Not all desires cause suffering, there are two types of desires, wholesome desires (considered good) and unwholesome desires (considered bad) such as desire rooted in hatred, lust and clinging to delusions that get caught there. Lustful desires are behind those that spin relentlessly, but no matter how much you fulfill the desires, you will still suffer in a state of dissatisfaction and unfulfilled. This is an unwholesome desire (considered bad), there is another type of desire, desire motivated by the love you have for your mother, desire motivated by kind thoughts to help others who are in need, the desire to end their suffering, as long as they are free from ignorance, delusion and without any defilement (greed, hatred, lust) without any attachment, these are wholesome desires (considered good), so when you see that if Buddha preaches somewhere that this desire causes suffering, here he means that the unwholesome desire (considered bad) which is caused by ignorance, hatred, lust, greed coupled with craving, clinging arising in someone who is not strong enough to understand the reality of nature. And going more deeper it is the in the second Noble Truth Buddha tells us that the cause of suffering is attachment. This is not the same as saying desires are the cause of suffering. The fundamental cause of suffering is “the attachment to the desire to have (craving), the attachment to the desire not to have (aversion) and the attachment to ignorant views“.
In other words we crave that which we like and which we hope will make us feel good, and push away or try, often desperately, to avoid that which we don’t like and don’t want.
With aversion, we tend to resist, deny, avoid, and oppose unpleasant emotions, events, and people we do not like. Our ego wants everything in our life to be pleasant, easy, comfortable and satisfying all the time.
Of course, life just brings whatever it brings and it really is impossible for everything on an outer level to just be how we would want it to be all of the time. Our aversion and attachment creates psychological suffering such as anger, fear, hostility, envy and anxiety.
This disturbed state of mind only strengthens our perception of duality and separation with the world, with reality. It also imprisons us into a vicious cycle of continuously experiencing an internal conflict with life.
Everyone wants to be happy but through ignorance people look for happiness in external things like a new car, more money, an exciting partner, a bigger house, two foreign holidays a year, to be admired, loved and seen to be successful and so on. People very often try to control life to try to get preferred outcomes, but of course it really is an impossible and frustrating task to try to control life or other people.
Most people become attached to that which they strongly believe will make them happy.
The nature of ego is to always feels something is lacking that in some way there is a lack, not enough and is nearly always looking for more or for what’s next.
Once the necessities of life are taken care of, for food, clothing, a home, companionship and so on we should be at least able to rest content, but very few do.
When getting what we think we want, we may feel happy for a while because we are temporarily relieved of that uncomfortable feeling of wanting and craving. After a while, maybe a few hours, days or a few months that uncomfortable wanting feeling will return when the external object of our desire does not give us any permanent feeling of happiness or contentment.
When loosing things or people or pleasant circumstances that we have become attached to we suffer much more than need be.
So the cause of suffering is not desires so much as our attachment and aversion.
