The key insight of Gautama Buddha some 2,500 years ago was that the cause of suffering was our attachment to worldly phenomena. All humans suffer because the desire for good things in our lives, whether it be food, consumer items, a relationship, a nice house or car, good health, peace and so forth, will always be thwarted by the transience of these very things. Suffering arises from this contradiction - what we want must change, nothing is permanent. Even the universe, which is in constant change, will one day be nothing more than a sea of remote unlit particles. Most of all really, we are attached to ourselves, to the permanence of our beings, the desire to go on beyond death. It might well be the central problem of the human condition.

The solution in simple terms is to practice non-attachment, gradually freeing ourselves from each attachment. At the extreme edge of this is monasticism, in which the monk has let go of the world - his family, friends, possessions - completely, the loss of which mitigates against suffering. You can't miss what you don't have or anything you have freely given up.

Strangely enough, this ancient faith is a doctrine for our times, for this period in which unchecked consumerism is creating so many stumbling blocks to happiness. The buy is a momentary illusion, a blip of joy before a precipice of suffering. The talk is always of owning, buying, having, a doctrine set up to fail in the light of human psychology.