Many people think that the aim of Buddhism is let go of any kind of longing. However, without wholesome desires – to awaken, to act ethically, to honor your relationships, etc. – you wouldn’t progress in practice. In Part 1 I started discussing five kinds of appropriate longing based loosely on the Vajrayana teaching of the five wisdom energies, covering Red and Yellow energy longing. In Part 2, I talk about Blue, Green, and White energy.
Quicklinks to Article Content:
Blue Energy Longing: Knowing
Green Energy Longing: Effectiveness
White Energy Longing: Transcendence
See Part 1 (Episode 340) for the setup to this discussion, where I talked about how Buddhism distinguishes between desire – which can be wholesome and motivating in a positive way – and tanha, or craving. Cultivating appropriate desire, or longing, is actually important for practice. One useful way to identify appropriate desires is by looking at this matter through the lens of the Vajrayana teaching of the Five Wisdom Energies. Everyone contains all five energies, and in fact it’s important for us to honor all the energies, but usually one or two energies dominate our personality. Therefore, you might end up resonating with one or more of the “colors” of longing I describe in this episode. Be sure to check out Part 1, where I described Red and Yellow energy longing.
Blue Energy Longing: Knowing
A person in whom blue energy predominates longs for knowing. Their primary motivating question is, “What can I know,” or – perhaps more accurately – “What should I know?” Knowing is what gives us security and control. It lets us make sense of things, identify threats, make predictions, and organize our lives to maximize the chances of a good outcome. Blue energy people may enjoy the accumulation of knowledge for its own sake, but they feel compelled to understand what seems relevant to the preservation of their wellbeing, or that of those they care about.
Blue energy is behind inquiry, curiosity, problem-solving, organizing, and practical creativity. Philosophers, engineers, scientists, and scholars of all kinds are likely to have lots of blue energy. Blue energy inspires us to design systems, organizations, and institutions that can be of great benefit.
In Reality-with-a-capital-R, there is no inherently-existing self to be threatened, and our True Nature is indestructible. Everything is impermanent and ungraspable, so any “knowing” is only an approximation that – at best – will be useful only for a limited time, in a limited set of circumstances. When we know our True Nature, this is not upsetting, and we can accept not-knowing as the condition of this life. Plus, we realize the universe is a living tissue we are an integral part of, not a threatening void.
But wait, what does it mean to “know” our True Nature if “knowing” is ultimately impossible? That’s another wonder for the blue energy person to discover: The knowing we can rely on isn’t intellectual or even intuitive, it’s simply an aspect of our own direct experience, like knowing the warmth or coolness of water as it runs over our hand. It’s not a knowing you can capture or put in a book, but it’s the most reliable information we will ever have.
When we doubt this Real-with-a-capital-R knowing, our longing manifests in all kinds of ways that can cause issues in our lives, including:
- Searching endlessly for answers in books and academic study, often to the neglect of our embodied life
- Discounting our own direct experience as merely subjective, instead seeking definitive and final answers in abstract, philosophical, logical, or intellectual forms that never ultimately satisfy
- Trying to control everything in our lives because of the threat of what is unknown or can’t be predicted, often resulting in emotionally distancing ourselves or living an impoverished existence limited only to that which doesn’t feel threatening
- Anger at sources of perceived threat
- Living in fear of attack, destruction, pain, other negative consequences originating from a named source beyond our control or a nameless source beyond our knowing
The wholesome desire of blue energy is to consciously experience and know Reality-with-a-Capital-R.
If we recognize our longing for Real knowing – a direct and personal experience of Reality – for what it is, we can use it to motivate our practice:
- To recognize our mental map as being largely arbitrary and unreliable
- To question everything, even when it’s uncomfortable
- To never be satisfied with an answer, but to keep up the process of inquiry
- To passionately investigate the nature of knowing itself
Green Energy Longing: Effectiveness
A person in whom green energy predominates longs for effectiveness. Their central question is, “What should I do?” You will find them doing, doing, doing. Our green energy causes us to take joy in serving, fixing, creating, moving, learning, and mastery – basically, in all positive human activities. Green energy people look around and ask, “What needs to be done?” Then they roll up sleeves and get to work. They never say, “Not my problem.” They don’t need kudos because they take satisfaction in effectiveness for its own sake – seeing something functioning, beautified, repaired, or flourishing.
Green energy is at heart of taking care of people, things, and places. It inspires performance arts, athletics, entrepreneurial projects, and social justice work.
