A quick comment that I posted on another forum. Edited :


Folks, there's a bit of confusion that comes from taking the Buddhist statement "Desire is the cause of suffering" that at face value without going a little deeper into the substrate of consciousness.

In Buddhism, Advaita, and several others the point is not that the solution is to get rid of all desires. There is nothing wrong with having desires, setting goals, and striving to achieve them. The problem comes when you invest your emotional energy (your heart) in them. Then if you don't get what you want to have or achieve, you allow that to damage your self esteem--actually "self valuation" would be the better term. That's suffering. Once you understand that, any "failure" does not make you have less value. Once you see that, your "value" can go infinite, because you're the only one that can set it.