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Just a few weeks ago, India marked her 79th Independence Day.
The flags were unfurled, anthems sung, and street corners washed in tricolour. Each year, the celebration recalls the nation’s long walk from subjugation to sovereignty: self-esteem reclaimed, self-made laws, and for the first time in centuries, every Indian recognized as a first-class citizen in their own land. Freedom for a country is hard-won.
Yet when that same word drifts away from the Red Fort’s parade grounds and into the quiet of the human heart, it grows slippery. A nation may be free, while its people remain in chains — not of iron, but of craving, fear, the restless greed for more. Laws can declare independence; the mind can still bind itself. This is where inner freedom becomes the true struggle.
The Buddha’s View: Desire, Suffering, and Freedom
Long ago, Siddhartha Gautama also won his freedom — not from a foreign yoke, but from the subjugation of his own conditioned mind. The Buddha called these inner chains tanha — thirst — the clinging that warps honest need. At Sarnath, in the Second Noble Truth, he taught that from this thirst springs dukkha — the suffering that binds us more tightly than iron ever could.
Translators have often rendered dukkha as “suffering” and tanha as “desire,” but these terms only scratch the surface. Dukkha comes from du (bad, difficult) and kha (axle-hole), evoking a wheel with a misaligned axle, wobbling under strain. It captures an existential friction — the deep sense that life is “off,” not just painful.
Likewise, tanha is more than mere want; it is the thirst that distorts clear impulses, contrasting with chanda, the wholesome impulse toward what sustains life. To tell them apart is to find the axis of freedom. This distinction between tanha and chanda is at the very heart of mindful living.
Modern Craving: Silence, Wi-Fi, and Control
The day before yesterday, a senior corporate leader from Chennai called about staying at the Zendo. His needs were crystal clear: a corner room facing the mountain, no interruptions (he insisted on being left entirely alone), and very fast, reliable Wi-Fi. He might join zazen. Or he might not.
His final question was about the menu.
I suggested another place nearby — Tamara.
“Is it a Zendo?” he asked.
“A five-star resort,” I replied.
Silence. Then the line went dead.
This is how tanha dresses itself today — the hunger for silence braided with the hunger for control, retreat tethered to a seamless data stream. Not wrong. Not right. Simply the wheel, wobbling under many pulls. Here lies the tension between freedom and desire.
Breath: The First Freedom
In the original list of primal instincts, before hunger, there is breath. The first gasp in the delivery room, the last sigh at death. Breathing is the body’s oldest rhythm, the metronome that plays even in dreamless sleep. Honest breath is like chanda: clear, necessary, free of ornament. But the mind can seize it, posture with it, chase exotic pranayamas for performance.
Breath reveals the foundation of inner freedom. It is where life meets discipline, where awareness transforms craving into clarity.
Hunger and Desire: A Buddhist View
Hunger, too, has its own manifesto of truth — until the mind twists it. Self-made billionaire and Thyrocare founder A. Velumani mapped it in rupees with striking clarity:
- Eating for the stomach — ₹50 to ₹100: true need
- For the tongue — ₹200 or more: craving enters
- For the eyes — ₹1,000: plating as theatre
- For the nose — ₹3,500: perfumed status
- For the “likes” on social media — an invisible currency, spent in restless scrolling
The higher the climb, the farther one drifts from the honest growl of the belly.
Schopenhauer caught the paradox: “You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.” The Buddha went further. Awareness doesn’t kill desire; it clarifies it. Discipline is the alchemy.
When breath shortens or hunger whispers — pause. Ask: is this chanda’s call for life, or tanha’s cry for comfort? Watch craving rise like steam from a five-star dish. Don’t judge it. Don’t become it.
Freedom Through Mindful Living
“When you eat,” said Dōgen, “just eat. When you breathe, just breathe.” A hundred-rupee thali, honest breath, meeting the sensation raw. Here, tanha starves. Chanda breathes deep.
Every morning after zazen, we chant the Meal Gatha in the Zendo dining hall before breakfast:
This food is the gift of the whole universe:
self-giving of the earth and sky, sentient and insentient beings.
Many are labouring to feed and nourish us in the mutuality of love and caring.
May we enjoy this food in love and gratitude.
May we become a blessing for the many.
From this scorched earth, patience grows. Focus sharpens. The Zen monk’s mindful bite of bread, the jivanmukta’s sip of water, the master’s easy gait — all move with life, not against it.
True Freedom: Beyond Wanting
True freedom isn’t the death of wanting. It is seeing the feast in the frugal, the vastness in a single breath. Then the wheel turns true: no wobble, no scrape, only the smooth roll of a life aligned. Hunger remains. Breath remains. The suffering ends.
In the half-dark before dawn, just before Independence Day, my 90-year-old Zen teacher walks toward the altar. The air is cool and still. The mountain’s mist-clad silhouette plays hide and seek. A few birds have already begun their sutra chanting. The floorboards creak under slow, certain feet.
Is it tanha that moves him, or chanda?
Perhaps neither.
Only the feet, moving.
Want more awesome content? Head over to the author’s blog, KokoroZendo.life, for fresh insights on mindfulness, motivation, and transforming your life. New posts drop all the time to help you on your journey!
