The Cause of Human Emotional Suffering: Deluded Thinking and Disordered Desire

As we saw in the last chapter, human emotional suffering begins with deluded thinking which leads to excessive or disordered desire. Excessive or disordered desires, our “wants” and “don’t wants”, are the direct cause of human emotional suffering. As the Buddha noticed from his own experiences some 2, 500 years ago, when emotional suffering was present within him, desire was also present within him, and when emotional suffering was not present within him, he noticed desire also was not present within him.  After carefully watching the interplay of desire and emotions within himself over a period of years, he correctly concluded that self-centered desires, or more accurately “False-Self” centered desires, are the cause of all afflictive or painful emotions.

We put this dynamic in the form of a weed:

As we saw, the dynamic works as follows. If a person believes a lie to be true (such as the lie: “I am a more worthwhile person if I have a lot of money”), that immediately leads to an excessive or disordered desire (such as the desire to have a lot of money). When that desire collides with reality, the way things are in this world, frustration, anger, anxiety, worry and other painful emotions arise, as the person tries to get and keep a lot of money. Then when that person encounters other people in daily life, the person comes from their deluded and emotionally painful state, and their words and actions will reveal this. Instead of being truly loving to others, they are likely to be somewhat abusive in their words and actions.

In this chapter, we will now look more deeply at each part of the weed, each aspect of the human mind.

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