What's the difference between desire (chanda) and craving (tanha)? From my understanding, tanha is always unwholesome but chanda can be wholesome or unwholesome. Chanda is when the child saw a puppet in the toy store, and having come home keeps asking mom to buy the puppet.
And the mom says, "but what are you gonna do with it, after a day you will just throw it in the box". Here, chanda is clearly a word for right effort (sammā vāyāma). The Commentaries regard this as a wholesome desire (kusala-c,chanda), a spiritual desire (or Dharma-moved desire, dhamma-c,chanda), the desire (or will) to create wholesome states. Assuming it's 'positive' chanda that you want to develop, I think the above suggests several answers: It suggests that a practitioner experiencing "dryness" or apathy (loss of Chanda) has actually drifted away from the Sutta instructions for Jhana/Samadhi, rather than succeeding in "letting go." The distinction between abandoning Tanha but cultivating Chanda seems vital for preventing the "spiritual depression" often reported by isolated ...
chanda kim, Chanda is a reason for Tanha. Ignorance (Avidya) is the cause for Chanda means it's the cause for Tanha. Then Tanha causes to increases the Chanda 's density towards something. Nirvana is understanding Chanda towards something is a useless thing. As nothing in this world is going to satisfy the intention (Chanda) the living beings have.
chanda kim, That's why no one can reach ultimate satisfaction. If ... As others have said, people distinguish between an always-unwholesome "craving" (tanha), compared with a potentially-wholesome "desire" (chanda). I guess the difference might be two-fold: Whether the object of the desire is wholesome Whether there's a corresponding skilful effort I suppose you're right that the pre-enlightened Gautama experienced a desire for liberation, and must have also ... I think that the Pali distinguishes two words: tanha -- "craving" or more literally "thirst" chanda -- "desire" or maybe intention One of the six occasional mental factors in the Theravada Abhidharma; in this tradition, chanda is a factor that can have positive or negative result depending upon the mental factors that it is co-joined with. This kind of desire must be distinguished from desire ...
And in reply to that, Buddhism distinguishes between wholesome and unwholesome desires -- i.e. taṇhā (which is referenced in the Second Noble Truth), and chanda which is defined for example here or in a bit more detail here, the point being that chanda (one type of desire) isn't necessarily a bad thing.
