The Buddhist notion of desire is a difficult subject to understand for most Westerners who study Buddhism. This is so for a number of reasons which are too many to cover in one blog.
I will begin by saying that first, the Four Noble Truths inform us of suffering. But elsewhere in the discourses we also learn that the five skandhas or aggregates are the noble truth of suffering (S. v. 425). Furthermore, by desiring the five skandhas is the origin of suffering for us. So what is happening here?
As we learn more about the Buddha’s teaching we learn that what is not our self or ātman is the five skandhas which make up our psychophysical body—what we believe to be our self but according to the Buddha is not-the-self or in Pali and Sanskrit, anattā and anātman.
In other words, for us to suffer we have desired what is not our self or ātman this being the five skandhas. This explains why the Buddha said, abandon desire for whatever is not the self (S. iii. 77) which is always the five skandhas; which always suffer. But the lot of mankind doesn’t do this. Mankind desires what is external or foreign to one's true nature or self this being the five skandhas which are never other than suffering. They cannot easily abandon desire for the five skandhas because they are confused as to the difference between the self or ātman and what is not-the-self or anātman. The confusion between the two is their ignorance.
When the Buddha says that one is entangled in the world on account of desire and it is by overcoming desire that one is liberated (S. i. 40), the Buddha is implying that we should not desire what we are not which is other than our ātman or in later Buddhism, other than our Buddha-nature.
If we study the Dharma or the teaching desire will become less for us because we are not desiring what is external to us but instead seek gnosis of what is fundamental and our true nature. Even if we are not yet Buddhas, by studying about our true nature or ātman we come to suffer less than if we did not.
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