What if the problem is desire?

The claim under examination: suffering comes from craving, there is no permanent self, and rebirth continues until it ceases in nirvana.

Standard · preponderance of the evidence, not proof

◆ The case for

A penetrating psychology. Craving and clinging really do drive much of human misery, and you can watch it happen.
Testable in part. Impermanence and the effects of attention can be checked in your own experience before lunch.
No creator God required, so it sidesteps some of theism's hardest problems, and Pure Land even offers grace.

◇ The case against

The easy-to-test part isn't the after-death part. Craving causing suffering is checkable; rebirth and nirvana are not.
Rebirth without a self is coherent, not proven. The candle-flame model is serious, but coherence is not evidence it happens.
Verification again. A profound meditative state does not, by itself, reveal the final structure of reality.

The verdict

DisprovenUnlikelyPlausibleStrongly supportedEstablished

Buddhism's analysis of craving and impermanence is strongly supported. Its claims about rebirth, karma across lives, and nirvana are possible or philosophically substantial, but unestablished. Assurance is mixed: self-powered paths defer it; Pure Land offers something closer to grace.

If you read nothing else

Look carefully at experience. Its hardest claims still need more than experience has shown.

Much of Buddhism can be tested in this life, and that is its strength. But rebirth without a permanent self, karma across lives, and nirvana as the end of the cycle remain beyond what the evidence here establishes.