Last week I wrote about the wanting that comes with a promise attached, the kind that says “just this one more thing and I’ll be set.” In class last week, a woman asked me whether there’s a good kind of wanting. Good question, and the answer I gave is “yes.”
When I first started reading yoga philosophy, I assumed the answer was “no.” I kept hearing yoga teachers say “let it go,” and I understood that phrase to cover everything, from wanting a second cookie, to wanting a better job, to wanting to see my kids grow up to be healthy and successful. I pictured an advanced yogi who had stopped wanting anything at all, and I wondered how that person would get out of bed or drive to class.
Two Modes of Mental Activity
Patañjali splits mental activity into two piles: the kind that afflicts (klishta) and the kind that doesn’t (aklishta). He isn’t telling you to empty the mind. He’s telling you the contents come in two flavors and they behave differently, which is a more useful thing to know.
What tips mental activity into the afflicted pile? Patañjali lists five afflictions, and one of them is rāga, attachment, which he defines by what it results from: pleasure remembered (YS 2.7). When something felt good once, the mind holds onto that, and then works to get it again. That’s the CD player, the new car, or the next vacation. The wanting isn’t the trouble. The memory doing the steering is the trouble, because a memory of satisfaction makes for a poor guide. It feels pleasant at the time, which is why the stress it produces in the body goes unnoticed. This kind of wanting proceeds as though something were missing.
Her question gets its answer in the other pile. Patañjali’s word for it is tapas, which comes from a root meaning “to burn,” and gets translated as “discipline,” “heat,” or “ardency.” When he lists the qualities that carry a practitioner forward, he starts with conviction (shraddhā) and then energy (vīrya). None of that describes someone who has stopped wanting. It describes someone leaning into something with their whole body. And tapas doesn’t add anything to you. It burns off what is in the way.
The good kind of wanting isn’t a grudging exception that we tolerate because it does no harm. It’s essential to progress. My teacher Rolf Gates translates tapas as “zeal” or “austerity,” and I notice I like the zeal half better. Sometimes the work is letting go of the fun toys that cannot bring lasting happiness. Plenty of us say we want peace, only to discover that the actual experience of peace is rather boring. You have to want it enough to sit through the boring parts.
Two of Mine
I have one of these experiences of the supportive kind of wanting most weeks. On Sunday mornings, before I teach Vinyasa at The Marsh, I want to sit in the meditation tower. The want to meditate in that particular space is strong. Sitting up there settles my mind before I walk into a room full of people.
Here’s a bigger one: I wanted to become a yoga teacher. That want was not modest, and the cost in money and time was high. I don’t think it was an “affliction.” I was starting to feel out of control in my life, and completing yoga teacher training gave me a really good reason to show up to class, multiple times a week, year after year, plus hours of study and practice at home that nobody was checking on. I loved it. I still do, and it’s part of the reason I continue to assist with yoga teacher trainings at Kripalu.
So the wanting did not end when I finished my training. There was no morning where I woke up, said “all set,” and put my certificate in a drawer. Instead, wanting to be a yoga teacher keeps offering me more occasions to practice, to try things out at home and share what I find with others. You don’t get the durable kind of happiness because you finally stop all of the wanting. You build it by doing, on the days you feel like it and the days you don’t. And once you have some, nobody can take it off you.
Afflicted or Not?
So here’s a practice to try: When you catch yourself wanting something, ask whether getting it would give you more occasions to do the thing you love, or fewer. The want for the new car ends when it’s parked in the garage. My teaching want doesn’t end Sunday morning after class, but keeps feeding my practice. I’m the same guy wanting something, but in different ways.
These are concepts with a lot of nuance in them, and you won’t settle any of it by thinking. I have thought about these two kinds of wanting for years, and the thinking has mostly just led to a fancier vocabulary. The meaningful sorting happens on the mat, and in the days afterward, when you find out whether the thing you wanted led to more happiness in your life. But if you practice yoga or meditation, you can start more simply than that: did that wanting put you in the room where you practice, or keep you home? What do you want right now that would put you in the room more often?
Comments