A Quote by Kenneth Smith on philosophy, buddhism, stoicism, worldliness, maya, suffering, desire, and spirituality

The way of the Buddha involves a metaphysical stoicism, a way of overcoming the power that worldliness has over oneself: the world rules us through our suffering no less than through our desires and appetites and hopes; all of this is Maya, the universe of delusorily desirable and despicable goods. The primal insight of Buddha is not that the suffering of the world must first be mitigated but rather that we must learn to recognize that our DESIRES are no less a form of SUFFERING than are our AILMENTS. This is what qualifies Buddhism as an authentic form of spirituality, its transcendence over the finite and merely psychological domain.