Eastern renunciation

I continue to find plenty in Mark Epstein's "Open to Desire: The Truth about What the Buddha Taught".  At one point, he relates an exchange between some Western psychologists and the Dalai Lama.  The visitors had heard plenty about difficulties stemming from emotions and one asked with some exasperation if the Dalai Lama  could think of any emotions that seemed to be have a positive value.  He replied that renunciation was often a source of joy.  Westerners often mean by renunciation a sort of retreating from the world, especially of worldly activities but the Buddhists mean something more like finally giving up on wanting, on endless needing of X.

The awareness that comes from sitting quietly and observantly with yourself sometimes turns up the same old longing.  Westerners might recommend action: you want to open a business?  Open it!  But Buddhists might say that if you can tell it the longing is another flibberty-gibbet, a flickering, tantalizing fantasy that presents itself in wonderful terms that will only turn out to be more work and less play, renounce that longing.  Just give it up. Finally shelve the pest.  

Epstein is at some pains to explain that Indian thought emphasizes that even little renunciations of temporary anticipated pleasures can strongly improve the pleasure.  Say a gourmet has a special cheese or wine they have been anticipating.  Deciding to put off getting to it can sharpen the pleasure of tasting when it comes. 

The more basic, childish and primitive action is to want, strongly and directly and immediately.  Especially with a love of a person, whether it is a mate or a friend or one's child, too strong and too direct desiring becomes objectifying.  I really want that lover and I will make her mine.  Renouncing the power drive to capture and compel the response one seeks actually leads to greater mutual enjoyment of the bodies and the personalities.