In Buddhism, desire and ignorance lie at the root of suffering. By desire, Buddhists refer to craving pleasure, material goods, and immortality, all of which are wants that can never be satisfied. As a result, desiring them can only bring suffering.
In Buddhism, desire and ignorance lie at the root of suffering. By desire, Buddhists refer to craving pleasure, material goods, and immortality, all of which are wants that can never be satisfied. As a result, desiring them can only bring suffering.
Except that it doesn’t. People with every one of their biological needs fulfilled still manage to be unhappy. Happiness is an internal thing, not tied to externalities except that you, the individual, is attaching a desire to a certain outcome.
Everything will end, everyone will fail. We can’t control that, and the more we try to, the more we realize it’s fruitless, and the more unhappy we become. There’s a limited section of the world you can control 100% - all of that exists inside you. There’s another broader section that you can exude some control over - the natural world around you. And then there’s the stuff that you have absolutely zero influence over. The eventual death of everything, the tendencies of society, and the things that go on inside of other people. We get so caught up in those last two things, the ones we have little or no control over, and forgot to maintain the one thing we actually can.