Being Rich is over rated: True wealth is not of the pocket. But of the Heart, Mind and of the Soul. In Buddhism Belief they express the desire is to desire nothing and at the end of desire — is the end of all suffering!! In Buddhism, the way to end suffering and desire is to follow the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Royal Road, or the Vedas?
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-desire-cause-suffering
https://buddhism.
stackexchange.com/questions/
4094/isnt-the-desire-for-giving-up-the-desires-a-desire
https://www.reddit.com/r/
Buddhism/comments/5meob9/how_does_desire_cause_suffering/
The Four Noble Truths state that life is filled with suffering, that suffering is caused by a craving for worldly things, that suffering will stop when one learns to suppress desire, and finally that the way to suppress desire is by following the Eightfold Path. The eight steps on the Eightfold Path are Right View, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Vocation, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. The Right View would involve understanding the Four Noble Truths, especially the truth that suffering is caused by desire.
The Eightfold path set out by the Buddha provides the path towards the cessation of suffering. Thus, the Eightfold Path addresses the questions raised by the fourth truth. It is important to understand the Four Noble Truths because they explain the origin of suffering and how to overcome its triggers. The Four Noble Truths can be viewed as the journey, while the Eightfold path is the destination. The Four Noble Truths do not innately provide a way to end suffering.
The Eightfold Path provides an eight-step system towards the realization of spiritual enlightenment and the cessation of suffering. Therefore, by following the eight-step system, one is able to overcome desire and transcend suffering. https://www.learnreligions.com/greed-and-desire-449725
https://www.zenlightenment.
net/buddhist-principles/four-noble-truths.html
In Buddhism, you have to create a difference between craving/desire (attachment) and aspiration. Attachment means you over-exaggerate the attractiveness of your desired object, which always leads to suffering. Like when you fall blindly in love and only see the positive qualities in your partner, unrealistically exaggerated, while you often don’t see the negative qualities at all, or pretend they are just “cute”. If you contemplate this, you will probably find you virtually always exaggerate the qualities of worldly things you desire, which is also why the contentment with them seldom last forever. After some time, you want another thing. Then another. Then another. And so on.
Attachment (craving/desire) is always rooted in egoism, since you always want, want, want for yourself – even when you think it is love. “Possessive love” is a Western expression for the same thing. In Buddhist terminology, love is something quite different, namely the wish for others to be happy.
Aspiration, on the other hand, is not always negative. Aspiration just means you take a strong interest in something, and is what you use as a basis for enthusiasm, another important factor in Buddhism. Whether aspiration is positive or negative depends on the object or goal. Aspiration for enlightenment, others happiness, peace in the Middle East or freedom for the Burmese people is positive, whereas aspiration for superficial entertainment, worldly fame, the latest car model or drugs is normally negative.
Common Misconceptions of Buddhism!
The highest aspiration in Buddhism (as formulated in the Mahayana traditions) is to attain buddhahood for the sake of being able to help all sentient beings to be free from suffering and reach buddhahood themselves. This is called “bodhicitta” (the mind of enlightenment), and is not only a positive aspiration, but actually a prerequisite for attaining buddhahood. In English you might translate both terms “desire” or “craving”, but in Buddhism they are definitely different things.
If you want a clear explanation with definitions of the different minds and mental factors according to traditional Buddhism, Do you feel that you did something wrong?
That you could’ve changed fate? That your chances would’ve been better if you behaved, looked, or felt differently? Do you feel sad? Like you’ve lost something? Like you missed out?
Or do you feel that you desired something that did not come about. And that’s it. Imagine this news delivered from your thinking brain to your holy self in terms as factual as the morning news. “It is Wednesday in Texas.” “You were not selected for this position.” It’s just a fact like any other news that passes in and out of your brain throughout the day. https://www.learning-mind.com/key-beliefs-of-buddhism/
A layman’s interpretation of Buddhism may be, “You should not have desired the job, for that creates suffering” where the realistic advice would be “You should not have attached your self-worth/identity to the job, for that creates suffering.” The part where you desired the job and took actions to get closer to that goal are not the problem. That motivation is a beautiful part of life. It only becomes a problem towards the end. If you get what you want, of course there is no problem. But if you do not get what you want, it can create tremendous suffering or tremendous nothing.
