The next thing that comes up, the second of the Noble Truths, is about the cause of suffering,
 and this in Sanskrit is called Trishna.
 Trishna is related to our word "thirst."
 It's very often translated "desire."
 That will do.
 Better, perhaps, is "craving," "clinging," "grasping," or even, to use our modern psychological
 word, "blocking."
 When, for example, somebody is blocked and dithers and hesitates and doesn't know what
 to do, he is, in the strictest Buddhist sense, attached.
 He's stuck.
 But a Buddha can't be stuck.
 He cannot be phased.
 He always flows, just as water always flows, even if you dam it.
 The river just keeps on getting higher and higher and higher until it flows over the
 dam.
 It's unstoppable.
 Now Buddha said then, "Dukkha comes from Trishna."
 You all suffer because you cling to the world and you don't recognize that the world is
 anitya and anatman.
 So then, try, if you can, not to grasp.
 Well do you see that that immediately poses a problem?
 Because the student who has started off this dialogue with the Buddha then makes various
 efforts to give up desire.
 From which he very rapidly discovers that he is desiring not to desire.
 And he takes that back to the teacher, who says, "Well, well, well."
 He said, "Of course, you are desiring not to desire, and that's, of course, excessive.
 All I want you to do is to give up desiring as much as you can.
 Don't want to go beyond the point of which you're capable."
 And for this reason, Buddhism is called the Middle Way.
 Not only is it the Middle Way between the extremes of ascetic discipline and pleasure-seeking,
 but it's also the Middle Way in a very subtle sense.
 Yes, don't desire to give up more desire than you can.
 And if you find that a problem, don't desire to be successful in giving up more desire
 than you can.
 You see what's happening?
 At every time he's returned to the Middle Way, he is moved out of an extreme situation.
 Now then, we'll go on, we'll cut out what happens in the pursuit of that method until
 a little later.
 The next truth in the list is concerned with the nature of release from dukkha.
 And so number three is nirvana.
 Nirvana is the goal of Buddhism.
 It's the state of liberation corresponding to what the Hindus call moksha.
 The word means "blow out."
 And it comes from the root nivritti.
 Now some people think that what it means is blowing out the flame of desire.
 I don't believe this.
 I believe that it means breathe out rather than blow out.
 Because if you try to hold your breath, and in Indian thought prana, breath, is the life
 principle, if you try to hold on to life you lose it.
 You can't hold your breath and stay alive.
 It becomes extremely uncomfortable to hold on to your breath.
 And so in exactly the same way it becomes extremely uncomfortable to spend all your
 time holding on to life.
 What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it's a drag?
 But you see that's what people do.
 They spend enormous efforts on maintaining a certain standard of living, which is a great
 deal of trouble.
 You know you get a nice house in the suburbs and the first thing you do is you plant a
 lawn and you've got to get out and mow the damn thing all the time.
 And you buy expensive this, that, and soon you're all involved in mortgages and instead
 of being able to walk out in the garden and enjoy it, you sit at your desk looking at
 all the books and filling out this, that, and the other, and paying bills and answering
 letters.
 What a lot of rot.
 But you see that is holding on to life.
 So translated into colloquial American, nirvana is "whew!"
 Because if you let your breath go, it'll come back.
 So nirvana is not annihilation.
 It's not disappearance into a sort of undifferentiated void.
 Nirvana is the state of being let go.
 It is a state of consciousness and a state of, you might call it, being, here and now,
 in this life.
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