Quotes About Suffering

You breathe in so that you can really understand what the Buddha meant when he said that the first noble truth is that life is suffering. What does that mean? With every in-breath, you try to find out by acknowledging the truth of suffering, not as a mistake you made, not as a punishment, but as part of the human condition. With every in-breath, you explore the discomfort of the human condition, which can be acknowledged and celebrated and not run away from. Tonglen

WHEN I TEACH, I begin with a compassionate aspiration. I express the wish that we will apply the teachings in our everyday lives and thus free ourselves and others from suffering.

suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last—that they don't disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.

When we say, "May I have happiness," or, "May I be free of suffering," or, "May any individual have happiness and be free of suffering," we are saying that it is the potential of a human being to expand our capacity for opening and caring limitlessly.

we are all addicted to avoiding pain.

Thinking that we can find some lasting pleasure and avoid pain is what in Buddhism is called samsara, a hopeless cycle that goes round and round endlessly and causes us to suffer greatly

When the world is filled with evil, transform all mishaps into the path of enlightenment.

When we're feeling uncomfortable and irritable and fed up, our thoughts and emotions are probably revolving around something like pain, loss, disgrace, or blame.

But the Buddhist teachings are not only about removing the symptoms of suffering, they're about actually removing the cause, or the root, of suffering.

Shantideva said that since all sentient beings suffer from strong, conflicting emotions, and all sentient beings get what they don't want and can't hold on to what they do want, and all sentient beings have physical distress, why am I making such a big deal about just me? Since we're all in this together, why am I making such a big deal about myself?

As long as we believe that there is something that will permanently satisfy our hunger for security, suffering is inevitable. The truth is that things are always in transition. "Nothing to hold on to" is the root of happiness. If we allow ourselves to rest here, we find that it is a tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs. This is where the path of fearlessness lies.

There comes a time when we are able to be pierced to the heart by our own suffering, and the suffering of others, and by our own regrets, without it dragging us down.

When the world is filled with evil, all mishaps, all difficulties, should be transformed into the path of enlightenment.

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn't mean that something is wrong.

Everywhere we go, we see the misery that comes from buying into the eight worldly dharmas. It's also pretty obvious that people need help and that there's no way to benefit anybody unless we start with ourselves.

the cessation of suffering is letting go of holding on to ourselves.

Traditionally it's said that the cause of suffering is clinging to our narrow view. Another way to say the same thing is that resisting our complete unity with all of life, resisting the fact that we change and flow like the weather, that we have the same energy as all living things, resisting that is what's called ego.

Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape—all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.

Thus we become less and less able to reside with even the most fleeting uneasiness or discomfort... This is our way of trying to make life predictable. Because we mistake what always results in suffering for what will bring us happiness, we remain stuck in the repetitious habit of escalating our dissatisfaction.

Pema Chödrön

There isn't any hell or heaven except for how we relate to our world. Hell is just resistance to life. When you want to say no to the situation you're in, it's fine to say no, but when you build up a big case to the point where you're so convinced that you would draw your sword and cut off someone's head, that kind of resistance to life is hell.

If your life is chaotic and stressful, there's plenty of advice here for you. If you're in transition, suffering from loss, or just fundamentally restless, these teachings are tailor made.

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.

The vicious cycle of existence—the round of birth and death and rebirth—which arises out of ignorance and is characterized by suffering; in ordinary reality, the vicious cycle of frustration and suffering generated as the result of karma (one's actions).