How We Create Our Own Suffering by Trying to Stop It
13 Pillars of Enlightenment: How to realize your true nature and end suffering
Hinduism or Buddhism has long taught that suffering (dukkha) exists because we are caught in the phenomenal world of transient objects and become attached to them. We suffer due to the way we are.
For example, suffering results from the self’s unmet desires, such as:
We want something, we don’t get it, and then we get angry, depressed, anxious, nervous, apprehensive, fearful, and so on.
Or we get what we want but we want more and more of it, so we get greedy.
Or we thought we desired something and then become regretful that we got it or sad because we expected something different.
The promise of ending desire and eternal happiness
To get rid of the self, so the enlightenment theory goes, is to end desire, which leads to the end of suffering. And then we experience eternal bliss.
Is this true? Is it possible to do? And who gets rid of the self? Can the self eradicate itself? Further, who is it that experiences bliss if not the self?
