Quotes About Suffering

Domesticated chickens and cattle may well be an evolutionary success story, but they are also among the most miserable creatures that ever lived.

Suffering emerges because people fail to appreciate this. They believe that there is some eternal essence somewhere, and if they can only find it and connect to it, they will be completely satisfied. This eternal essence is sometimes called God, sometimes the nation, sometimes the soul, sometimes the authentic self, and sometimes true love – and the more people are attached to it, the more disappointed and miserable they become due to the failure to find it.

In evolutionary terms, cattle represent one of the most successful animal species ever to exist. At the same time, they are some of the most miserable animals on the planet.

Resumió sus enseñanzas en una única ley: el sufrimiento surge del deseo; la única manera de liberarse completamente del sufrimiento es liberarse completamente del deseo; y la única manera de liberarse del deseo es educar la mente para experimentar la realidad tal como es.

What's undeniable is that monotheists have a hard time dealing with the Problem of Evil.

A person who does not crave cannot suffer. According

the real root of suffering is this never-ending and pointless pursuit of ephemeral feelings, which causes us to be in a constant state of tension, restlessness and dissatisfaction.

Paradoxically, the more sacrifices we make for an imaginary story, the stronger the story becomes, because we desperately want to give meaning to these sacrifices and to the suffering we have caused.

If your country is torn apart by war, if the economy is in crisis and if health care is non-existent, you are likely to be miserable.

For thousands of years the answer to this question remained unchanged. The same three problems preoccupied the people of twentieth-century China, of medieval India and of ancient Egypt. Famine, plague and war were always at the top of the list.

All wealth and power might be concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite, while most people will suffer not from exploitation, but from something far worse - irrelevance.

el sufrimiento surge del deseo; la única manera de liberarse completamente del sufrimiento es liberarse completamente del deseo; y la única manera de liberarse del deseo es educar la mente para experimentar la realidad tal como es.

Puede sufrir en verdad una nación? ¿Tiene una nación ojos, manos, sentidos, afectos y pasiones? Si se la pincha, ¿sangrará? Claro que no. Si es vencida en la guerra, pierde una provincia o incluso renuncia a su independencia, pero no puede experimentar dolor, tristeza ni ningún otro tipo de desgracia porque no tiene cuerpo, ni mente, ni ningún tipo de sentimiento. Lo cierto es que se trata solamente de una metáfora.

politicians.' It is much easier to live with the fantasy, because the fantasy gives meaning to the suffering. Priests discovered this principle thousands of years ago.

Esta discrepancia entre éxito evolutivo y sufrimiento individual es quizá la lección más importante que podemos extraer de la revolución agrícola. Cuando

The more significance we give our feelings, the more we crave them, and the more we suffer

Of all rituals, sacrifice is the most potent, because of all the things in the world, suffering is the most real. You can never ignore it or doubt it. If you want to make people really believe in some fiction, entice them to make a sacrifice on its behalf.

If God knew in advance that a particular person would use her free will to choose evil, and that as a result she would be punished for this by eternal tortures in hell, why did God create her?

To ensure that the pigs can't run away, farmers in northern New Guinea slice off a chunk of each pig's nose. This causes severe pain whenever the pig tries to sniff. Since the pigs cannot find food or even find their way around without sniffing, this mutilation makes them completely dependent on their human owners. In another area of New Guinea, it has been customary to gouge out pigs' eyes, so that they cannot even see where they're going.7

The cause of war is fictional, but the suffering is 100 per cent real. This is exactly why we should strive to distinguish fiction from reality.

When you inflict suffering on yourself in the name of some story, it gives you a choice: "Either the story is true or I am a gullible fool." When you inflict suffering on others, you are also given a choice: "Either the story is true or I am a cruel villain." And just as we don't want to admit we are fools, we also don't want to admit we are villains. We prefer to believe that the story is true.

The most important thing I realised was that the deepest source of my suffering is in the patterns of my own mind. When I want something and it doesn't happen, my mind reacts by generating suffering. Suffering is not an objective condition in the outside world. It is a mental reaction generated by my own mind. Learning this is the first step towards ceasing to generate more suffering.

Buddha agreed with modern biology and New Age movements that happiness is independent of external conditions. Yet his more important and far more profound insight was that true happiness is also independent of our inner feelings. Indeed, the more significance we give our feelings, the more we crave them, and the more we suffer. Buddha's recommendation was to stop not only the pursuit of external achievements, but also the pursuit of inner feelings.

This discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual suffering is perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from the Agricultural Revolution