Quotes About Suffering

When a man's love of finery clouds his moral judgment, that is vanity. When he lets a demanding palate make his moral choices, that is gluttony. When he ascribes the divine will to his own whims, that is pride. And when he gets angry at being reminded of animal suffering that his own daily choices might help avoid, that is moral cowardice.

Pain is itself a god: the taskmaster of life. Pain cracks the whip, and all that lives will move. To live is to be a slave to pain.

in its deepest sense, suffering is intimately linked to a misapprehension of the nature of reality. R

Loving-kindness and compassion are the two faces of altruism. It is their object that distinguishes them: loving-kindness wants all beings to experience happiness, while compassion focuses on eradicating their suffering.

A storm may be raging at the surface, but the depths remain calm. The wise man always remains connected to the depths. On the other hand, he who knows only the surface and is unaware of the depths is lost when he is buffeted by the waves of suffering.

Recognize suffering, Eliminate its source, End it By practicing the path.

Paraphrasing Spinoza, Alexandre adds, "In pity, sadness comes first. I am sad that the other is suffering, but I don't really love him. In compassion, love comes first."23 The

We all strive, consciously or unconsciously, competently or clumsily, passionately or calmly, adventurously or routinely, to be happier and suffer less. Yet we so often confuse genuine happiness with merely seeking enjoyable emotions.

lasting happiness is boring because it is always the same, while suffering is more exciting because it is always different.

The world of ignorance and suffering—called samsara in Sanskrit—is not a fundamental condition of existence but a mental universe based on our mistaken conception of reality.

we want to be free of inner suffering once and for all, it is not enough to rid ourselves of the emotions themselves; we must eliminate our attachment to the ego. Is that possible? It is, because as we've seen, the ego exists merely as mental imputation. A concept can be dispelled, but only by the wisdom that perceives that the ego is devoid of intrinsic existence.

With the help of experience, we can deal with negative emotions before they surface. We can "see them coming" and learn to distinguish those that bring suffering from those that contribute to happiness.

According to Buddhism, suffering will always exist as a universal phenomenon, but every individual has the potential for liberation from it.

to the waves and the depths of the ocean. A storm may be raging at the surface, but the depths remain calm. The wise man always remains connected to the depths. On the other hand, he who knows only the surface and is unaware of the depths is lost when he is buffeted by the waves of suffering. But how, you might ask, can I avoid being shattered

First we conceive the "I" and grasp onto it. Then we conceive the "mine" and cling to the material world. Like water trapped on the water wheel, we spin in circles, powerless. I praise the compassion that embraces all beings. – Chandrakirti

We define empathy here as the ability to enter into affective resonance with the other's feelings and to become cognitively aware of his situation. Empathy alerts us in particular to the nature and intensity of the sufferings experienced by the other. One could say that it catalyzes the transformation of altruistic love into compassion.

We expend a lot of effort to improve the external conditions of our lives, but in the end it is always the mind that creates our experience of the world and translates it into well-being or suffering. If we transform our way of perceiving things, we transform the quality of our lives. It is this kind of transformation that is brought about by the form of mind-training known as meditation.

It is also important to consider the cognitive aspect of compassion, in other words understanding the different levels of suffering and its manifest or latent causes. We will be able thus to place ourselves in the service of others by helping them effectively while still preserving our inner strength, our kindness, and our inner peace.

Suffering can be triggered by numerous causes over which we sometimes have some power, and sometimes none. Being born with a handicap, falling ill, losing a loved one, or being caught up in war or in a natural disaster are all beyond our control. Unhappiness is altogether different, being the way in which we experience our suffering. Unhappiness may indeed be associated with physical or moral pain inflicted by exterior conditions, but it is not essentially linked to it.

Buddhist texts say that in the cycle of death and rebirth, no place, not even one the size of a needle's point, is exempt from suffering.

Nos esforzamos mucho para mejorar las condiciones exteriores de nuestra existencia, pero, en resumidas cuentas, al que siempre le toca bregar con la experiencia del mundo es a nuestro espíritu, y lo traduce en forma de bienestar o de sufrimiento. Si transformamos nuestro modo de percibir las cosas, estamos transformando la calidad de nuestra vida. Y este cambio es el resultado de un entrenamiento del espíritu denominado «meditación».

In depression, all that is happening in the present is the anticipation of pain in the future, and the present qua present no longer exists at all.

The main difference between the pursuit of knowledge in science versus the same pursuit in Buddhism is their ultimate goals. In Buddhism, knowledge is acquired essentially for therapeutic purposes. The objective is to free ourselves from the suffering that is caused by our undue attachment to the apparent reality of the external world and by our servitude to our individual egos, which we imagine reside at the center of our being.

Dans la pitié, ce qui est premier c'est la tristesse. Je suis triste que l'autre souffre, mais je ne l'aime pas vraiment. Dans la compassion, ce qui est premier c'est l'amour79