There is no paradox of desire in Buddhism

·期刊原文
Reply to Wayne Alt's "There is no paradox of desire in Buddhism"

By John Visvader
Philosophy East and West
volume 30, no. 4
1980 October
P.531-532
(C) By The University Press of Hawaii

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.533

Mr. Alt and I apparently both agree that by adding
to one's desires one can sometimes give them all up,
at least in the sense required by the Buddhists. In
my article I thought there was some practical
necessity in doing this for anyone with less insight
than a Hui-neng. It certainly seems odd for someone
to begin to give up desires by first adding to them.
The characterization of this oddness seems to be the
main disagreement between Alt and myself. His own
suggestion is that it is similar to the case in
which we tell someone to jump in the air, and he
begins by bending his knees, that is, he begins to
obey our instructions properly by doing something
that is opposite. This is a very good analogy
because it displays the practical psychology of the
situation, but it also obscures some logical
characteristics of the instruction which are
important to some schools of Buddhism.

To bend my knees in order to jump in the air is
to do something "opposite," but it is not "opposite
to the instruction;" it is merely to move in the
opposite direction first in order to obey the
instruction. The instruction says nothing about what
else I am to do in order to obey it. I could do all
sorts of things first, some of them even more
surprising than bending my knees. I would have more
trouble with the command to jump in the air without
moving. But if in the instruction to give up all
desires, I begin by desiring to do so or by desiring
to practice a certain technique to do so, I am going
"opposite" in a different sense. I am violating the
instruction itself. In this sense I am caught in a
practical paradox of having to disobey the
instruction in order to obey it.

This may, however, be the only practical way for
me to obey the instruction. It is similar to the
case of someone telling me to possess no more tools
and to get rid of the ones I already possess and I
find that the only way I can do this is to buy
another tool, a tool-carrier. This goes against the
instruction, but what else can I do? With the
tool-carrier I carry out all my tools then when I'm
finished I can put down the tool-carrier as well and
will have been successful in obeying the
instruction. Alt would agree, I believe, with this
analogy, though he does not want to recognize the
paradoxical nature of the request or of my actions.
But the paradox is important because it is far more
difficult to put aside the desire to get rid of
desires than it is to put down my tool carrier. It
is naive to think that my final desire to give up
desires will just disappear when I have gotten rid
of the other desires, for from the Buddhist point of
view I have really not gotten anywhere by merely
eliminating particular desires if I still have the
desiring mind, that is, the mind of ingorance which
has been expressing itself the whole time in the
desire to give up desires.

Though it is theoretically possible for the
final desire to just disappear, the student has been
so convinced by the efficacy of using the desiring
mind that

P.534

he or she will either not see that it is still
functioning, or he or she will try to get rid of it
by desiring to do so. At this point the student
needs to be shaken up, and intense and seemingly
absurd paradoxes which require the student to
perform an action from "no-mind," or to express the
truth of Buddhism without speech or without silence,
may be used. These kinds of "intention paradoxes,"
which are not contradictory, in a strictly logical
sense, will be used to pry the student out of the
desiring mind. It is a kind of practical therapy
which the existence of paradox in the original
instruction makes possible. These are only paradoxes
as long as the student remains ignorant of his or
her self-nature. The paradox is introduced loosely
at the beginning so the student won't be paralyzed
in action and tightened at the end to help students
despite themselves.

A brief word concerning the intelligibility of
the goal of giving up all desires. Through thousands
of years many people have claimed to be successful
at this goal, and it would be silly to doubt their
claim. The word "desire" as used by Buddhists is a
technical philosophical term and is not coextensive
with the ordinary use of that word in English. It is
to be expected that an enlightened person, being
free of such things as graaha, kaama, kle`sa and
t.r.s.naa, will still desire to do such things as
drink tea, go for a walk, or help other people.