352. Compulsive Desires

A desire can sometimes feel automatic and compulsive, as though there were no possible alternative to its satisfaction. In such a case, it feels absolutely necessary to get what we want.

Sometimes this means we are actually describing a need instead of an intention. When we are hungry, we want to eat the food that is in front of us, but this want is nothing more than an intuitive response to the need for nourishment. Such a desire is not an intention because it arises in the moment and can be satisfied in the moment, whereas an intention is about the future.

An intention always involves some kind of goal or ideal state we are trying to reach, maintain, avoid, or confirm. It is the future-oriented nature of our intentions that causes us to become attached to them. Intentions give us specific, definite goals to strive towards and we crave this certainty. Sometimes our desires feel automatic or compulsive because we become attached to them almost as quickly as they form.

Every intention has a judgment at its core. For a desire, we want its object because we judge it to be valuable in some way. We could always judge differently, which means every intention could be reversed: we could choose to hate what we presently want, and vice versa. Our judgments often happen so quickly that they lack conscious consideration. Many of our desires arise spontaneously from judgments that follow immediately from our preexisting beliefs or values.

When an intentional desire feels compulsive or seems to lack alternatives, we are almost certainly attached to it. Our inability to see that there are other options indicates that our awareness of this desire is deficient, which means that we cannot see how attachment to it will produce suffering. But all is not lost, for once we have noticed an attachment, we can begin to see how it operates, and by paying attention to it, we can eventually develop the awareness necessary to break free.