For the longest time, I have equated “needs” with “attachments,” and rejected entirely the notion of needs. I thought one of the goals of Dharma practice was to get to the point where we have no needs. I now think this is a big mistake.

The mind of attachment thinks, “I need X external thing to be happy,” and “without X I can’t be happy.” Such thninking is obviously wrong and clearly the mind of attachment. Thinking this towards any external object just sets us up for misery as we chase after X and fall into despair without it. In truth, we don’t actually need these things, therefore it is wrong to even call them needs. Only our ignorance does so.

But this does not mean we don’t have needs. We need Lamrim realizations, for example. It is clear all the stages of the path of Sutra and Tantra are our inner needs, and there is nothing wrong with striving to attain them and thinking we can’t be happy without them. We must rely upon a happy mind alone. This is also fairly clear.

What has been a gray area for me is those external things which are conducive to my inner needs. This is where it gets a bit tricky. Obviously things like adequate food, shelter, and a healthy body are all examples of things we need. But what abour our emotional needs? For example, getting a proper night’s sleep makes a big difference for my mental well-being. Being over-extended or over-committed for long periods of time makes me cranky. Not feeling loved has been a recurring theme in my life, hardening my heart as a defense mechanism. Being appreciated has provided me with great encouragement to continue. Having a happy, functional, healthy family is conducive to the members of it having a happy, functional, and healthy mind. Atisha said avoid places that disturb your mind. The corrolary is seek out conditions that are conductive to inner peace.

The mistake I have made is basically over-applying the definition of attachment to tell myself I don’t “need” any of these things, and when my karma doesn’t provide me with these things, my response has been to harden my heart and say to myself, “this is just attachment, you need to get to the point where you need nothing.”

This is clearly an unhealthy extreme which quickly leads to burnout as we over-extend ourselves or fail to get adequate rest, or it leads to a detached Vulcan-like understanding of the Dharma that it is all about eliminating our emotions, or it leads to thinking we have to go at it alone without friends or support. If I’m honest, these are all extremes I have fallen into, and I don’t think I am alone.

I think the key distinction here is we have to accept where we are at in our heart, not where our intellectual understanding is. Sure, a Buddha might not need these things, but I am not a Buddha yet. So having adequate rest, not over-extending myself, feeling loved by those around me, feeling appreciated for my virtues as encouragement, etc., are all legitimate needs. I don’t need to say I don’t have needs, nor should my goal be to get to the point where I have no needs. I can have legitimate external needs without it being the mind of attachment. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging our genuine needs, knowing them, stating them, and even working towards fulfilling them.

Now, just because we have legitimate needs does not mean we can’t be happy if they go unmet. There will be times when we don’t get adequate rest, when we are shunned by all those around us, when nobody appreciates our efforts, etc., etc., etc. Just because we have legitimate needs does not mean they will always be met. Indeed, they will often not be met. But this does not mean we should deny we have such needs, it means we need to patiently accept our karma when they go unmet.

Thinking about this reminds me of the story of Buddha Shakyamuni in his time with the aesthetics. He tried that path and realized he was just destroying himself in the process and he needed certain things to optimize his ability to practice. We clearly don’t need to be physical aesthetics, but we also don’t need to be emotional aesthetics either. We can have emotional needs and we can pursue their fulfillment, while practicing patient acceptance when these needs go unmet. But we don’t need to deny we have those needs. It is simply where we are at.

If we look at the history of our tradition, it seems there are ample examples of where our failure to understand this has led to burnouts (too many to count!), pre-mature ordinations, repression until disrobings, misplaced self-hatred and guilt, Vulcan interpretations of Dharma, callousness instead of empathy when people are struggling, and moralistic judgments and condemnation of those who are still deluded (which, um, is all of us…).

At a personal level, it also leads to an extreme form of practice which presents a terrible example for others. Our inner understandings of Dharma become distorted, meaning they are not bringing us the inner peace we seek, causing us to eventually reject the Dharma when in truth our problem is our misunderstanding of it. It also leads to us pursuing a self-sacrificing model of Dharma and cherishing others and causes to us enable others to abuse us or others. We give terrible advice to others based upon our own misunderstandings, causing others to become miserable as well and eventually abandon the Dharma altogether. People look at all this and think, “if that’s what it means to practice Dharma, I don’t want that.” This helps nobody.

In short, perhaps, quite simply, we can say the needs of our self that we normally see are attachments, but the needs of our Buddha nature are our legitimate needs. We don’t need to abandon all needs thinking they are objects of abandonment. We can become atuned to what our legitimate needs are moment by moment and pursue them with confidence, all while practicing patient acceptance if those needs are going unmet. This seems a much more healthy way to approach our Dharma practice, more humble, more acceptable to modern society, and frankly more in line with Buddha Shakyamuni’s example.