Psalms 38:9 Meaning Lord

Taṇhā: Craving Taṇhā is the thirst that keeps reaching. Laying all of it out before God works like emptying a bag onto a table: every wanting, the respectable and the shabby together, in one heap where it can be counted. A thirst set down in the open has already lost some of the secrecy it feeds on.

Dukkha: Suffering Dukkha is the ache running through things. A groan is the sound it makes before words arrive, the noise a person makes alone at three in the morning with a fever that will not break. Bringing that raw noise up instead of tidying it into a presentable prayer keeps the report honest.

Anusaya: Underlying tendencies Anusaya are the leanings that lie asleep below what a person can find in himself. Claiming that nothing here stays hidden reaches down past the desires he can name to the ones still rooted: a weed cut level with the lawn looks gone, and the root waits underground for rain. Being seen that far down is uncomfortable, and it is also how roots finally come up.

Sati: Mindfulness Sati is keeping a thing steadily in view. Desire placed out front where it can be looked at behaves like a pot watched on the stove: still boiling, no longer able to boil over unnoticed. The wanting has not gone anywhere, and it has stopped running the house from behind a closed door.

Desanā: Disclosure Desanā is speaking a fault aloud to another. In the monastic training, one who has slipped says it plainly to a fellow monk, and the mending begins in the saying itself. The hearer here already knows every word in advance, so the telling does nothing for him and everything for a sick man whose friends stand well back from his wounds, done at last with carrying it by himself.