If you desired it, but remained un-attached and had no expectations, then you are no worse off than before you applied for the job. If you hinged your self-worth upon the attachment to getting this job, then you feel like a failure, a loser, you feel not good enough. That is where the suffering lies.
Desire and commitment to goals is an admirable thing and can be done in a way where you remain unattached.
Isn’t the desire for giving up the desire, a desire?
You are right, its a dirty & Nasty trick.
A trick played by your own mind.
So, what are you trying to accomplish?
The word desire is often a translation of the word tanha.
Many Buddhologist say that—like dukkha (translated above as suffering)—tanha is not really translatable. Perhaps closer to the root of meaning is craving or thirst. Obviously, in english we can have positive desires: I desire to live today to its fullest; I desire to do be a decent human; I desire to respond to this question clearly. As such, we can’t say that every nuance of the word desire is inherently bad. If you could create a word that has desire for its base, the implications of thirst and craving, yet with the immediacy of addiction, then you would start to get closer to the meaning of tanha and the reason your craving it.
The implication with equating tanha to suffering (dukkha) is the wrong-minded notion that if we fulfill the thirst/desire/craving/addiction we too will be fully sated and satisfied. Truth is, that which we focus on clinging to or pushing away will never fully satisfy our deepest needs or longings. And so we crave, we long, we desire, we become addicted… all the while feeling that satisfaction and completion is just one more thing away.
In the second noble truth (dukkha samudaya) that implicates desire, it notes that our dukkha originates from three sources: raga (greed/passions), moha (delusion/ignorance), and dosa (hatred/aversion). A very wise man with whom I studied, once said something that I thought was deeply profound. He said,
“In reality, the mind does not want a desire to be fulfilled for the happiness it brings, but for the moment of being free of desire when it is fulfilled.
So you see, you don’t work to be free of the desire because something is wrong with the world, but free of the burden of desire itself because nothing we think we attain is attainable from anything in the world. We want freedom from the burden of the world.
Freedom from desire is for the purpose of understanding the truth, not denying, but having greater access to joy and inner equilibrium. The world cannot always give us fulfillment to our desires. So, if we believe that our happiness comes from the world, we are deceived and our own belief denies us what is rightfully ours. In that respect, mind is a brutal but effective teacher.
Also one becomes disillusioned when desires, fame and fortune do not truly offer the expected lasting happiness. That is one reason why so many famous people overdose.
The weight of fulfilling the immensity of their desires becomes too heavy. They want more happiness then more then more and still, find themselves wanting more. That is because their soul yearns for constant experiencing of its truth. The mind, with its illusions that keeps joy at arms length, deprives one of that joy by sending one forever looking to fulfill yet another desire. But its never enough…..ever….And when you are famous and wealthy and still ‘unhappy’, where do you turn for escape? Many turn to drugs.
That is why when a person becomes more aware, they see the folly of the world, realize the absolute power of SELF and allow the mind to rest within the peace and joy that is its natural state free of desire. It is an incremental process. Think of all of the desires you have had in your life. Okay, now, how much lasting happiness did they give you? How are you feeling as you sit here? What do you want? Plenty.
I think it is at least important to understand the mechanic really going on.
That is how desires cause suffering on a very deep level. The mind untrained, drags us endlessly around by our HERE. Desire causes suffering because its a state of desperation of getting something you don’t have. When you know that you don’t have something then you feel poor and not abundant. After our current desire is fulfilled we find that that thing cannot satisfy us, and we desire more things! We are just not satiable. Its a state of mind. According to Buddhist theory there are three forms of suffering: the suffering of suffering, the suffering of happiness, and the suffering of embodiment.
They are on a spectrum from gross to very subtle.
Everyone knows about the suffering of suffering—stubbing your toe, having your house eaten by a lava flow, pretending all is well when your insides ache—but the second one requires some wisdom to see and the third, a lot of it.
Desire, unless it’s quite gross (like dying of thirst), registers for many people as a kind of happiness. It’s a sort of “pre-joy” or anticipation of the consummation of the joy, the eating of the actual ice cream, fools the brain into putting out hormones like it’s actually happening. The dog salivates when it hears the bell.
