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Guided Meditaton: Beyond Desire; Dharmette: Doors of Liberation (3 of 5) The Wishless - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 12, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditaton: Beyond Desire

I offer you my delighted greetings from IMC.

Sitting here in my meditation posture, a posture that has been phenomenally important for me for over fifty years, it is quite something to assume a position where, as soon as I sit into it, there is some degree of stopping. There is a stopping of some of the momentum of the mind. Part of that momentum of the mind is having desires.

We don't necessarily recognize how ongoing, continuous, and habitual desires operate in the functioning, activities, and constructions of the mind—what we think about and how we think. Meditation is one of those means by which two things can happen. We slowly begin to recognize how powerful the continuity—the river, the flood—of desires can be. And we recognize that there is an alternative that is delightful. In a way, it is wondrous. It is more satisfying than having any desires.

In fact, having desires—even ones that produce images and ideas that are delightful for the mind—has within it a degree of stress.

An analogy is that there are times where I do stretching, like yoga stretches of different types. There are particular kinds of stretches for me where what is happening is slowly the muscles are relaxing. It is not a matter of stretching the tendons or ligaments, or exactly stretching the muscles. It is rather to be up against where the muscles are tight and gently finding ways to let that release. Release, re-release, and slowly over time, what I am stretching opens up and relaxes. The muscle lets go. What is fascinating is that I didn't know those muscles were tight or being held—maybe continuously held in daily life. Not until I do my stretches do I realize that is the case, when they relax deeply.

It is the same thing with the mind. We don't even know how much we are involved in desires until the mind begins to do something that allows them to relax, soften, and then—wow—it is possible to have this degree of peace or calm.

Another analogy is the classic one in Buddhism of a monkey swinging from limb to limb in the forest. As it is swinging forward, at some point, it is going to let go of the limb behind. But as it lets go, it is already reaching to grab the next limb. There isn't any time in which it is not grabbing. It is holding on tight, and as it lets go of one, it is already reaching forward to grab the next.

That can also be part of our stream. We don't even know that we have a desire, and when that desire goes—maybe it is satisfied—the mind can be already looking for the next thing to want. It is not just simply an object that we want to get or a thing we want to do. There is desire that propels and motivates even what we think about. There can be that reaching forward for the next thought, even if we don't know what that thought is going to be. Because it is so habitual—the swing of grabbing and letting go, grabbing and letting go.

When we sit in meditation, it is one of those places in life where, on a regular basis, we can learn not to grab the next branch. Not because then we will fall, but rather because then we can rest deeply.

So, the idea is of putting to rest, resting, stopping, ceasing for a short while all desires. Don't be afraid that you will never have a desire again. Of course, you will. After some really wonderful, good activity that was tiring, you might stop and rest and do nothing for a while. Completely stop. That doesn't mean you won't do an activity in the future, but we need pause. We need vacations. We need to stop deeply.

Assume a meditation posture which does require a little bit of desire—desire to sit in an aligned posture that supports meditation. Hold that until that desire is fulfilled well enough. Then, you put that desire down and let the posture be what it is.

Then, have a small, light desire to relax the body within that posture. Act on that desire. You might take a few fuller breaths and relax the body as you exhale.

Feeling that is enough, have the desire to breathe normally again—to let go of extra deeper breathing and extra effort, and allow yourself to breathe in an ordinary way.

Then you might want to have a small desire to relax the mind. The image that you might try is to stay with the breathing—maybe the breathing in the torso, the expanding and contracting. Lifting and settling in the torso like the lifting and falling of waves traveling across the ocean. The thinking mind somehow rests on the top of that ocean, being lifted and settling with each passing wave, relaxing the thinking mind as you exhale.

So there is operating a little desire to relax, to soften.

And then maybe having a quiet, peaceful desire to leave the mind alone now and let the awareness settle into the torso, settling around the experience of breathing. And a desire to allow the experience of breathing to connect you to the present moment.

So the desire to think about the future, the past, fantasizing, desire to think about other things to do—those desires are met with the desire to let those rest for now. Relaxing desires for anything but being at rest, peacefully settled here with your breathing.

Noticing the momentum of desire. The force of desire within you is often found in the force behind thinking. The force of wanting, or the desire to want something to go away and not be there.

