Thy Heart's Content

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Mothers Day, Sunday May 14th, 2006


“Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content;
The quiet mind Is richer than a crown.”

--Lines from a Sampler on the wall of an old farmhouse


Some years ago now I had the opportunity to attend a public lecture at Oregon State University by the well-known science fiction writer Ursula K. LeGuin. LeGuin is one of my favorite authors, and I’d actually already met her several times before (since we both were living in Portland, Oregon at the time) -- first at a Science Fiction convention book-signing, and then later at the “Fishtrap” summer writing conference in Enterprise Oregon (where we spent a lovely afternoon sitting at a picnic table talking about her Earthsea series while all of the other aspiring writers were over at the “big tent” trying to network with agents and publishers), and then finally by chance standing in line in the Anne Hughes coffee room at Powell’s “City of Books” bookstore on Burnside Street in Portland, where we greeted one another like old friends. But I’ll never forget this particular lecture, because afterwards during the Q & A one of the students asked her which of her works she considered to be her greatest accomplishment, and without batting an eye or skipping a beat she responded “my children.” And I thought I’d share this story with you this morning both in honor of Mother’s Day, and also because it makes such a nice introduction to this morning’s topic.

For those of you who weren’t here last week, this morning’s sermon is actually the second in a two-sermon series inspired by the book I read from earlier: philosopher William B. Irvine’s On Desire: Why We Want What We Want. You can find the entire text of last week’s sermon on our FRS website, but to summarize briefly, in his book Irvine argues that our desires are more complicated than we think, and can’t really be trusted either. They arise from multiples sources, often forming long chains of “instrumental” and “terminal” desires, and are conditioned by something he calls the “biological incentive system” which has evolved through natural selection over the millennia to give us pleasure or cause us pain in order to reward activities that make us more likely to survive to reproduce, and to discourage us from behaviors that don’t. We aren’t really in control of our BIS, and it really cares very little for our happiness either, once we have served “nature’s purpose.” Furthermore, our desires themselves are typically more emotional than rational, and left to their own devices are also essentially insatiable... which can easily put us on to something Irvine calls “the satisfaction treadmill” -- always wanting and seeking more and more, but never finding it to be enough.

Faced with a dilemma such as this, human beings essentially have three choices. The first is hedonism: the pursuit of pleasure for it’s own sake. We can basically just give into our desires entirely, and pursue them with a single-minded abandon until they either wear us out or kill us. This option actually sounds a lot better in theory than it is in practice. For one thing, our desires often conflict with one another. We want to have things our own way, but we also want to be liked and admired by other people, some of whom we may actually need in order to get what we want. And then there is Irvine’s “satisfaction treadmill” I spoke of earlier: the strange psychological quirk of our biological incentive system that always seems to leave us hungry for more no matter how much we have consumed already.

Which brings us to the second option, which is Asceticism: the attempt to suppress our desires through rigorous physical, mental, and spiritual discipline. The problem with Asceticism is that it is both very difficult and not much fun, since it basically calls for us to control our desires by denying them (and ourselves) any comfort or pleasure at all.

Which leaves us with the third option, the “middle way” which involves first learning to Understand the nature of our desires, and then Mastering them by consciously transforming nature’s purpose into something of our own choosing.

Perhaps one of the earliest and most influential proponents of a “middle way” was Siddhartha Guatama, better known as the Buddha or “enlightened one,” who lived approximately 2500 years ago on the Indian subcontinent. I’m guessing most of you know a lot of this story already, but here it is again anyway. Siddhartha spent the first 30 years of his life as a prince in a castle, never wanting for any human comfort, and completely sheltered from the slightest hint of pain or suffering.

But after a series of accidental encounters which made him aware of poverty and illness and death, he renounced that lifestyle and went to live as an ascetic in the forest. Eventually these extreme physical and spiritual mortification failed to satisfy him as well; he took some nourishment and became enlightened to the Four Noble Truths of the Dharma. The first is that all life is suffering (which includes not only physical pain, but also disappointment and discouragement). The reason for this suffering is our “thirst” -- our insatiable desire for things that come into being and pass away. But there is a way out of this cycle, through the Noble Eight-fold path: Right Understanding, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.

Let’s take a little closer look at these. Right Understanding and Right Intention basically add up to a correct comprehension of the Nature of Reality as described by the Four Noble Truths, together with the expressed desire to renunciate one’s desires. Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood are essentially moral prescriptions: Thou shalt not Lie, Thou shalt not Steal, Thou shalt not Kill pretty much cover the same territory. Right Effort is a little more sophisticated. Right Effort consists of mastering the five basic “distractors” which afflict us all: Sexual Desire (or “Lust”); Ill-Will (think Envy and Anger); Lethargy (or Sloth); Worry; and Doubt. Finally, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration are the disciplines which lead most directly to our eventual enlightenment and liberation: a sensitive awareness to everything that is happening around us, together with the practice of a contemplative meditation which helps us to live fully and contentedly in the here and now, without being consumed by our restless desire for something more, or even the desire to be free from the grip of desire itself.

“For most people,” Irvine writes, “now represents an infinitesimal slice in the infinity of time. To an enlightened person, now -- the current moment -- is all we can know or experience. We are stuck in the present moment, in an eternal now. The past and future are known only by inference. Because the enlightened person has the ability to stay in the moment, he can experience beauty and wonder during even the most commonplace moments. The unenlightened person cannot.”

