Wisely reflecting, I use alms-food -- not for fun, not for pleasure, not for fattening, not for beautification, but only for the maintenance and nourishment of this body, for keeping it healthy, for helping with the holy life. Thinking thus, I will allay hunger without overeating, so that I may continue to live blamelessly and at ease.
-- midday prayer at Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery
Yael says to me: "If someone got rid of all their desires, wouldn't they just become a rock?" She's right. There is no person alive with no desire, because desire is what keeps us alive. We all need to eat.
But the more you want, the more you seem to lack. The more you seem to lack, the more you suffer. There's no obvious limit to how much you can want, so there's really no limit to how much you can suffer. I've heard some people say that pain is mandatory but suffering is optional. But as long as we have desires, it would seem like some amount of suffering is also mandatory.
A monk might answer this by talking about the "middle way": that the buddha tried indulgence and it didn't work for him, but he also tried asceticism and that didn't work for him either. He ended up somewhere in between.
But this doesn't really answer the question for me. Are there desires we shouldn't get rid of? Can't get rid of? If so, are we doomed to suffer, even just a little bit?
It's possible. Maybe the idea of the end of suffering is just that -- an idea -- something to shoot for, or inch towards, but whose logic conflicts with the reality of being stuck in a body.
But there's one desire which, to me, breaks the rules: the desire for others to be happy. The Pali word for this is metta. It's not like the other desires. Unlike the desire to taste, to touch, to own, metta does not exist purely to extinguish itself. If you're happy, I don't go back to being hungry, I simply continue to wish it. Metta is its own reward. It feels good. It's harmonious. It sustains itself.
There's a difference between giving something with an expectation, and giving something with no expectation. The expectation can distress you. But the same action, done selflessly, does not. That difference can be felt in the heart.
Metta, in some ways, buys us an out -- when we have those unavoidable desires to do those selfish things, we can do them with metta. Probably not perfectly, but at least a little bit.
Imagine eating, for example, not for fun, not for pleasure, not for beautification, but as an act of kindness to the body, so that it can remain a faithful partner to you as you live a long and meaningful life.