The way is built in all living things. We begin our physical lives inside our mothers. This is the absence of desire, because we have yet to need our own source of air and food and even our excrement is dealt with.
This is our internal benchmark concept of “bliss”. Like the story of the prodigal son, we move from that completeness, to looking outside ourselves.
Like from the story of the Buddha, after looking in religions, and practices, and things, he realized (only some do!) that what he was looking for was intrinsically within him. Always had been…. (the demons in the story told him that no one would be interested in hearing this kind of anti-climactic answer)
This type of story ALWAYS gets confused when religion, and heroes and lack of a sense of completeness is involved.
But most mistakenly think they need a higher purpose, and strive to work towards it, and teach others to do so.
Mental and emotional suffering are due to not being in a state of “everything is just as it is”, removing “should” and “ought”. It is there in Here and Now just as it is…..
Desire is “i need something that i do not have”…. and the “I” is also created there…..
There is no way to put an end to desire, there is only continually coming back to NOW…. there is no strata, no leaders, no heroes, there is only one by one by one droplets of ocean water sitting on a rock for a limited period of time, until the ocean washes over it and takes it back into the ocean….. where is the I now???
Reality is Dharma 
I wonder how much “desire” we would actually have if we weren’t taught to desire (such as in our capitalist sytem of buy, buy, buy … and in our educational system of get more education so you can get rich and have more things … and yes, in our religious system in which we are taught to learn more and reason more and become wiser and so on… The longer I live, the less I find is necessary of the many desires that are pushed toward us… It seems like desire beyond the very basics of living is a big trap….
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For my understanding, desire is automatically born when we are born. We are thrown out into a world where we need satiation of first physical, then emotional and mental needs. (Maslow’s heirarchy of needs lays it out pretty well)
We might say that it requires a second birth, (or the turning back home of the Prodigal Son) for us to realize that our needs have been met from the beginning, by our creator. I honestly believe that Jesus teaching was pointing this direction. The church missed it when they put a chasm there in the form of a condition. Yet, there is ONE condition…. that we look inside, and don’t ignore the creators voice within us…..
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