Buddhism considers the self to be a fiction and the primary cause of human suffering. Whenever you crave material things like expensive cars and clothes, or desire compliments to enhance your reputation, or seek positions of status and power to benefit your life, Buddhism says you are treating your fictional self as real (reifying the self). These material concerns may bring immediate gratification and pleasure but they also entrap you, like golden handcuffs, and cause persistent suffering, which we would call prolonged unpleasant affect. To a Buddhist, a self is worse than a passing physical
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