Surviving desire: what Buddhist thought teaches us about our war on want | Nadine Levy

When I was a kid, I had a designated “junk food drawer”. I remember a particular kind of joy in choosing what I felt like eating: chips, chocolate, biscuits. I would saunter into the kitchen, choose my poison and kick back on the couch.

These were simpler times.

Perhaps you are raising an eyebrow. Such parenting might seem laissez-faire, irresponsible even. But this small act shaped my relationship to my body and its needs. Hunger was to be listened to, not feared or repressed. “When you are hungry, eat,” my mum would chime.

I recognise the privilege of growing up in a home where food was abundant and the fact that I could usually stop when I had enough (a capacity I have since, ironically, lost). Yet, as an adolescent, I was struck by how often food became a site of negotiation and tension in other families. For many, food represents a source of profound struggle, bound up with shame, discipline and judgment.

Of course I didn’t get away scot-free. If food wasn’t a struggle for me as a child, other desires were – the desire for rest, pleasure, recognition.

This is a strange moment in the history of desire. Digital platforms and their algorithms increasingly anticipate our desires, sometimes even before we register them ourselves. Do you need an app that tells you to drink water before you feel thirsty? Maybe you do!

What’s more, we live in a culture adept at stimulating desire while simultaneously encouraging us to distrust it. We are sold viral food trends, alongside GLP-1 medications that can suppress appetite and, for some, calm the “food noise”.

But what is the actual problem here? Do we desire too much, or too little? Or is there a more interesting question at play?

It may come as a surprise to some, but Buddhism does not propose that we eradicate desire altogether. Rather, it asks us to look closely at the ways desire arises; how it feels, what shapes it and where it leads.

The heart communicates through its wanting – through its pulling, beckoning and reaching. We begin by respecting this dynamic. Bowing to it. And giving it enough space to reveal itself on its own terms. With time, we develop trust in our own discernment and capacity to move with wanting, rather than being trapped by its demands.

Not all wanting is the same. Some forms of desire entangle us; others support our flourishing.

A useful Buddhist concept here is taṇhā, the Pali word for craving or thirst. This is wanting with a particular flavour: sticky, insistent, difficult to release. We crave something, get it, and sooner or later we want it again. The object of our yearning fails to live up to what we had subtly imagined, and the experience of satisfaction itself fades, giving way to more wanting.

In fact, I am likely ensnared right now, as I reach for my third cup of coffee.

The problem is not necessarily the coffee itself but our grasping at the idea of it and the promise it carries. Like a dog with a bone, we can’t loosen our grip.

In Buddhist thought, desire can also take a wise and wholesome form, an aspiration or intention to care, to grow, to practise non-harm, and to minimise suffering and confusion. And then there are very practical desires and instincts, like the need to eat, rest, move, connect. They are to be noticed and responded to wisely and compassionately.

And this is where matters get interesting. Rather than immediately gratifying or repressing desire, we can learn to get to know its different faces, textures and patterns of movement.

What sits behind the urge, or the pining? And how does it move in the body?

Mary Oliver, the late American poet, famously implores “You only have to let the soft animal of your body … love what it loves”. For me, there is something in this line that opens the possibility of lingering in the wanting, allowing it to unfurl, refraining from extinguishing it through immediate gratification.

When the Buddha taught mindfulness, he instructed his disciples to know the body in the body. The body is where instinct, sensation and craving can be known and felt directly. With tenderness and presence, we might notice the visceral tug of wanting and how it is linked to the future it imagines.

And here is another twist: sometimes our desires are too small. What we think we want is a second sandwich, but what may lie beneath the wanting is broader, bolder. We want freedom, peace, a sense of completeness. In Buddhist terms, such aspirations find a rightful place in the spiritual path; it would be hard to sustain spiritual practice without them.

There is no war on wanting. The work is less about fighting what we feel, and more about meeting desire with curiosity, integrity and wisdom. We take a breath and feel the sensations in the chest, the throat, the jaw; we watch the fantasies, the pleading and the magical thinking. There is no rush. Desire has a life cycle of its own.

We notice the desires that make us contract and quicken, and those that make us feel spacious, connected and aligned with the heart of things.

As an adult, I still have my hands in the junk food drawer. But the difference, perhaps, is I can see desire for what it is: a powerful intersection of body, evolution, memory, imagination and culture, something that is much bigger than me.

Wanting need not be pushed aside, nor automatically followed.

Instead, I imagine my late grandmother asking: “Are you hungry or do you want a cuddle?”

Both!

“Why don’t I fetch you a snack and a blanket and we can rest here together?”