An issue I take with Freud is how he approaches desire. Indeed, to be denied that which we desire will cause anxiety, and will influence (or, “cause”) repression. But, the key is happiness. Freud seems to contend that happiness is the satisfaction of our repressed desires, or at least the rooting out of repressed desires, and I question this notion. I do not think that pleasure = happiness. I think that happiness may rather be the process of seeing and living things as they really are as opposed to as they “are” (or, “seem”). Freud’s (and dare I say “Western” societies’ version of) happiness is the satisfaction of the baby who gets its bottle. While I do think that one cannot be happy with repressed desire, that doesn’t mean that happiness is the satisfaction of those desires. I think happiness is more concerned with truth, with seeing the desire-process as it really is and not allowing oneself to be controlled by it.
Repression can only exist when there are desires to be repressed. But can there be repression without desire? If not, then the way to genuinely negate repression is to negate (by which I do not mean deny) the desire, not merely to attempt to root it out and satisfy it.
I don’t mean to imply that we should not try to root out and understand our repressed desires. In fact, I think that this is what Freud was right about. I think that we should make an effort to root out our desires and understand them, understand why we want what we want. And that entails an understanding of what we want, and why, and the assumptions and beliefs on which they are based. In this process of understanding (of questioning the illusions of) our desires do we see their illusory and essentially invalid/unreal nature, and that is how they are overcome in the right way, which means that they disappear like a mirage that is recognized as an illusion.
If happiness is understood as the satisfaction of the self’s desires (whatever they may be, even helping others), and if there is no real such thing as “self,” then happiness will be utterly unattainable. This is such an important thing to think about and understand. It is in this way that I think that anyone who defines happiness as the satisfaction of their self’s desires (wants and “needs”), and pursues it thusly, will never—for they can never—be truly happy; for true happiness cannot exist in a conceptual framework which includes (the concept of) “self.” It is ultimately impossible to satisfy the self because ultimately, there is no self (to be satisfied).
Therefore, people who look for satisfaction (of desire or expectation) will never truly be satisfied. People who seek to satisfy the self, who think that the way to wholeness and enlightenment is the satisfaction of their desires (conscious or unconscious) are missing the point, which is the possibility that the true path to enlightenment begins with the awareness that the self does not exist, and to live and think and act/do accordingly.
Unfortunately, our “reality,” our culture, our collective assumptions and their subsequent ideologies, economies, philosophies, and ultimate conceptual frameworks (our collective conditioned existences) are not set up for this, and he who tries to do this will be a pariah, for he will be one from the many, and thus shoved aside as an individual who does not fit into the whole, when he is the one who really understands the futility of “individualism.”
When Hinduism/Buddhism teaches that the path to enlightenment is “through the self” what that means is that the path to enlightenment is seeing the ego-self as, or for, what it really is: an illusion, a concept, a delineation we have imposed upon “nature,” or reality. Thus, if our goal is happiness (and I do not know anyone who could truthfully claim to not want to be happy), and we seek happiness through the satisfaction of the self, then we will/can never truly be happy, for while we may be looking in the right direction (at the self) we are not seeing it clearly, we are not seeing the illusory nature of it, and therefore act wrongly in accordance with our ignorance.
We are focusing on the self, but in the wrong way. We think that we need to satisfy the self, but that’s partially because of our ignorance of thinking that the self is real and not illusion; for the right way is to question the illusions of our conditioned existence which will allow us to see that the self is an illusion.
We’re on the right track by focusing on the self, but we’re just focusing on it in the wrong way, with the wrong attitude. If happiness is not the satisfaction of the self (of the self’s desires) then that changes the whole ballgame. It really does.
.
From my personal notes, 10/7/99.
