Hi. I admire much of Buddhism's epistemology although I don't consider myself a Buddhist. Many aspects of its morality are appealing, although I do find it takes the adherent too far from the practical world if followed too closely and to its limit.
I believe the principle of reducing desires is one of reducing 'irrational'
desires of grasping and attachments, ones that disturb one's equilibrium or knock you from the so-called Middle Path. Keep in mind that's what the Middle Path is essentially about. Buddha and those who recorded his message or interpreted it at least, believed that keeping to the 'middle' meant to not deny yourself the basic necessities of life while at the same time not grasping at things, ideas or people for that matter. Buddha apparently did not believe in ascetic denial. This to him was irrational and a form of grasping in itself, a form of reification of the ideal of 'self-denial.' For instance, hatred is the reverse or mirror image of positive attachment and is dependent upon a negative fixation on something or someone, seeing that thing or person as having some 'inherently' evil or harmful quality. And Buddhism claims that there are 'no' inherent or permanent qualities or predicates and thus no reason to become either attached in the positive sense or in the negative sense since hatred tends to involve an attachment in the sense of being fixated on the object of one's hatred.
One should live according to the mean, to 'not' become attached to your illusory sense of 'self,' at least according to Buddhist psychology, however neither to reject one 'self' (self ,not as an absolute here but as a conventional idea we have of our own existence). One should thus have the basic desires enough to keep to that Middle Path, poised between
self-grasping and self-denial. If one leads an extreme ascetic lifestyle, then one is straying from the Middle Path. Extreme ascetism comes across from a practical perspective as akin to self-hatred and hatred or 'reified rejection' is wrongful thinking in the Buddhist view. There's no 'reason' to reject oneself, to deny yourself in a harmful way or to hate others for that matter. Buddhism's concept of 'emptiness' is the realization that there are indeed no permanent, essential qualities to grasp at in the first place.
People however get hung up on the notion of emptiness and often confuse it with 'nothingness.' Think of it more as an 'open' quality to the things and events in the world around us. Things, beings and events are 'open' to constant change. They 'arise and diminish' with no single, essential causal influence on their arising (similar to Hume here). Or perhaps one can also imagine a flowing river, constantly changing. Reification is like a dam in the river, creating a pressure-exerting lake behind it. Nagarjuna's concept of the 'emptiness-of-emptiness' is a reminder that emptiness as a pivotal concept, is not a 'thing' in itself, not something to be grasped at either but simply denotes the non-permanent, non-essentialist nature of the universe as we know it in its 'conventional' form, that is, as it is presented to us through our senses and understanding. Thus we shouldn't get attached to concepts either and that includes the central concept of emptiness itself.
Like I stated above, I find Buddhism takes one too far from the practical world. It does lend itself naturally to the monastic life and indeed I consider it an unfortunate accident of Buddhist history that after Buddha's death (at least according to what has come down to us through the records) it was established and heavily influenced by a monastic community. One could argue however that Buddhism's message might not have been preserved had it not been for the monastics. A moot point I suppose.
If you want a good website/forum for Buddhist discussion, try:
http://www.e-sangha.com .
Cheers, mrj
