One thing I am surprised no-one here talks about is the
insight into the illusory nature of desire, as separate from the insight into the illusion of self-as-doer (agent).
In my experience, this insight into desire (which occurred separately some time after I did MCTB 4th path) was a mighty sledgehammer blow into the foundations of the patterns of craving & desire.
Here is how I saw/see it.
Last September I had the insight into non-doership, meaning that self-as-doer, agent was seen through, which is one of the conditions that people in here call 4th path (MCTB 4th Path). Thoughts just appeared with no thinker, the body moves and reacts to various stimuli, and there is no single, controlling entity of my experience. This became my baseline state.
However at this point, my desire, lust, craving etc, were all still unattenuated in any way. I was suffering much less, confusion is significantly reduced but the same craving/fantasy patterns of thoughts, sensations and actions continued to occur, with no controller, no agent.
Although my experience was centreless, and doer-less, just experience, happening all around, it seemed like there were pulls and pushes on experience, which were my latent desires, my karmic conditioning, which I decided needed to be dealt with, or allowed to self-liberate. It seemed certain objects had gravity (or repulsion) which pushed or pulled the mindbody system into conditioned responses. And in my new condition, I curiously had no more power than before over these cravings and aversions.
Then, by doing more insight practice specifically into desire/aversion I felt like I had a really really big liberating insight, and now patterns of wanting/aversion are starting to unwind frighteningly fast. For example romantic & sexual fantasy were really frequent and sticky, but now they are mostly dropped within a second or so.
The insight is very simple, it was simply seeing that the gravity of certain objects, and the "pulls and pushes" they cause are totally illusory. In short that desire is a total illusion.
The illusion of desire works in a similar way to the illusion of "do-er", but it is a little more subtle.
The illusion of do-er1. a thought appears spontaneously e.g. "look, cake!"
2. another thing happens spontaneously e.g. the hand reaches for cake
3. a false interpretation is made that "I, the self, did that"
4. from this dumb interpretation, more erroneous thoughts can arise "Oh, I'm really bad for taking that cake"
The illusion of desire (even after the illusion of do-er is clearly seen through)
1. a thought appears spontaneously, with no thinker e.g. "thought of Person X"
2. another thing happens spontaneously e.g. sensations around the heart area
3. a very fast habitual false interpretation is made that "therefore there is still desire for person X playing out in this mindbody"
4. from this dumb interpretation, more erroneous thoughts can arise "hmm why do I still have desire for person X?"... suffering
The reality is that in direct sensate experience, it is not helpful to say that the thought (1) CAUSES sensation (2)... it is truer to say that one thing happens, then the other spontaneously, with no link whatsoever, for reason whatsoever, with no meaning whatsoever. Go there in your direct experience now, bring an object of aversion or desire to mind, and watch the play of sensations and thoughts. It appears to the untrained eye that they cause, that they push or pull each other, but look carefully and they are not linked in any way. One sensation cannot pull or push another sensation. It just is one sensation.
The fact that they might appear to be linked is a subtle illusion of self-as-desirer. So I did a lot of insight practice with strong objects of desire and the sensations and reactions and it is seen clearly that there is nothing that can be called desire, nothing that can be found to be lust, nothing that can be called karmic conditioning, experience is just one thing happening spontaneously, then another, with NOTHING in the gaps between... when this was seen clearly then fantasies just don't gain traction anymore, because the root of fantasies is the false interpretation at step 3.
This seems like an important insight post mctb 4th path and I believe is the basis for the therevada path 2 (weakening ill-will / sensual desire), but I have not seen anyone talk about it. It can only really be appreciated after seeing through self-as-doer/watcher (mctb 4th path) because prior to that, it is not possible for people to see that there is nothing in the gap, because they still believe in a nebulous selfy-continuity to the whole of their experience, so they can't see clearly that there really is nothing hiding in that gap which can possibly be their desire.
By the way this (doing insight practice on the strong desire-feeling-thought patterns) is I think the same method which Adyashanti describes in rooting out of thought belief patterns, and also I believe the same process as Byron Katie's the work. Basically you are just trying to see the patterns clearly, see that there is no you in them, no desire in them, then finally they can self-liberate. Prior to this, if you believe that there is some mysterious force of personal desire in there, then the patterns cannot self-liberate as they are being held in confusion.
Anyway just how things have panned out for me. would be interested to hear from other people...
Jinxed P:
The first few noble truths state that the cause of unsatisfactoriness is desire/craving. And while people here make a great deal about nonduality I find little discussion on how nonduality relates to the cessation of desire (does it?).
From my understanding of buddhism it is the ending of desire that leads to nirvana. And while many here have claimed to have fully reached a nondual understanding, no one here claims Nirvana. Are we at the DhO community simply stopping at nonduality and not realizing the nondual implications for ending desire which in turn leads to the end of suffering?
What is the relationship between desire and nonduality? Between desire and the attainments you have reached?
How has a nondual understanding impacted desires for sex, good food, friendship, etc?