Quotes About Suffering

I stopped committing acts that cause suffering to other living beings. All living beings want to live. All fear death. We must nurture a heart of compassion and protect the lives of all beings.

If we accept life and everything that belongs to life—the moments of happiness, joy, and peace, but also sickness, old age, and death—then we don't suffer anymore. So suffering is okay. Not only is suffering okay, but thanks to suffering we have an opportunity to experience well-being.

With mindful awareness, we can look into the nature of our suffering and find out what kind of food we have been supplying to keep it alive. When we find the source of nourishment for our suffering, we can cut off that supply, and our suffering will fade.

Nirvana means pacifying, silencing, or extinguishing the fire of suffering. Nirvana teaches that we already are what we want to become. We don't have to run after anything anymore. We only need to return to ourselves and touch our true nature. When we do, we have real peace and joy.

When we look deeply and honestly at our own suffering, energies, and views, we find a peace that comes from being comfortable in our own bodies. But our true home is not only inside us. Once we have become comfortable in ourselves, then we can begin listening deeply to the suffering of our loved ones, and begin understanding their experiences and views. Then we can become a true home for each other.

In Buddhism we talk about a bodhisattva called Avalokiteshvara, the one who has the ability to listen and to understand the suffering of others. If we evoke his name, it is in order to learn to listen.

Freedom is above all else freedom from our own notions and concepts. If we get caught in our notions and concepts, we can make ourselves suffer and we can also make those we love suffer.

Right or wrong action can be determined by using the single criterion of suffering or nonsuffering. Whatever causes suffering in the present or the future, for ourselves and people around us, is the wrong thing to do. What brings well-being in the present and the future is the right thing. The criterion is clear.

The Chinese translate Four Noble Truths as Four Wonderful Truths or Four Holy Truths. Our suffering is holy if we embrace it and look deeply into it. If we don't, it isn't holy at all.

Don't ignore your suffering, but don't forget to enjoy the wonders of life, for your sake and for the benefit of many beings.

we've seen that our suffering is connected with the suffering of our ancestors, our loved ones, and with the planet itself, so we know our happiness is not an individual matter. If we are able to breathe happily, we can invite our ancestors to enjoy breathing in with our lungs. If we are able to enjoy walking, we can invite our ancestors to walk with our feet.

Looking deeply can become a way of life. We can practice conscious breathing to help us be in touch with things and look deeply at their impermanent nature. This practice will keep us from complaining that everything is impermanent. Impermanence is what makes transformation possible. Thanks to impermanence, we can change suffering into joy.

We should not try to escape from our pain. We should look at it directly. Looking at suffering deeply, we will have deep insight into its nature, and the path of transformation and healing will present itself to us.

The Buddha teaches us that we have to master ourselves first. Before we can act, we have to cool these coals beneath us. To succeed doesn't mean triumphing over the one who causes us to suffer, but over our own ignorance and resentment. No matter what has been done to us or how we've been wronged, we're always responsible for at least fifty percent of our suffering, perhaps more.

la infelicidad humana se asienta fundamentalmente en tres elementos: la ignorancia, el apego y la ira.

We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.

I am determined not to try to cover up loneliness, anxiety, or other suffering by losing myself in consumption. I will contemplate interbeing and consume in a way that preserves peace, joy, and well-being in my body and consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family, my society, and the Earth.

We blame our suffering on another person or group, or on bad luck, but outside conditions are not the reason it appears. Our suffering was already there.

Watering the seeds of happiness is a very important practice for those who are sick or dying.

When you listen deeply to someone who suffers, you step into a zone of fire. There is a fire of suffering, of anger burning in the person you are listening to.

Knowing how to handle suffering, you know at the same time how to produce happiness. And if you're truly happy, we all profit from your happiness. We need happy people in this world.

When we recognize that our suffering is based on images instead of current reality, then living happily in the present moment becomes possible right away.

our afflictions, such as craving, anger

The Buddha's Four Noble Truths are: there is suffering; there is a course of action that generates suffering; suffering ceases (i.e., there is happiness); and there is a course of action leading to the cessation of suffering (the arising of happiness).