This question came out of the blue at a seminar I was facilitating last week.

Maybe it is one of the most important questions facing our world and it is going to be one of the most challenging journeys to find the answers.

The Buddhist belief that desire is at the root of all unhappiness is a very convincing idea; however in the world we have made for ourselves it is hard to believe that this philosophy will quickly reach the hearts and minds of millions of people who have been programmed since birth to see 'achieving', acquiring', 'owning', 'winning' and even shopping (!) as the driving forces of life.

It is almost certainly true that there is more than enough land, food, water and potential sustainable energy sources to give everyone on the planet an extremely comfortable, sustainable lifestyle - no poverty, no hardship, no lack of dignity.  But if some people are driven to grab and hold on to many, many multiples of what they need, and if the pervasive mindset of the majority is that, "there is not enough for everyone" then we will see many more generations of living conditions and imbalance that cause deep pain, suffering, jealousy, unhappiness and ultimately conflict.

What does seem inexplicable to me is that even when our fundamenal needs are met - and sometimes met in abundance - we seem pre-programmed to crave more, envy those who have more, and feel 'better-off' than those who have less. This is so deply rooted in human nature that (a) it requires considerable commitment to personal development to develop a different belief system, and (b) it only has to get a tiny bit out of balance to trigger massive greed.  We don't have to look past the truly obscene revalations in global banking and even the UK's House of Commons to see that even those (perhaps expecially those) who have far more than they need start to crave more and more and more.

A number of years ago I was coaching a business leader whose company was worth about £300million. He enjoyed all the trapping - numerous homes, a yacht and a private jet. After some weeks of struggling to reach the core purpose of what he was seeking through coaching - apart from working through a number of stressful relationship problems with family, frieds and colleagues - he finally told me that what he really wanted was to start making 'serious money'. My professional guard was down, and I laughed! 'You see, Adrian, it's not about the things that money can buy. Money is just a score card. Others have more than me which means I am not as good as them. By their standards I am a loser.'

It is an addiction. I know what this is like. One chocolate biscuit, and my body (not my mind) wants to eat the whole packet. Anyone who has fought the demon of addiction to alcohol, drugs, carbohydrate, gambling or sex will know how miserable it is to be pulled by what feels like a graitational force of desire. So it is with money, status, posessions, mansions, yachts, power, status and authority ... all addictions that wield an extraordinary power and shift an individual's life way off balance.

Being compelled by a desire for 'more' creates damage in all directions. It hurts to be driven by cravings for more, more, more. But it also means we find ways of making sure others have less, and feeling you have 'less' or a 'worth less' hurts too. Sometimes we keep others with less deliberaely because it makes us feel better; sometimes it is just an unlooked for consequence of our own desire.

While we measure our own se

nse of self in terms of our rank, position, wealth, beauty, power, bank balance or twitter ranking we are doomed to be unhappy and - worse - make other people unhappy. We must find a new measure and I think it is something to do with the word 'enough'. When do I have enough? When have I eaten enough? When have I drunk enough? When am I earning enough? When have I worked long enough? What we really need is always much less than what we really want. I am working very hard at recognising when I have everything I need and reflecting on how to become more satisfied, more fulfilled by that.

“Greed, insatiable human greed,” said Prime Minister Jigme Thinley of Bhutan, describing what he sees as the cause of today’s economic catastrophe in the world beyond the snow-topped mountains. “What we need is change,” he said in the whitewashed fortress where he works. “We need to think gross national happiness.”