment that is the problem and not the desire itself. If one can, as a liberated mind does, disassociate the desire from the attachment, the result is a mind that has the availability of the force of desire, but the force has no direct consequence or particularity of direction (that is where intelligence comes in to give direction). That is also where its independence resides.
As Friedrich Nietzsche so aptly put it: “Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.”
My second note concerns the idea of a warrior poet, the epitome of those that will liberate their minds. Desire need be strong, deep and free flowing for a mind to become a warrior poet. And yes, it’s all in the Mind.
“Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.”
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
And one further point: We currently do not have a comprehensive philosophy of desire (nor for that matter a modern philosophy of sensuality) and we need both.
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Thank you for reading
