Quotes About Suffering

I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self preservatives of a species.

The subject of pain is the business I am in - to give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering. The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses.

...Slavery appears such a relatively mild business that one begins to wonder why Frederick Douglass and so many others ever tried to escape.

Compassion is to share the pain without sharing the suffering.

The Devil, it is true, is not exactly a doctor who has taken degrees, but he is very learned, very expert for all that. He has not been carrying on his business during thousands of years for nothing.

Living like this is a full-time business.

I am so sick of reading about another car bomb, another suicide bomber, another 10, 20, 30, 70, 100 people dead in a day, both Americans and Iraqis.

Affliction doth not rise out of the dust or come to men by chance; but it is the Lord that sends it, and we should own and reverence His hand in it.

Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people.

There isn't any hell or heaven except for how we relate to our world. Hell is just resistance to life.

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn't mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don't have to feel it's happening because we personally made the wrong move. In reality, however, when we feel suffering, we think that something is wrong. As long

Thich Nhat Hanh says, "It's not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.

This can be the value of our personal suffering. We can understand firsthand that we are all in the same boat and that the only thing that makes any sense is to care for one another.

But if, instead of thinking of these feelings as bad, we could think of them as road signs or barometers that tell us we're in touch with groundlessness, then we would see the feelings for what they really are: the gateway to liberation, an open doorway to freedom from suffering, the path to our deepest well-being and joy.

Second there is relative bodhichitta, our ability to keep our hearts and minds open to suffering without shutting down.

The second noble truth says that resistance is the fundamental operating mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering.

We spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to re-create these zones of safety, which are always falling apart. That's the essence of samsara—the cycle of suffering that comes from continuing to seek happiness in all the wrong places.

When inspiration has become hidden, when we feel ready to give up, this is the time when healing can be found in the tenderness of pain itself.

The Four Limitless Ones Chant May all sentient beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness. May they be free from suffering and the root of suffering. May they not be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering. May they dwell in the great equanimity free from passion, aggression, and prejudice.

The first noble truth says that it's part of being human to feel discomfort

The third noble truth says that suffering ceases when we let go of trying to maintain the huge ME at any cost.

ACCORDING TO THE BUDDHA, the lives of all beings are marked by three characteristics: impermanence, egolessness, and suffering or dissatisfaction. Recognizing these qualities to be real and true in our own experience helps us to relax with things as they are.

Because we mistake what is impermanent to be permanent, we suffer.