Week 9

A Noble Truth: Desire causes suffering

“Desire nothing, give up all desires and be happy”.

Swami Sivananda (1854 – 1934)

If we analyze each of our sufferings, we realize that there is always a desire unfulfilled.   From the moment the desire is in our minds, the thirst for satisfaction arises, but this satisfaction is ephemeral and resurfaces to demand more of the same. The consumerist policy creates desires. The commercial strategies and tactics of consumerism are constantly offering something desirable to the people. Sometimes are useful things, but in most cases they are completely useless but associated with social or personal "status" that makes one see himself- herself more important in the eyes of others. We are the product of a society that consumes us while we consume its products, where the identities are exchanged for false needs.

 Simultaneously or alternatively, we want everything but we cannot achieve it. Sometimes when we get something, there is not enough for us, or we lose it, or we suffer the feeling of dissatisfaction because of the end of our craving. Intellectually we know that it is impossible to have it everything but we feel bad because what dominates us is what we want and not the intellectual side. The desire to own things without limits imprisons us in a suffering that makes us vulnerable and kills the desire of being who one is. Then, we desire more things to compensate our emptiness creating a vicious cycle that never ends ...

 However, given the ephemeral nature of life, why we also have to renounce to the ephemeral? Not all the unfulfilled desires crumble us, some affect us more than others depending on the importance we have given them, and this depends much on our psychological structure. Every plan of life can be seen as ephemeral and doomed to suffering, but can we aspire to anything more?