>>18081076
The point, which isn't one I agree with, is that suffering IS desire. A painful, burnt hand only makes you suffer because you desire there not to be pain. If you were entirely content with your pain, as some terminally ill people become, you be content and not suffering.
My issue with this is that it assumes suffering is worthless and evil. Really, going through difficult periods of your life develops who you are, and I believe, can provide a person with real wisdom. Absolute contentment, as the buddhists want, would be absolute stagnation, no development of the Self.
This kind of makes sense, because the Buddhists want to eliminate the Self, but that just leads to another problem. They say that the Self is an illusion because, when they meditate, their goal is to eliminate reflective thought, and doing this makes your sense of Self disappear. The problem is that reflective thought is exactly the thing that recognizes the Self. What they're doing is basically taking a microscope away from a cell-biologist and saying "See! There's no cells! They're an illusion!". Imo their meditation bullshit is what leads to illusion. They're intentionally blinding one of their senses.
