I’ve just come back from 10 day meditation retreat at a Buddhist centre in the country side near Bath about an hour away from London. This centre follows a tradition of Burmese Buddhist meditation and the 10 day course consists of meditating in groups and not being allowed to talk for 9 of 10 days. You are also not in contact with the outside world and of course I was not checking email or using my iPhone while I was there. This is based on Buddhist tradition of noble silence, but this also gives opportunity for the participants to fully contemplate in their thoughts and see themselves as they are.

While meditating, you are supposed to have a clear mind and not think about anything. But of course many thoughts come into your mind at times, especially when you are sitting for long hours. Many of the thoughts that come into my mind are often driven by bodily and psychological needs and desire, such as pain from sitting, craving for food (in my case cigarette as well), sensual thoughts, greedy thoughts etc.

This gave me a chance to reflect on my needs, what I desire, and what I want to obtain as a greedy self. It gave me a chance to reflect how our mind works and raised and raise a question – When does human desires become too much? How do we deal with this as a society?

Our collective goal to create ‘better life’ and happiness based on our desires drives our civilization, culture and science over all. Especially in the post war era in the west, many of basic needs were satisfied. Families in such countries sought new homes, cars, appliances and so on in the name of ‘better life’.

In between the meditation, I was wondering what the differences are between pursuing healthy desires and greedy needs.

Pursuit of happiness,
Pursuit of desire,
Pursuit of greed.

What I feel is that I am often misled to believe these 3 points are interchangeable, especially in market driven consumer led culture.

In 2012 I worked at an international advertising agency as a key member advising the fashion brand Prada on their overall digital strategy. Marketing and advertising agencies carefully and strategically target consumers’ consciousness which desire for ‘better life’ to create demands for products and services.

Desire creation is a big business. But this kind of desire created in minds are often relentless. It is agitation like mind-set with no end. As soon as your desire is satisfied, next desire comes up. To make matter worse, our society allows these desires and greed to be justified with our ‘rights’ to be happy.  Like famous L O’real advertising copy – “Because I am worth it”.

Dr. Tomabechi, a Japanese cognitive scientist and psychologist claims that there are two types of desires in our daily life. One is physical desire, such as hunger, need for sleep etc and these are essential desires for supporting human life. The other is information-based-desire where one’s desire is driven by information. He reminds us to watch out for this information-based-desire, as it may not always be what one really desires. He uses an example of someone wanting to own a Ferrari. This person might desire type 453, instead of 430, but in reality the difference of driving experience may be small but the desire is driven by the attachment to the information of how it’s lie to drive 453. In fact if the main goal of buying a car was to get from A to B, perhaps small car might do the job.

Coming back fro usual life from the meditation retreat made me aware of how my desires are driven, how to observe my desire come and go. I am more aware of my essential desires and or if they are relentless desire based on information, obsession or attachment.