Another translation of "chanda" is "interest". For example, you develop interest in the practice, and that gives you energy to pursue it. The way you frame it as process-based instead of outcome-based desire is interesting.
I think there's definitely something to what you're saying, as I've noticed that the key sign that something is going sideways in art is if there's even the slightest whiff of self-satisfaction from the artist. Anytime there's a sense of trying or effort, whatever I'm reading/seeing loses it for me. The masters just completely got out of their own way. When I make my own work, I can see the process happening in real time, and I've been realizing that the best way to develop my craft is to try to avoid those moments.
Been exploring Chanda/tanha a bunch recently against the backdrop of living into my own genius. Very cool to learn more context and to see the connection to the Gita outcome-independence mindset.
One of the Bhagavad Gita's* main points is that the path of unity (yoga) is to act without concern for results. The encouragement is to make every action a state of worship, of total presence, offering all action to divine unity.
I flipped open to a random page and got the following:
"He who performs his duty
with no concern for results
us the true man of yoga – not
he who refrains from action"
another random page:
"if even this** is beyond you,
rely on my basic teaching:
act always without attachment,
surrendering your actions fruits"
It goes deeper & broader, but the core of the text is exactly what you're talking about above.
---
* I find Stephen Mitchell's translation to be the most accessible place to start with the Gita
Great. Also, I've been chewing on a blog post about push vs. pull motivation for a long time, and this post helped remind me that I'm actually just talking about tanha vs. chanda. Gonna rewrite it from this angle and credit you for the inspo...
I dig your insight here, and also in your linked X post about chanda, especially these parts:
"What happens if you release tanha (craving) but don’t transition to chanda (zeal), the cleaner fuel?...Chanda for me feels like a sort of upward angelic current through my bodymind. It feels impersonal, as if I'm 'channeling' something.'"
Your framing of this as "the cleaner fuel," an angelic current, the sense of channeling something -- all very much appreciated. For many years I have found value in framing and speaking of that fuel, that angelic current, in terms of the ancient model or concept of the muse, daemon, or inner genius. If you'll forgive me the vanity of quoting myself, here's a mutually resonant passage from my book published in December, from the penultimate chapter:
"Throughout this book, in talking about writing into the dark, and living into the dark, and writing with the daemon muse, and reaching the flashpoint of silence where we realize we are content with total quiet and stillness, and then finding our way past what may feel like a creative and spiritual impasse when we see through Resistance and realize our natural, given identity as an axis of spontaneous creation—throughout all this, the principle of creative quietude [the Taoist wu wei] has been whispering. . . . The synthesis of effort with relaxation expands our identity and puts us in sync with the creative flow of the cosmos. Conversely, setting effort and relaxation apart and pitting them against each other cuts us off.
"Recognizing the truth of this principle, not just abstractly but concretely, in the specific circumstances of your life, and working gently with yourself to actuate it—perhaps, say, by adopting the model of the daemon muse and learning to work with creativity as an intelligent other within you who bears your unique stamp, and with whom you collaborate—expands the flow of your writing in alignment with the metaphysical current that gives rise to self and world. Your ends as a person become Being’s very ends. There is no possibility of frustration, despair, ennui, and all the rest, because Being is intrinsically and infinitely meaningful. Your awareness and actions are now infused with that, and they naturally, effortlessly express and fulfill that, just as the circulation of your blood, the growth of your hair and fingernails, and all the processes of your physical body, along with the flowing of water and air currents, the growth and movement of plant and animal life, the workings of meteorological and geological processes, the spinning of this planet, and the motions and cycles of the stars and galaxies, have always been and always are expressions of meaning, of Being, of the intelligence and purpose that shapes and animates all things.
"In this marriage of conscious and unconscious, deliberate and spontaneous, action and stillness, sound and silence, self and other, light and dark, we enact our purpose in the sheer fact of existing, including our engagement with whatever specific work comes to us and through us to do. We write and live into the dark, simultaneously blazing and illuminating the path we were born to follow, the famous 'pathless path' of Zen. And we find it to be a perfect path, exactly what our hearts desire. In fact, desire and reality are no longer distinguishable from each other. Creative quietude takes us where we both want and need to go in the world and in our lives, because wanting and needing are now inseparable from the undercurrents of reality itself, which shape everything, including us, exactly as we must be."