Irvine goes on to illustrate this point by asking his readers to imagine two people stuck in traffic. The unenlightened person “will likely sit there in a distracted state of mind. He might experience anxiety about being stuck -- and of course it is pointless anxiety since there is nothing he can do to get unstuck. He might think about the things he must do when he gets to his office and about how good it will feel to get home that evening. The enlightened person, in the same situation, might instead contemplate the sky. It is not only blue but a beautiful blue that changes from hour to hour, and it is typically populated with clouds of varying shape, color, and texture. And if the sky is overcast with leaden clouds, he might instead contemplate the smoke drifting up from the tailpipes of the cars in front of him -- the way it swirls and then dissolves into nothingness. If it is raining, he might study the way the raindrops on his windshield merge and the irregular paths they take as they trickle down. Indeed, he might even contemplate the glass of his windshield: how miraculous that a substance can block the wind but transmit light! The enlightened person will become a master of inconspicuous consumption, as compared to the conspicuous consumption in which most of us revel. While the drivers around him are experiencing boredom and anxiety, the enlightened driver might experience bliss.”

Of course, Irvine is also well aware that some people, “on hearing this description of enlightenment, will ridicule the person who can find pleasure gazing at the smoke drifting up from the tailpipes of the cars blocking his way. Such a person is at best childlike and at worst a fool. They will pity him. But who is more to be pitied, the person who is almost incapable of satisfaction and must therefore spend unsatisfying days in pursuit of a moment or two of satisfaction, or the person who can find satisfaction in the most ordinary moments and whose days are therefore filled with satisfying moments? If what we are interested in is satisfaction, it is the former person who is to be pitied; but...most of us aren’t interested in satisfaction. We are instead interested in ‘success,” which not only is different from satisfaction but is to a considerable extent incompatible with it.”

The paradoxical relationship between “satisfaction” and “success” poses a very important philosophical question for us to consider: is it every truly possible for human beings to “achieve” our “Heart’s Content?” The Desire for Success is based on Ambition, but a Sense of Satisfaction is rooted in Appreciation. Success is the product of an experience of discontent and the desire to better ourselves and our condition, while Satisfaction is an expression of our gratitude for what we have and who we are. Success is also often a manifestation of Greed: a desire to acquire and consume more and more; while Satisfaction often expresses itself though generosity, and the pleasures gained by sharing what we already have with others. Finally, the desire for Success is often linked to human pride, and the desire to be respected and admired (and perhaps even envied) by everyone who sees us; while Satisfaction is more often associated with humility, and the realization that we are what we are, and that that’s OK.

To put this in a slightly different way, those who seek success simply for the sake of achieving success rarely feel satisfied, while those who learn to seek satisfaction for its own sake quite often become quite successful as well, although = almost as an afterthought. A restless feeling of dissatisfaction is part of our biological inheritance, and mastering it completely is almost impossible. But according to Irvine, “the worst way to deal with our feelings of dissatisfaction is by working to satisfy the desires we find within us. If we do this, we practically guarantee that we will never experience lasting satisfaction, since the desire we satisfy will quickly be replaced by another desire.” Rather, “the best way to gain satisfaction -- lasting satisfaction -- is to change not the world and our position in it but ourselves. In particular, we should work at wanting what we already have.... We should remember that in most cases what we have... is something that we once dreamed of having, or something that someone less fortunate than us presently dreams of having.... We should endeavor to enjoy this dream, rather than ignoring it to pursue some other dream....”

In many ways, as Human Beings we ARE slaves to our desires, but in Irvine’s view we do not have to submit to that slavery voluntarily or completely. Rather, like any slave, we can recognize that while we may be powerless to escape our enslavement, we can still subvert it; we can still “form a personal plan for living and superimpose it over the plan imposed on us by our evolutionary master. If we do this, we will no longer simply being doing [nature’s] bidding; we will instead be taking our life and doing something with it, something we find meaningful. We will thereby be conferring meaning on our life, to the extent that it is possible to do so.”

When we look at life from this perspective, our quandary becomes much more clear. We can either chose to continue to play in a game which we can never win, constantly experiencing the frustration and the disappointment of constant anxiety, envy, bitterness and discontent; or we can choose to change the game by changing ourselves, by giving up the vain attempt to control things that are not really ours to control, and instead realizing that it is indeed possible to find satisfaction and contentment by looking within ourselves, by looking to the HEART of things. Rather than seeking fame and fortune, or the attainment of worldly success, we should teach ourselves to feel fortunate for the gift of life itself, and the things of the world which are close at hand that give us satisfaction.

When we learn to control our expectations, we make them easier to satisfy as well. When we learn to take pleasure in the simple things that are all around us, we discover that joy is our constant companion, and never far away. Irvine observes that “seen from the cosmic point of view, our existence is an astounding accident. The universe not only could get along without us but for billions of years it did get along. What we must settle for is meaning in some lesser sense -- call it personal meaning. In ‘choosing’ a plan of living, I am doing what I want to in life.... Will this make my life ‘genuinely’ meaningful? Probably not, but I think it will make it more personally meaningful....”

The key to personal happiness and genuine satisfaction, and the ultimate discovery of our Heart’s Content, is hardly a secret: it can be found simply in learning to embrace the lives we have: by becoming aware of the emotional sources of our insatiable desires, and teaching ourselves to redirect those desires toward aspirations that we find personally meaningful, whatever those may be: better relationships, creative achievements (or perhaps merely the mastery of one’s chosen craft), a deep appreciation for the many gifts we have gratuitously received from the Universe.

Evolution has programmed us to feel restless and discontented. But by confronting those feelings for what they are, and asserting our own freedom to choose, we can replace the mindless pursuit of worldly success with the mindful appreciation of who we are and all the blessings of life itself.

And in that moment, we shall be truly satisfied....