Desire begins with our inability to distinguish the conditioned from the unconditioned which is the state of avidyā (P., avijjā)—a kind of unwisdom. With desire one is in an unbroken continuous state of being attracted to avidyā. This is also the repeated cycles of birth and death or samsara which hasn't been broken by enlightenment, that is, seeing the unconditioned.
But there is more. Both birth and death occur within the conditioned world (they are not unconditioned). Even death cannot escape it. From death we reenter the conditioned world. It might even be a beautiful imaginary world with its gods, or a hell, or rebirth into another womb.
Interestingly, today's nihilist after they die will just return to the womb. (I am sure many nihilists will object to this.) But this is what their strong belief in nihilism is all about, this being a return to the womb-like condition of avidyā.
The point to be made is that we do not escape the conditioned world. Birth and death are always within it even the worlds of the gods. Like all things conditioned they are fundamentally imaginary but, nevertheless, more real than even our world.
The breakout from the conditioned is what the Buddhist journey is all about. It is a difficult journey in the sense that to arrive at the unconditioned is to have given up all expectations and assumptions as to what the unconditioned is. (Over the years I have encountered people who tell me they did just that but they never became enlightened! Obviously they had some hidden expectations that they were not yet aware of.)
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