The book's subtitle is "Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius." So obviously we're honing in on the same thing in our respective delvings.
I like this a lot. Feel like I've gotten so caught up in survival and trying stabilize my life that I forgot about how much I wanted these very specific things, including wanting to become a god. I like having the language of 'chanda' now too. Good post
I’ve perceived that most people have modes where their genius flows already. For some people that’s when they’re hosting a party, For this one Uber driver was when I got her telling jokes, for me, it happens when I’m about an hour into dancing contact improv. In a world of gods and goddesses, people would simply look the way they do in these modes, but all the time.
A part of the craving and clinging is definitely innate; another thing I'm realizing is that the narrative that we grew up with professionally - to focus on outcome, maximize output, optimize towards it is the exact thing that gets in our way as we realize in midlife "wait all this feels sort of empty, how do I feel something different"? Because it goes against impulse, creativity, self-expression, and all the things that are relatively "unproductive" if measured by some second-order benefit.
fascinating stuff Tyler, I think our theses might be converging in some way here, I have some ideas about how to facilitate this process and would love to chat/brainstorm with you about it. Lemme know if you're open to that!
(context: I recently wrote an essay titled "Self-Improvement is Dead" calling for a ideological evolution/return from "Self Improvement" to "Cultivation", wherein the latter centers "sowing the seed" over "reaping the fruit", doing it specifically in community, and surrender/sharing the fruits. more than a simple mental exercise, i'm putting it into actual practice and seeing beautiful things happen)
Another translation of "chanda" is "interest". For example, you develop interest in the practice, and that gives you energy to pursue it. The way you frame it as process-based instead of outcome-based desire is interesting.
I think there's definitely something to what you're saying, as I've noticed that the key sign that something is going sideways in art is if there's even the slightest whiff of self-satisfaction from the artist. Anytime there's a sense of trying or effort, whatever I'm reading/seeing loses it for me. The masters just completely got out of their own way. When I make my own work, I can see the process happening in real time, and I've been realizing that the best way to develop my craft is to try to avoid those moments.
This is so resonant- thanks for sharing 🙏.
Been exploring Chanda/tanha a bunch recently against the backdrop of living into my own genius. Very cool to learn more context and to see the connection to the Gita outcome-independence mindset.
Can you tell me more about this? “the Gita outcome-independence mindset”
ya absolutely.
One of the Bhagavad Gita's* main points is that the path of unity (yoga) is to act without concern for results. The encouragement is to make every action a state of worship, of total presence, offering all action to divine unity.
I flipped open to a random page and got the following:
"He who performs his duty
with no concern for results
us the true man of yoga – not
he who refrains from action"
another random page:
"if even this** is beyond you,
rely on my basic teaching:
act always without attachment,
surrendering your actions fruits"
It goes deeper & broader, but the core of the text is exactly what you're talking about above.
---
* I find Stephen Mitchell's translation to be the most accessible place to start with the Gita
** single pointed concentration
wow guess I finally better read the Gita
just started rereading it today as a result of this convo! it's a banger, infinitely re-readable too.
Great. Also, I've been chewing on a blog post about push vs. pull motivation for a long time, and this post helped remind me that I'm actually just talking about tanha vs. chanda. Gonna rewrite it from this angle and credit you for the inspo...
Excited to read. Here’s a longer thing on chanda in case useful: https://x.com/TylerAlterman/status/1977008477701566510?s=20
Also thanks for reminding me of chanda in this moment when I was actually in my tanha
if we're gonna go there... not "your" tanha, but the arising of tanha in the dynamic, impermanent process mistakenly perceived as a self ;)
There was tanha. It arose in the mindstream, which temporarily flowed through the whirlpool of experience they called Tyler. And then it passed away.
I dig your insight here, and also in your linked X post about chanda, especially these parts:
"What happens if you release tanha (craving) but don’t transition to chanda (zeal), the cleaner fuel?...Chanda for me feels like a sort of upward angelic current through my bodymind. It feels impersonal, as if I'm 'channeling' something.'"
