Fire of Desire
It looks like it is snowing outside our home. Velvety gray-white flakes gently fall to the ground, occasionally swirling in a breath of wind before landing. But these flakes are not made of frozen water; they are composed of carbon ash from nearby wildfires. They had to travel at least 20 miles to get here. I wonder about their journey…
Rising upward from the flames, the ash flakes ascended to an elevation where southerly winds blew them northward and thermal currents buoyed them skyward until they cooled enough to descend over the city. I never thought I would be sweeping ash originating from so far away. I think about those who live closer to the active forest fires—they must be coated in the gritty powdery stuff. This ash is an emissary of fire, a wise messenger from our mother earth.
Fire is such an amazing thing. I often contemplate its transformative power alongside the intimacy of a campfire. Gazing into the blue-orange tongues whipping and dancing about, the warmth emanating is unlike the feeling of any home heating system. Radiating directly to the body while contained within the fire ring, the heat is a wise and comforting friend. But if it escapes into the surrounding grasslands or forest, it marches relentlessly though the landscape destroying everything in its path.
Fire has her own urgings and not much patience with us. Sometimes I wonder if our attempts to reduce the effects of a conflagration actually does anything other than assuage our anxiety for a moment. In our own minds we seem preoccupied with dousing flames much of the time. Our thoughts try to extinguished the fires emanating from the dramas we ignite. We often hope to temporarily calm our anxiety without doing anything to cease igniting more fires.
In Buddhism, fire is the symbol for desire swell as the liberation of the desire that arises as grasping and attachment. When we cling to a particular thought (person, place, or thing), it is as if we set a fire on purpose and it can easily get out of control. We can use that same fire to extinguish itself as in the case of woodland firefighters setting backfires to eliminate fuel. We too can set metaphorical backfires to eliminate the fuel of our misdirected desires. It is a matter of paying attention and coaxing the fire of desire to benefit others rather than for our own selfish needs.
In other words, we transform passion into compassion. Passion has its place in our enjoyment of life and zeal to accomplish goals, but compassion is always for everyone everywhere. As it says in the Kuntuzangpo Aspiration Prayer: “May all beings, conditioned by desire and attachment, neither reject the pleasure of desire nor accept the clinging of attachment. By relaxing their mind as it is, may they restore self-refreshing awareness, and attain the wisdom (fire) of discernment”.