Is there anything in the various Buddhist canons that responds

It's more of a translation problem

Buddhist texts talk about ending 'craving' (tanha) - this is often translated as desire

Desire has a broader semantic field in English, it could mean craving, but it could also simply mean wanting something, a volitional stance.

>>8913735
This comic is unfunny garbage for redditors

>>8914385
Isn't even simple "want" a part of dukkha? Doesn't one's temperament towards dukkha also need to be altered?

>>8913735
yeah i never understood how Buddhists can ask to abandon all desire but also walk the middle-path

SN 51.15:
Unnābha, (a Brahmin) challenges Ānanda, claiming the followers of Gotama the ascetic are following a path of practice without an end, because "it's impossible to abandon desire by means of desire." Ānanda asks (receiving an affirmative answer):

"What do you think, brahmin, did you earlier have a desire, ‘I will go to the park,’ and after you
have gone to the park, did the said desire subside?"

It isn't even necessary to point out that the English word "desire," which can mean almost any volition or want, is far too broad a translation for the Pali word "tanha," which has a universally negative semantic valence and is more accurately rendered as "craving." The Buddha always says that what's to be sought is the end of tanha.
The above discourse, however, uses the related word "chanda" where the translator has put "desire," which can mean a neutral aspiration like in English. Ānanda's counterargument is fairly elegant, and at least in my view, convincingly demonstrates that there is nothing contradictory about aspiring for the end of aspiration. The bhikku's "chanda" fuels a process (the path of practice) which has a result -- enlightenment -- and once enlightened, the bhikku has no more need for chanda.

>>8914747
Because the practictioner avoids tanha (craving, thirst) by means of chanda (volition, will, intention). The enlightened arhat still has desires only in the minimal, and karma-neutral sense of "volitions;" so for example while the Buddha must have been capable of forming intentions to stand, sleep, eat, etc, he claimed it made no difference to him whether he was met with praise or condemnation, whether his teachings led living beings to liberation or not, or whether he was torn limb from limb by bandits or not, because those all would imply a thirst for one thing over another, not merely an intention to act.

zen; zazen

>>8915961
Worth noting that while early Buddhism had an easy apologetic answer to the supposed paradox of desire, it became a genuine problem for Chan. Many popular Mahāyana sutras state that beings are inherently enlightened. If this idea is married to the much older metaphor of the raft which is abandoned upon reaching the far shore, then both the efficacy and necessity of Buddhist practice are undercut -- i.e. you're already enlightened, so don't bother. Chan Buddhism can be understood at least in part as the dialectically sophisticated attempt of Chinese scholasticism to mend the inherent contradictions that were apparent to them in the received scriptures, which after all spanned 1000 years of Indian Buddhist development.

>>8915679
Any clearer interpretations of the "persistence, intent, discrimination" in this sutta?

I feel like the use of a location/movement analogy is a bit cheating. Since the conquering of desire takes place on the level of feelings of attachment, it seems safe to say that one would be emotionally vulnerable until the wholesome states are perfected. If things were as simple as Ananda makes them seem then the speech on the expedient means of the raft would not be so important.

>>8916497
Well, enlightenment is a gnosis, so the conquering of tanha ultimately happens on the level of knowledge -- the total eradication of spiritual ignorance is both a necessary and sufficient cause for bodhi. Does that make any sense? So it's not as if enlightenment is willed into reality, rather, the will is instrumental to achieving salvific knowledge.

File: Hey kid.jpg (593KB, 900x900px) Image search: [Google]

593KB, 900x900px

Buddhism is nihilistic decadence.

>>8913735
>thinks Buddhism posits that time is a delusion

This idiot needs to be put against the wall