The term ‘desirous people’ deserves clarification because in our society it carries specifically sexual overtones which Shantideva didn’t intend. In this instance we might replace ‘desirous people’ with ‘consumerists’, because in this verse Shantideva refers to a particular aspect of Buddhist psychology which suggests that much of our unhappiness is created by attachment/desire at one end of the spectrum, and its opposite, aversion/hatred, at the other.

David Michie in ‘Enlightenment to Go’ commenting on the words of the eighth century Buddhist monk, Shantideva