Suffering seems as though it is a proliferation of a certain kind of qualia, but that is like saying that night is caused by an infusion of black air, rather it is a way of functioning of the self, crudely thought of as attachment or resistance to what is. And the self is no real thing but a holding pattern of energy set against the natural flow of mind. It facilitates a vortex of auto-affection and does not need a belief in its own existence pr any belief at all. If it could be observed from the outside it would appear as an extraordinary phenomenon, part order, part chaos, a sinister gothic aurora.