The Nature of Desire One of the core tenets of Buddhism is the belief that desire is the root of all suffering. If you think about it, when you give in to your desire, even just a little bit, it fuels more. Then you find yourself living to fulfill the next desire, and the next desire, and so on - each successive desire becomes more intense than the previous one, and you become more desperate to fulfill it. Now you've become a slave to your desires, trapped in a prison you've created for yourself. You cannot see life beyond this prison - you may not even know you are in it, but a slight dissatisfaction, if not unhappiness, gnaws at you. True happiness is attained by liberation, and liberation is achieved by relinquishing all desires, by recognizing the emptiness of them. It is important to differentiate desire from want, because there is a very fine line between the two. You can want and desire the same exact things, but the difference lies in your attitude - how you feel when you are seeking fulfillment, and how you feel when it is denied. When you want something, you still have a healthy detachment from your want. The ego does not appropriate it - there remains a distinct separation between your want and your self. When it is unsatisfied, you still feel fine, because the resulting disappointment does not transfer to disappointment in your self - it remains in a separate, detached space. Your peace of mind and self-image remain undisturbed, and you move on quite easily. Antithetically, desire becomes absorbed into the ego, as the direct result of unhealthy attachment. Because of our tendency to believe we cannot be happy or whole until we fulfill desire, it is controlling and obsessive. We lose ourselves in desire, forgetting who we are otherwise. When unfulfilled, desire transubstantiates into emotional turmoil, shattering the ego. Because you saw your desire as a part of you, letting it control you, your whole self is affected by the disappointment. It often casts a negative shadow on your whole life, preventing you from seeing the positive. Peace of mind is disturbed, and not knowing that you can be liberated from your desires, you believe that fulfilling the desire is the only way to restore it. If that is impossible, you remain miserable until you forget about it, but then another desire arises and the cycle happens all over again. While there are both good and bad wants, there are no good desires. Desire is inherently egotistical - even if you desire something good, for example world peace, the fact that you desire rather than want it connotes unhealthy attachment and an ulterior, selfish motive. Perhaps you desire world peace because you want glory for your own activist efforts to promote it. The right wants - those with pure intentions - are healthy and make life enjoyable. You should want, because want leads us in many interesting directions in life, making us hungry and curious. Our basic human instinct is to want happiness - all other wants relate to this instinct, even if they are misguided. Because want can easily turn into desire, it is essential to keep your wants in check. Observe how it is affecting you - are you in control or is it controlling you? Ask yourself how you would feel if your want is unsatisfied. If it causes mental anguish, then you know it is a desire. Step back and distance yourself from it. Meditate on its emptiness. Fulfilling desire may bring pleasure, but that pleasure is temporary. Unless your next desire is fulfilled, the pleasure gained by the previous desire inverts to pain, because it no longer seems good enough. Perhaps you are accustomed to having all of your desires fulfilled, but there will come a time when you are denied gratification. When that happens, you will feel as if none of your desires were ever fulfilled, because the pleasure derived from them was empty and ungrounded - it was not happiness. Even if you feel quite satisfied from the pleasure, you will never experience the greater happiness of being free from your desires. This happiness is solid, not wavering and circumstantial. Happiness builds a solid foundation, while pleasure vanishes into thin air. Cravings, addictions and habits - they all stem from desire. Be wary of these. If you feed a desire regularly, it becomes a craving. The desire becomes more intense, and arises more frequently. Satisfying it seems like the only way to extinguish it, when it actually induces more cravings. When you regularly succumb to a craving, it becomes an addiction - now you feel you can't live without it. With physical addictions, the body even experiences adverse symptoms during withdrawal; with mental addictions, the effects may not be corporeal but they are just as afflicting. When you choose to feed an addiction, it forms a habit. Sometimes the addictions are so subtle that they are subconscious - for example, a habit of watching television may not seem like an addiction, because you feel you can stop anytime, but the truth is you only stop when presented with alternate, stimulating option. Otherwise, to just stop watching television, allowing your self to experience open, free and quiet time, causes cognitive dissonance. You turn on the television again because you can't deal with it. At worst, habits are incapacitating; at the least, they induce mediocrity. Either way, all habits are self-destructive. They will either destroy you acutely, or slowly, over time. Even a “good” habit, like eating healthy, is bad. Why? Because when an action becomes a habit, it is no longer a conscious choice but a rote, empty action. It no longer has meaning, so it is no longer good for you. It will not help you fulfill your greater potential. Sometimes people become obsessive about good habits, but it is out of fear of reverting to the bad habits. It doesn't mean they have changed. The good habit can just as easily invert into a bad habit. They often do. You should break all habits - better yet, relinquish them at the source, i.e. desire - because they prevent you from living the inspired life. It is the inspired life that allows for creativity, expansiveness and greatness. Freedom is a requisite for inspiration - if you live your life chasing after desire, you will remain shackled. When you break free, then you can start tapping into your greater potential - all human beings possess the potential for greatness. It is our choices, both big and small, that determine whether we fulfill that potential.