iMEDITATION

1.  "Birth is suffering; aging is suffering; sickness is suffering; death is suffering; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; not to obtain what one wants is suffering; in short, the five aggregates affected by clinging/ attachment are suffering. This is called suffering."

2.  "And what is the origin of suffering? It is craving, which brings renewal of being, is accompanied by delight and lust, and delights in this and that; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for being and craving for non-being. This is called the origin of suffering.

If we stop and observe with mindfulness whenever craving arises, we will notice that with the arising of desire there is also the arising of the feeling of discontent. So we try and try to fulfill one desire after another, in the hope that discontentment will leave.  But then new desires keep coming, and bring with it the feeling of discontentment until it is fulfilled. We fulfill a desire, and get a break. Not long after another desire arises along with the feeling of discontentment until it is fulfilled. What then is the solution to our endless desires and therefore, endless discontentment.

3. "And what is the cessation of suffering? It is the remainderless fading away and ceasing, the giving up, relinquishing, letting go and rejecting of that same craving. This is called the cessation of suffering.

The Buddha suggests that instead of trying to get rid of discontentment  through fulfilling desire, one should just try to remove desire as it arise.  Since desire is the cause of the arising discontentment, we should remove the root cause ( desire)  instead of merely trying to remove the symptom (discontentment).

4. The way to carry this out is through the Noble Eightfold Path:

Wisdom :

                          1. Right View  (What is Right View? )                           

      2. Right Intention

Virtue ( keeping the precepts) :

   3. Right Speech

4. Right Action

         5. Right Livelihood

Samadhi ( meditate) :

6. Right Effort

             7. Right Mindfulness

       8. Right Stillness

" When a noble disciple has thus understood nutriment, the origin of nutriment, the cessation of nutriment, and the way leading to the cessation of nutriment, he entirely abandons the underlying tendency to greed, he abolishes the underlying tendency to aversion, he extirpates the underlying tendency to the view and conceit ' I am,' and by abandoning ignorance and arousing true knowledge he here and now makes an end of suffering.  In that way too a noble disciple is one of right view, whose view is straight, who has perfect confidence in the Dhamma and has arrived at this true Dhamma."

Unfulfilled Desires As The Cause For Seeking a New Existence