In Reality-with-a-capital-R, there is no separate, inherently-existing self behind all the doing. Ultimately, everything is precious just as it is, so nothing truly needs doing. Activity can be carried out beautifully and effectively in the spirit of wu-wei, or not-doing (a term from Taoism): When our sense of a small, limited self isn’t in the way, the energy of the universe flows through us. The result is effectiveness far beyond what that limited self could accomplish on its own.
When we doubt this Real-with-a-capital-R effectiveness, our longing manifests in all kinds of ways that can cause issues in our lives, including:
- Overwork, stress, burnout – seeking to fulfill our longing for effectiveness through self-power, pushing through, feeling responsible for more than we can handle
- Getting attached to, lost in, or identified with our activities and effectiveness, therefore experiencing suffering when we don’t get results, or our efforts are misunderstood or rejected, or our roles our projects are taken from us
- Developing a habitual frantic or resentful energy as we work
- Regretting responsibilities that we’ve taken on out of a desire to experience effectiveness
- Finding ourselves overwhelmed by tasks and projects that we boldly took on all by ourselves without waiting to get others on board
- Existential despair about our activities – are we doing the right things?
- A sense of groundlessness, restlessness – feeling we should be doing something, but we don’t know what it is
- Living in fear of everything falling apart and being unable to prevent it
The wholesome desire of green energy is to give oneself over to the manifestation of Reality-with-a-Capital-R in the world – to fully celebrate and honor the truth in an embodied way.
If we recognize our longing for Real effectiveness – wu-wei – for what it is, we can use it to motivate our practice:
- To learn to see the true nature of self so we can get self out of the way
- To learn to avoid powering everything through the limited efforts of the small self
- Take joy in service, in the emptiness of the three wheels of giver, receiver, and gift
- To release ourselves from the compulsion to act because we have a sense of how ultimately nothing needs to be done
White Energy Longing: Transcendence
A person in whom white energy predominates longs for transcendence. Their primary question is something like, “When (or how) can I rest?” The white energy longing for spaciousness, calm, or rest isn’t about exhaustion, it’s about longing to feel complete. A white energy person often feels an aversion to, or lack of interest in, the hustle and bustle of world. They are likely to see the pointlessness of it all. White energy draws us to contemplative spiritual practice.
White energy is at the heart of spiritual and religious practices. This energy inspires our attempts to broaden the mind, open the heart, challenge our mental maps, and connect with nature. White energy is behind true equanimity.
In Reality-with-a-capital-R, everything is okay. Just as the white energy person intuits, nothing ultimately needs to be done, and everything is precious just as it is. At the same time, we are Buddha-nature. Despite emptiness, we are. To think Emptiness is a void is a great mistake; in fact, everything is sparkling with liveliness. True transcendence isn’t hiding out in nothingness; it’s fully inhabiting our lives even as we walk in Emptiness.
When we doubt this Real-with-a-capital-R transcendence, our longing manifests in all kinds of ways that can cause issues in our lives, including:
- Depression and malaise – not due so much to difficult life circumstances, but to a disconnect with any of the motivations felt by others; inactivity then leads to more depression and malaise
- Overwhelm – the world can seem pointless, demanding, frantic, and difficult to navigate
- Clinging to a partial intuition of emptiness, thinking thoughts like, “nothing is worth doing,” “I don’t even really exist,” or “none of this real”
- Watching life pass us by, and unwillingness to commit
- Lack of clarity about who we are, what life is about, but also not wanting to face our doubts
- Living in fear that everything is actually a nihilistic void, and we are in danger of being subsumed by it
The wholesome desire of white energy is to give honor and live in constant awareness of Reality-with-a-Capital-R in the world, where there is nothing that is needed – living with a sense of completeness and wholeness, but also aliveness.
If we recognize our longing for Real transcendence for what it is, we can use it to motivate our practice:
- Balance our white energy with other energies so we have enough motivation to practice
- Awaken to true non-duality, so we’re not just stuck in an idea of emptiness – tap into an aliveness, a strong sense of self, even as we acknowledge emptiness
- To be an equanimous presence in the world
Conclusion
In conclusion, I encourage you to look within and find what longings are there. You may be used to identifying them in their problematic manifestations and might even think of these longings as something you should get rid of. However, underneath each of our neurotic desires is usually a sincere spiritual longing that can motivate our practice, and when we awaken to our True Nature and Reality-with-a-Capital-R, our longings are fulfilled in ways we never imagined.
