Passion From A Pragmatic Buddhist Perspective

By: Br. Christopher Xing-Wen Johnson, OEB

The dictionary has many definitions for passion, but the one I like best says it is an intense desire or enthusiasm for something.

There are scriptures and sutras aplenty that warn us away from passion as a gateway for suffering.  And it CAN be a prelude to attachment which can lead us smack into the Second Truth.

But passion needn’t always be a bad thing.  The Buddha taught that passion leads to suffering, because the people he was preaching to, at the time, needed to hear it.  Like the raft in the parable, however, we must discover how, when, and why to leave that behind.

At its root, one could say that it is our passion to help others that lead us to the Mahayana path.  Passion for spreading the Dharma leads us to become teachers.  Like all things, we should examine our motives and our filters, to see what we do with that passion.  Like steam, if allowed to simply rise into the air, passion can have no positive outcome, but control and direct it and it becomes a motivating force.

Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, in one of his responses to the Lion’s Roar article How do we retain passion while accepting all of life equally? Says of passion:

“It seems in the West we associate passion with uncontrolled emotion. Emotion drives us toward what seems shiny and promising. But it is possible to experience strong emotion, or strong enthusiasm, or inspiration, without being driven by emotion. You must guide emotion—You are the source of that emotion, and also the driver. You guide that emotion and live and act with it, but you are in control.”

Passion is one of the things that makes us human.  It drives art, music, and the written word – all of which serve to enrich our experience of this life.  To deny passion may be to deny one of the very things that makes us human.  But, it can also be a gateway to the Second Noble Truth.  What determines where that energy goes, is where it comes from.

I find that the 3 Pure Precepts are a wonderful guide for pretty much everything, but perhaps especially so when talking about passion.  Anger at being treated unfairly, if left unchecked, may move into violence – but if we apply the 3 Pure Precepts of Do no harm, do only good, and do good for others, it may now become the impetus to begin a social movement that can educate others and change policy.  If left to its own devices,  love can move into lust or possessiveness.  But when the 3 Pure Precepts are applied, we can move that love to become a desire to make life more enjoyable for the other person.

The 3 Pure Precepts are a good springboard for passion, but now we must direct it, and for that we turn to the 6 Perfections.  If we understand them in depth, Generosity,  Morality, Tolerance,  Energy, Meditation,  and Wisdom provide us with a road map on where to take it.

It could even be said that to be passionate moves beyond simple feeling.

Passions move us to actions that can otherwise be contrary to our own preservation, like a mother pushing her child out of the way of a speeding car resulting in her getting hit.  If passions serve no evolutionary purpose, perhaps they come from a deeper place, one only we as humans can open ourselves to.  It becomes our responsibility to take these passions and direct them through those filters and channels that make a positive use of their energy.  If we begin from the 3 Pure Precepts,  and direct our passions along the 6 Perfections,  the result is that we find ourselves living the 8 Fold Noble Path, and creating positive changes in our society that benefit all sentient beings and show the spirit of Thousand Armed Avelokiteshvara Bodhisattva, whose passion to save all beings from suffering led to his vow never to rest until all are freed from samsara.

🙏🏼