Your framing of this as "the cleaner fuel," an angelic current, the sense of channeling something -- all very much appreciated. For many years I have found value in framing and speaking of that fuel, that angelic current, in terms of the ancient model or concept of the muse, daemon, or inner genius. If you'll forgive me the vanity of quoting myself, here's a mutually resonant passage from my book published in December, from the penultimate chapter:
"Throughout this book, in talking about writing into the dark, and living into the dark, and writing with the daemon muse, and reaching the flashpoint of silence where we realize we are content with total quiet and stillness, and then finding our way past what may feel like a creative and spiritual impasse when we see through Resistance and realize our natural, given identity as an axis of spontaneous creation—throughout all this, the principle of creative quietude [the Taoist wu wei] has been whispering. . . . The synthesis of effort with relaxation expands our identity and puts us in sync with the creative flow of the cosmos. Conversely, setting effort and relaxation apart and pitting them against each other cuts us off.
"Recognizing the truth of this principle, not just abstractly but concretely, in the specific circumstances of your life, and working gently with yourself to actuate it—perhaps, say, by adopting the model of the daemon muse and learning to work with creativity as an intelligent other within you who bears your unique stamp, and with whom you collaborate—expands the flow of your writing in alignment with the metaphysical current that gives rise to self and world. Your ends as a person become Being’s very ends. There is no possibility of frustration, despair, ennui, and all the rest, because Being is intrinsically and infinitely meaningful. Your awareness and actions are now infused with that, and they naturally, effortlessly express and fulfill that, just as the circulation of your blood, the growth of your hair and fingernails, and all the processes of your physical body, along with the flowing of water and air currents, the growth and movement of plant and animal life, the workings of meteorological and geological processes, the spinning of this planet, and the motions and cycles of the stars and galaxies, have always been and always are expressions of meaning, of Being, of the intelligence and purpose that shapes and animates all things.
"In this marriage of conscious and unconscious, deliberate and spontaneous, action and stillness, sound and silence, self and other, light and dark, we enact our purpose in the sheer fact of existing, including our engagement with whatever specific work comes to us and through us to do. We write and live into the dark, simultaneously blazing and illuminating the path we were born to follow, the famous 'pathless path' of Zen. And we find it to be a perfect path, exactly what our hearts desire. In fact, desire and reality are no longer distinguishable from each other. Creative quietude takes us where we both want and need to go in the world and in our lives, because wanting and needing are now inseparable from the undercurrents of reality itself, which shape everything, including us, exactly as we must be."
The book's subtitle is "Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius." So obviously we're honing in on the same thing in our respective delvings.
This was cool. Thanks for an introduction to a new concept and practice.
I like this a lot. Feel like I've gotten so caught up in survival and trying stabilize my life that I forgot about how much I wanted these very specific things, including wanting to become a god. I like having the language of 'chanda' now too. Good post
Godhood without chanda is still just unawakened deva realms
A beautiful desire, may it be so.
What would living in a world of gods and goddesses look like? How would you know if your desire comes true?
I’ve perceived that most people have modes where their genius flows already. For some people that’s when they’re hosting a party, For this one Uber driver was when I got her telling jokes, for me, it happens when I’m about an hour into dancing contact improv. In a world of gods and goddesses, people would simply look the way they do in these modes, but all the time.
A part of the craving and clinging is definitely innate; another thing I'm realizing is that the narrative that we grew up with professionally - to focus on outcome, maximize output, optimize towards it is the exact thing that gets in our way as we realize in midlife "wait all this feels sort of empty, how do I feel something different"? Because it goes against impulse, creativity, self-expression, and all the things that are relatively "unproductive" if measured by some second-order benefit.
Does this concept leave room for one’s best ideas to come from dialogue?
I feel significantly more creative now that I have always-on access to a collaborator who is on the level about everything.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jordanmrubin/p/a-year-of-automated-overthinking
fascinating stuff Tyler, I think our theses might be converging in some way here, I have some ideas about how to facilitate this process and would love to chat/brainstorm with you about it. Lemme know if you're open to that!
(context: I recently wrote an essay titled "Self-Improvement is Dead" calling for a ideological evolution/return from "Self Improvement" to "Cultivation", wherein the latter centers "sowing the seed" over "reaping the fruit", doing it specifically in community, and surrender/sharing the fruits. more than a simple mental exercise, i'm putting it into actual practice and seeing beautiful things happen)