Let the desires you feel—not what you are desiring, but the sensation or feeling of desire being in you—let that rest on the surface of the ocean. So the waves are breathing in and out, the lifting and falling of the breath.

Calms, settles the force of desire within you.

Feeling the force, momentum, pressure of desiring, wanting something, or a wanting which is wanting something not to be. Put aside what the concern is in favor of experiencing the sensation, the pressure, the momentum of wanting. And let it all rest on the gentle waves of breathing.

The pleasant evidence that the force of desire is quieting is abiding peacefully here and now in your body, maybe with the breathing.

And whatever takes you away from that present moment, away from the peace, chances are high that there is some desire, some momentum or force of desire at play. Can you feel or sense that within you, in your experience?

The awareness which has no desires in it. Maybe being aware of a sound that arises spontaneously is heard without any desire for or against it.

Maybe there are sensations in your body that occur and you can be aware of them and there's no desire. There's just awareness.

Maybe deep inside there is a quiet, still, peaceful place where there is an awareness. There is a way of being that just is, independent of any desire. A place that is desire-free.

Can you adjust yourself to be in harmony with what is desire-free? To join it? To be in the current of what has no desire? Because for the next few minutes, in the deepest, intimate place within, there is no need for desire. Except for the desire to be aligned, to be going with the grain, with the current of the vast world that is free of any desires that you have.

Beyond the edges of desire—to the side, above, below—is a space, is an awareness, is a peace. Peace that is free of desires.

Shift your devotion from desires to what is free of desires. And let go.

And as we come to the end of the sitting, see if you can awaken or tap into a simple, ordinary, natural desire for a peaceful world. For a world in which all people are friends. All people have enough resources to care for each other.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

And may each of us cherish the desire that wants the best for everyone.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Doors of Liberation (3 of 5) The Wishless

Hello and welcome to this third look at the doors of liberation¹, the doors of freedom—a kind of deep, inner spiritual freedom of the heart and mind. That is what Buddhism sees as a phenomenal medicine, a phenomenal form of health, and a phenomenal benefit for those who can experience this freedom.

There are three doors. The second door, which is the topic for today, is the door of wishlessness².

To have no desires—first, we have to be clear that the idea is not to now, forever, have no desires whatsoever. That is a sign of being depressed or being dissociated. Of course, human beings have desires: the desire to eat, the desire to go for a walk, the desire to say hello to someone. There are all kinds of desires that we have. But it is a game changer to have—even temporarily, very temporarily, even momentarily—an experience of the profound peace, the profound possibility of having no desires at all.

It is like a story I have told about a species of humans that were born in the ocean. They were born swimming and all they know is to swim. They swim all the time. They don't stop swimming. They are swimming as they sleep, swimming when they are awake, all day, all the time.

Then one day, one of those swimming humans hears that way far to the east, there is a place where you can go and rest. You can somehow lay on your back and there is a support there for you. The person thinks, "Oh, it must be land. It must be a continent."

The person swims for maybe days, months, years, and never reaches it. Then they meet someone who says, "No, no, it's to the south." And the person swims south, then east, then north. After a phenomenal time of always swimming, searching, searching, searching for a place to rest, a wise old person says, "Yes, there is such a place. It's right where you are. All you have to do is flip over on your back and you'll float."

You are not supposed to float all the time; there probably is a time to start swimming again for that species of humans. But, wow—finally I can rest.

To have this phenomenally deep rest of putting down all desires is one of the potentials for deep meditation and Buddhist practice. But it is also, for some people, how the door of liberation opens. As we get a sense of something, as we step forward or fall into or flip over on our back onto a deep experience—a deep perception or sense or feeling—of that which has no desires.

So the door of where there are no desires at all, and to trust it—to trust having no desires—is more important than anything else. Because anything else is to be caught in the world of desires. Desires by themselves always involve some degree of tension, some degree of stress, some degree of work that we don't see in the ordinary state of mind. In the ordinary state of mind, we don't even know how many desires we are having. It is just a stream of desires. One thought after another all represents wanting something.

The metaphor the Buddha gave is of a monkey swinging. By the time it is letting go of one branch, it is already reaching forward to grab the next. There is no time in which they are not holding on, just switching from one thing to the next. That is how it is for humans often. We just have an endless stream and flow of desires.

