Are You Motiv-ated?

Are You Motiv-ated?

Buddha continually maintained that to end suffering, desire must come to an end.

The reason is that desire is a more readily noticed expression of one’s often unacknowledged discontent. We are so highly conditioned to accept that our constant judgments of the way things “should” be (or “could” be) are “normal”, that we are often unaware of our chronic dissatisfaction with the way things actually are. But our desires—to turn our present condition into some alternate condition deemed more satisfactory—are generally more apparent in our conscious thought. We are continually seeking after that which we don’t have, rather than finding contentment in what is already present, the ‘what is’.

So, desire is the symptom of our feverish condition of “becoming,” most readily visible in our expressed desire of becoming “more happy”—satisfied—or “less unhappy.” Discontent is our harbinger of existential suffering. Desire is the reaction which is consciously noticeable, because it is the motivator for virtually all of our actions and activities. In other words, each of our motivations, when considered, can alert us to the potential for an addition of impending suffering.