"The primary afflictive emotions are ignorance, desire, and aversion."

Anything impermanent inevitably leads to discontent, since eventually it breaks down, leaving one with a sense of disappointment and loss.

The third type of suffering is the basis for the first two, since it refers to the fundamentally unsatisfactory nature of cyclic existence, which is so constituted that it entails dissatisfaction for all who are caught up in it. The Dalai Lama says that

it is called pervasive compositional suffering since it pervades or applies to all types of transmigrating beings and is compositional in that it is the basis of present suffering and induces future suffering. There is no way of getting away from this type of suffering except by ending the continuum of rebirth.

Transmigrating beings experience distress as a result of their previous negative actions, actions motivated by afflictive emotions (nyon mongs, kleŸa). The primary afflictive emotions are ignorance, desire, and aversion. These motivate people to engage in counterproductive actions that inevitably rebound on them, and they also tend to produce concordant mental states, leading to a vicious cycle.

The cycle can only be broken through eliminating the underlying negative emotions. Although we have been caught in transmigration since beginningless time, it is possible for an individual to bring her own transmigration to an end. This is the focus of the second noble truth. Buddha recognized that suffering has a basis, and he identified this basis as desire motivated by ignorance.

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