A central idea of the Buddha and his teaching is that desire is the root cause of human suffering. “From craving (desire) springs grief, from craving springs fear. For one who is free from craving, there is no grief and so no fear” is a quote attributed to Buddha.
He doesn’t say to want nothing but that suffering comes from coveting and attachment to things, and if we want peace, we must understand desire and the control it can produce over us.
A contemporary spiritual writer, Margaret Silf, offers a healthy understanding of desire:
We tend to think that if we desire something, it is probably something we ought not to want or to have. But think about it: without desire we would never get up in the morning. We would never have ventured beyond the front door. We would never have read a book or learned something new. No desire means no life, no growth, no change. Desire is what makes two people create a third person. Desire is what makes crocuses push up through the late-winter soil. Desire is energy, the energy of creativity, the energy of life itself. So let’s not be too hard on desire.
