taṇhā or chanda — Resolving the suffering of desire
Being an “autodidact” I spent some time looking into Buddhism, reading about the core tenets (The Three Universal Truths; The Four Noble Truths; and The Noble Eightfold Path), the nuances between Zen, Theravada and Mahayana. I admired it in that it set a moral and metaphysical path, without relying on a god or deity.
One of the core tenets is the Four Noble Truths:
- dukkha (suffering, incapable of satisfying, painful) is an innate characteristic of existence with each rebirth;
- samudaya (origin, cause) of this dukkha is the “craving, desire or attachment”
- nirodha (cessation, ending) of this dukkha can be attained by eliminating all “craving, desire, and attachment”;
- magga (path, Noble Eightfold Path) is the means to end this dukkha
Yet I couldn’t myself fully swallow it. I mean, how could a person live without passion or desire? What motivates them to get up in the morning? What motivates them to act throughout the day? I couldn’t envisage living “detached”, purposeless, meaningless, just “there”. It seemed like the core tenet of Buddhism rejected one of the core characteristics of being human. The sacrifice of abandoning purpose, passion, desire, in order to “end suffering” sounded like suffering in itself.
This stagnated, unresolved, frustrating, for years. Life passed on as it does. And then….
I came across the amazing Ajahn Brahm, also known as Peter Betts from London. Ajahn Brahm trained under the amazing teacher Ajahn Chah who is one of the most important contemporary figures the Thai Forest Tradition of the Theravāda school of Buddhism. Ajahn Chah welcomed foreigners such as Ajahn Brahm, Ajahn Sucitto, and Ajahn Sumedho who themselves became established Buddhist monks.
What is amazing about this work is that they have been able to make Buddhism accessible to the West, able to relate the otherwise Asian-born tenets to a Western world, yet while keeping it authentic and true, and not “dumbing down” or culturally appropriating to appease a Western audience. Ajahn Brahm’s podcasts were my introduction. I would listen to his talks from his Buddhist Society of South Australia to my daily commute to Sophia Antipolis.
This eventually led to writings from Ajahn Sucitto. One in particular caught my attention. It explained that there is an important distinction in passion & desire, notably between Taṇhā and Chanda.
Taṇhā is a type of desire that can never by satisfied. Ajahn Sucitto states:
taṇnhā, meaning “thirst,” is not a chosen kind of desire, it’s a reflex. It’s the desire to pull something in and feed on it, the desire that’s never satisfied because it just shifts from one sense base to another, from one emotional need to the next, from one sense of achievement to another goal. It’s the desire that comes from a black hole of need, however small and manageable that need is. The Buddha said that regardless of its specific topics, this thirst relates to three channels: sense-craving (kāmataṇhā); craving to be something, to unite with an experience (bhavataṇhā); and craving to be nothing, or to dissociate from an experience (vibhavataṇhā).
This he contrasts to chanda. He says that the Buddhist teachings contrast the reflexive, self-centered desire of taṇhā with the wholesome type of desire for well-being, called chanda.
Ajahn Sucitto states:
Sometimes taṇhā is translated as “desire,” but that gives rise to some crucial misinterpretations with reference to the way of Liberation. As we shall see, some form of desire is essential in order to aspire to, and persist in, cultivating the path out of dukkha. Desire as an eagerness to offer, to commit, to apply oneself to meditation, is called chanda. It’s a psychological “yes,” a choice, not a pathology.
He further explains~
“In fact, you could summarize Dhamma training as the transformation of taṇhā into chanda. It’s a process whereby we guide volition, grab and hold on to the steering wheel, and travel with clarity toward our deeper well-being. So we’re not trying to get rid of desire (which would take another kind of desire, wouldn’t it). Instead, we are trying to transmute it, take it out of the shadow of gratification and need, and use its aspiration and vigor to bring us into light and clarity.”
This distinction between compulsive taṇhā and deliberate chanda was the key. The four noble truths are not asking one to abandon passion in all forms altogether, but rather to recognize between taṇhā and chanda, of perceiving of our compulsive tendencies, our impulsive cravings, to take control of them rather than have them control us, and from there to instead objectively define that which we deliberately and consciously choose to direct our energy towards. In the end it resolves towards a human way forward.
