Grasping Fire (About Desire)

I get these daily dharma quotes by email, and I thought this was a pretty good one by Ajahn Sumedho. He is a monk living in England who was born and raised in Seattle. The Spirit Rock teachers look to him as one of the greatest living western teachers in their tradition. Here goes:

Grasping Fire
By Ajahn Sumedho, Teachings of a Buddhist Monk

The Buddha's teaching is all about understanding suffering--its origin, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. When we contemplate suffering, we find we are contemplating desire, because suffering and desire are the same thing. Desire can be compared to fire. If we grasp fire, what happens? Does it lead to happiness? If we say: "Oh, look at that beautiful fire! Look at the beautiful colors! I love red and orange; they’re my favorite colors," and then grasp it, we would find a certain amount of suffering entering the body. And then if we were to contemplate the cause of that suffering we would discover it was the result of having grasped that fire. On that information, we would hopefully, then let the fire go. Once we let fire go then we know that it is not something to be attached to. This does not mean we have to hate it, or put it out. We can enjoy fire, can't we? It is nice having a fire, it keeps the room warm, but we do not have to burn ourselves in it.
--Ajahn Sumedho, "Teachings of a Buddhist Monk"

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