Suffering is caused by mistaking a grand and wondrous illusion for the truth. It is the forgetting of our true identity, and the felt sense and belief that we are the separate individual that we appear to be. Suffering is caused by misidentifying our "self" as our body, thoughts, feelings and desires, and then participating in the collective assumption that happiness is determined by circumstances such as health, relationships, money and success. Suffering is the identification with the subconscious mental/emotional activity (reactivity) of resisting "what-is" in an attempt to get or keep the circumstances we want, and to avoid or remove the circumstances we don't want.
