Desire

I was reading the "world book of mythology". The quest for "liberation" from the cycle of birth and rebirth is a recurring theme in Indian mythology. Ok, I am making lot of assumptions like the life and death is an eternal cycle (body dies but there is something within this body that does not die. That is true considering the fact that the atoms that make up the body don't get destroyed but merely get converted in to some other form of matter). The purpose of life is to find liberation from living again :-) etc. When we achive this it is called Mukti (liberation). The cause of rebirth is supposed to be our unfulfilled desires during our life. The thought that goes beyond this is Buddha's simple words that "the desire is the root cause of all misery" that we suffer in life.

My question is how to conquer desire or how to be desireless? This builds on my previous post. To become desireless you either have fulfilled all your desires or you don't have any desire. Each of these is really hard to do. However much we strive we may not achieve all the goals, as not everything is under our control. Hence the only possible way to become desireless may be is to be without desires.

Hm, if we became desireless - what about our fundamental animal instinct for self preservation? Do we need need to give that one up? My current though is whichever desire is causing misery to me I think I should give that up. That will keep leading me towards a state where I am happy all the time. I believe intrinsically all beings are happy.