Without desire everything is sufficient.
With seeking myriad things are impoverished
Plain vegetable can soothe hunger.
A patched robe is enough to cover this bent old body.
Alone I hike with a deer.
Cheerfully I sing with village children.
The stream under the cliff cleanses my ears.
The pine on the mountain top fits my heart.
Ryokan
With each meditation, each moment of engagement with what is, I am becoming more aware of the sensations of desiring. This occurs to me in a strand of thoughts: when I am content, contact is luxurious. I take my time getting to know shape, feel, scent, music, colours, and flavour. Plain vegetables suffice in their richness.
When I’m ravenous for contact, there is an urgency that pushes through the sensations, desiring only that the ache of craving be soothed. The connection is impoverished by theft.
Just this one breath…
just this one breath… is sized perfectly for my heart
Thank you for still practising,
Genju
108zenbooks 
One interesting thing, of course, is when the contact with which you experience desire is the object of awareness itself – e.g. the breath. This is my (slight) worry about Jhana practice.
Hi Andre! I found jhanic practice to be too seductive for that very reason. It became (for me) an iterative process that in the end carried me away rather than ground me. It was easy to slide into a sensation of ‘transcendence’ – which might easily have be ‘torpor’ or ‘arousal’ (funny how seeming opposites get muddled).
Hope you have a great day!
I’ve never worked with the jhanas. Shucks, I can barely work with my keyboard.
But today I saw the crimson throat of the hummingbird at the feeder, urging me to get out of the way. On a cold day, these little fellows need their sugar.
What do I need?
I’m surprised the little sucker didn’t go for you more aggressively! We got our first snow here today. I don’t know what you need, Barry, but I need to get to the end of next week so I can go on vacation! 🙂 But for this moment my cold cup of chai will do as I pound out these reports!
I never “got” the jhanas. Seemed like too much work, if you ask me… not that anyone did. Besides, I think all I did was hypnotize myself. 😦