But the feeling, even at that stage, is a bit uncomfortable, isn’t it? It’s a sort of excitation that you want to get rid of by getting the thing that will get rid of it. Ahhh…. Finally, ice cream. And then, if you eat too much ice cream, you feel sick. Too much sex, or the wrong sex without Love, or the whatever, and you feel bored, or unsatisfied. It’s like licking honey on a razor’s edge. That is a traditional analogy. Worldly happiness always melts away, leaving its opposite, as well as the craving for more. This is why it’s also called the suffering of change. So on a gross level, desire causes suffering; on a more subtle level, it is suffering.
Finally, while desire (better words might be greed, craving, want, envy, need) is considered a mind poison (because it hurts and makes you do things that don’t benefit you), some wishes are quite different. My desire does not cause my suffering. I cause my suffering. As several others have pointed out, that at times I can have a desire without causing myself to suffer. I can’t even cause myself to feel joy or happiness with a desire. So it is I who cause my suffering, not my desire.
The way I cause my own suffering is to _allow_ a desire to give rise to feelings of anger, resentment, jealously, injustice, loss, etc., instead of giving rise to feelings of joy, connectedness, happiness, love, etc. But in all cases, it is my perception of my desire (including my emotional reaction to my desire) that causes me pleasure or pain, happiness or suffering–not the desire itself, nor the object of my desire. No one is responsible for my suffering but me because no one is responsible for what I feel and how I feel but me.
‘Desire’, when balanced with contentment for that which occurs in the present, without anxiety (expectation) for what is to occur with it tomorrow does not lead to suffering. Desire for a goal one is working towards to the best of one’s ability, for the good of both oneself and others. Certainly, when seeking to accomplish that desire by one’s own ability, the thought of not accomplishing should not be there. But if one falls short, not being attached to the outcome but being hopeful for more venues to pursue TOWARDS THAT SAME single-pointed outcome will not lead to suffering. NOTHING can be an end-all, be-all, except that you must work towards it as if it is so.
However, those who are consumed by their desire will often miss the entire journey taken towards their ultimate destination. They will forget the gardens, the malls, banks, and car shops they need to stop by before reaching there. Oft impatient they are! They will forget about other people that they ought to treasure in pursuit of one. They forget their very selves and their duties for themselves and for the greater good. Desire necessarily draws on imagination and imagination possesses little competence yet to distinguish with clear vision which paths are only illusions and which cannot even be entered upon. To believe that what is seen is “real” and then to pursue it, believing that it “exists” can only lead to suffering.
It hurts when you don’t have it. If you don’t have what you want it always hurts a bit. And because of the fact that there is only so much stuff, we can expect that most of the time somebody loses something every time we get something. It isn’t always like that but it is sometimes. Every thing we get comes out of the earth in some way and when we take it out of the earth we change it in a way that it can never be the same again. The suffering of change is a great suffering and things change because we desire them to stay the same.
In Buddhism there are 3 types of suffering
1. the suffering of suffering
2. the suffering of change
3. the suffering of things composite
The suffering of suffering is sickness, old age, and death.
The suffering of change the suffering we get from changes in life
and the suffering of things composite is the suffering we give to others from our joy.
When we enjoy milk we take advantage of the cow. When we walk on the grass we hurt the grass. When we make money off of people they lose money and so on. Everything is suffering according to Buddhism, the point is to overcome suffering. We cant avoid suffering but we don’t have to let it ruin a beautiful life. From my perspective, desire causes suffering by forcing you to live in the future. You don’t get to enjoy what you have. You’re always looking for the next best thing and everything else you’ve acquired through that same desire is placed in the “old” pile. The thrill of ‘having’ dies quickly.
If you have no way of acquiring what you desire, your mind convinces you that there will always be a hole somewhere in your consciousness because of it, and that you will fall into that hole time and again. The desire to ‘have’ is not the same as the desire to get ahead in life, or to change things for yourself. These are positive desires that generally involve engaging the co-operation of others.
Acquiring ‘things’ is purely selfish.
https://carm.org/is-buddhism-compatible-with-christianity
My desire to live without chronic pain causes the suffering I experience. If the desire is gone, even with the pain still present, no more suffering. I suffer only because I want the pain to go away. This is a mental/emotional/spiritual trick I have not mastered, nor even come close. But, I am told, there are those who have mastered this and live at peace with pain. Other, so-called positive desires — love, sex, food — can cause suffering, as well. When I let go the desire, no more suffering. Pretty esoteric,
Namaste