What about the thing with the stuff?

Matter, objects, possessions — things — turn out to be almost beside the point. What these passages examine, with striking consistency, is the mind that reaches toward things: the craving, the clinging, the hope that the next acquisition will finally satisfy. Buddhism and Hinduism converge on a counterintuitive truth — freedom is not found by fleeing the world of things, but by transforming the inner posture with which we hold them.

Drawn from 17 passages across Buddhist, Hindu

What role does craving for things play in causing suffering?

Buddhism is almost unanimous here: craving for sensory objects, for existence, for pleasure — this is the root. Not the things themselves, but the reaching.

Buddhist

Craving for sensory delight is the origin of suffering

The Noble Truth of the arising of suffering is this craving which produces re-becoming, accompanied by passionate greed, and finding delight now here now there — namely the craving for sense pleasure.

Buddhist

Craving in all its forms generates renewed suffering

The origin of suffering is craving, which brings renewal of being, is accompanied by delight and lust, and delights in this and that — craving for sensual pleasures, craving for being and craving for non-being.

Buddhist

Craving, latent in all, drives repeated cycles of misery

Craving is a powerful mental force latent in all beings. It is the chief cause of most of the miseries of life. This craving, gross or subtle, leads to repeated births in the cycle of continuity of suffering.

What happens when attachment to things is finally released?

Cessation is not described as loss but as arrival. The letting go of craving is, across these passages, the very definition of freedom.

Buddhist

Complete relinquishment of craving equals liberation

The Noble Truth of the cessation of suffering is the complete cessation of that very craving, giving it up, relinquishing it, liberating oneself from it, and detaching oneself from it.

Buddhist

Letting go without remainder is the cessation of suffering

The cessation of suffering is the remainderless fading away and ceasing, the giving up, relinquishing, letting go and rejecting of that same craving.

Buddhist

Understanding craving fully brings suffering to an end

When a noble disciple has understood craving, the origin of craving, the cessation of craving, and the way leading to the cessation of craving, he here and now makes an end of suffering.

Does acting without desire for the fruits of things constitute liberation?

Both Hindu texts point the same direction: action without attachment to outcome — not withdrawal from the world, but a radical change in how one holds it.

Hindu

Passionless duty is right; desire-driven action is vain

There is right action: that which, being enjoined, is wrought without attachment, passionlessly, for duty — not for love, nor hate, nor gain. There is vain action: that which men pursue aching to satisfy desire.

Hindu

Renunciation means releasing desire for the fruit of action

The rejection of works with desire is known by the learned as renunciation. The abandonment of the fruit of all work, the discerning call abandonment.