To begin recognizing what we are desiring, and questioning it—questioning whether it is worth desiring or worth having—but to drop down behind it to the force, the momentum, the tension of desiring itself. Desire often camouflages itself because it is focused on something it wants as an object. The movement of mindfulness is to turn the attention around 180 degrees and feel the desiring. Feel what it is like to be involved in desires independent of what we desire.

That is a game changer because often there is a lot of belief, a lot of value, a lot of investment in the object of desire. Even if it is a desire that has something to do with a past experience and reviewing it; desire for the future and anticipating something. Even when we are afraid and focusing on what we are afraid of, there is a momentum of desire behind that.

It isn't that desire is wrong. There are appropriate desires to have and appropriate ways to have desires. But to begin discovering how deeply we can let go of desires, and be without desires, can teach us how to let desires surface without any tension in them. To have desires not cause any stress at all and not be addicted to them, not be caught by them, not be attached to them. This is a wonderful thing: to be able to hold desires lightly and to have the ability to choose whether we pick them up or not.

So when we meditate, for some people, they become acutely aware of that tension, this unsatisfactoriness, this stress that is involved in having desires. Not everyone will have this. But sometimes it becomes clear in some very deep, quiet, peaceful, calm meditation that any desire at all is a little bit stressful, a little bit too much, because we know what is better. We know there is a calmer and peaceful place to be.

I don't know if this is a good example, but if you have had a really full day—there has been a lot of physical activity—and now you finally feel so good to rest. Just lay down flat and rest in bed or rest on the grass. You feel any movement—even moving your finger—is too much. Lifting an arm up, or someone asking, "Do you want to go over there to look at something in the park?" No, I just want to stay here. "Do you want to open your eyes?" Not even open your eyes. It is just like everything is too much.

So in very, very deep meditation, there is a peace where we feel like any desire at all ripples the waters. The water has gotten so quiet that we don't want to ripple the waters. It is a remarkable experience. It is an experience that supports the mind to trust: Okay, let go, let go, let go of desires.

Part of this is to begin recognizing that there is a peaceful place, a calm surface of the lake where there are no desires, and to have a real sense of intimacy with that, and peace with that. To be in harmony with it, to be with the grain with it, to be in the current of it. To be kind of laying... if the cat hair is all laid down in the same direction, to let your hand go in that direction. Then maybe the hand stops and rests, and the cat is quite happy that your hand is resting on top of all the fur that is going in one direction. If you pet the cat in the other direction, get all the fur standing up and then put your hand down on top of it, pushing it down, that probably doesn't feel good for the cat.

So this idea of being in alignment with the way of being that has no desires—because it feels so sweet, so nice. You want to purr in the goodness of that, to trust it. And then, for some people, the door of desirelessness opens.

This door of desirelessness—maybe I have convinced you that it is an okay idea. But for some people, the way they get to it is they have a lot of suffering. Only when they suffer a lot—they reach rock bottom with their suffering—are they finally willing to give up and let go of everything.

It is not uncommon, and certainly happened to me, that my suffering was so strong, so deep. I kept trying to work against it and fight it and overcome it and fix it and make my way through it. All my attempts at some point in my practice just made it worse because I was using more tension, more desire, more clinging to try to let go of clinging. I didn't see it. I didn't know any other way. My suffering just grew and grew and grew until finally I had reached rock bottom. With misery and despair and discouragement, the only thing left to do was to give up—to let go completely. "I don't know what to do. I can't practice anymore." I just deeply, deeply let go.

Not because I thought I should, but there was just nothing else that made sense. Nothing else was possible. I was exhausted from all the effort.

There was a particular retreat where that happened. That was the beginning of the retreat for me. I didn't know that that was the case. But then I became in alignment with that. I was supported by that. My system now knew having no desires at all, and that opened a gate. That opened a possibility for me to let something other than my clinging efforts support practice. That became in alignment, in harmony, with this idea of wishlessness, desirelessness, as a way of continuing the practice.

So, the door of the wishless³, maybe it is available more often than you realize. Maybe as you go through this day, you can ask yourself in different circumstances: Where is the door of wishlessness at this moment? What is just below my desires, in between the desires, to the side of them?

And what would it be like to be aligned, to be in harmony, to be with the grain of that part of life that is certainly alive, present, attentive, but does so without any desires? What arises in that? What is possible in that?

The door of the wishless is one of the doors to the heart's release, the heart's freedom.

So, thank you.