Evidence · Case 14 · Buddhism
Buddhist texts distinguish tanha from chanda
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The fair reply is that Buddhism separates tanha, craving, from chanda, a wholesome desire that can drive the path. In one discourse (Samyutta Nikaya 51.15) the attendant of the Buddha, Ananda, explains to a brahmin that a monk develops concentration founded on desire, and that this desire for the goal falls away once the goal is reached, so the path uses desire to end desire. A desire for good qualities is even called essential to benefit from the teaching.
Sources
Samyutta Nikaya 51.15, where Ananda explains abandoning desire by means of desire
Objections & responses
- The puzzle rests on translating tanha as “desire.” But tanha is craving or thirst, and the second Noble Truth never said all desire is the problem. Isn’t the “concession” just the doctrine correctly understood?
Mostly yes, and the word concession is wrong; the distinction between craving and wholesome desire is original to the tradition, not something it was caught out by. The puzzle is a puzzle for the popular slogan Buddhism says desire causes suffering, not for the doctrine. What survives is smaller and more interesting: if the tradition distinguishes good desire from craving by the object and manner of desiring, then the deepest problem is not desire itself but misdirected desire, which is close to Augustine’s analysis of disordered love. That is a point of contact rather than a defect.