In Buddhism, they say that desire is what leads to suffering (dukkha). I resonate with this idea, but it’s not very actionable. You know what I mean if you've ever tried to not have desire. It runs deep, and I don’t know if I'm there yet.
But there is a specific type of desire that gives me the most trouble: conflicting desire. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but conflicting desire is when you have two or more desires, and satisfying one unavoidably fails to satisfy the others.
When I look closely, conflicting desires are everywhere.
- I want to meditate, but I also want to check my phone.
- I want to eat healthy, but I also want to eat this damn ice cream.
- I want to keep hanging out with friends, but I also want to get some sleep.
- I want to be liked, but I also want to be authentic.
And the list goes on. This can be applied to larger life decisions like:
- I want adventure, but I also want comfort.
- I want to live simply, but I also want the security of money.
- I want to drop out of school, but I also want to get a degree.
The issue here is that, no matter which choice you make, there's always a voice in the back of your head saying, “But my other desire is not being met.”
When I took a closer look at these conflicting desires, I realized that “I” don’t have conflicting desires; it's just that there are several “I”s. Different “I”s want different things. The issue is that they are all sharing one body and seemingly one global consciousness.
Contradictions or hypocrisy usually have negative connotations. But when I am being truthful to the state of my consciousness, I find myself contradicting all the time because “I” am not a concrete being.
One time, I got into an argument in a car with Shreya, and she pointed out that I was contradicting myself. I pulled out, “You are attached to logic,” and boom, mic dropped, and I tried to walk away. She got really pissed.
Anyway, I think the truth here is that the concept of a constant Mahiro is a fabricated delusion. To have an identity around anything is just me trying to gain comfort by pretending that I am a concrete thing.
Now I am gonna edit this so it actually makes sense… Sike.