Quotes About Suffering

You cannot understand how much patience I need in order not to lose my patience, so that I can withstand all this misfortune all by myself. Nikos Kazantzakis, from a letter to Galatea Kazantzaki wr. c. June 1922

At night the jackals came and ate their feet, and the next morning crows flew down and ate their eyes.

On the way between nothingness and God, we dance and weep.

What sort of madness comes over us to make us throw ourselves on another man, when he's done nothing to us, and bite him, cut his nose off, tear his ear out, run him through the guts - and all the time, calling on the Almighty to help us! Does it mean we want the Almighty to go and cut off noses and ears and rip people up?

My heart is always heavy. No matter where I go, I have no pleasure. I'm hiding. Everything that I do, write and think strikes me as unworthy. And human beings are horrible, ignoble companions. I often think, furthermore, that the only thing worthy of our lofty nature is death.

Solange es Kinder gibt die hungern, gibt es keinen Gott!

Dumnezeu i-a dat ochi saracului doar asa, de podoaba.

Dünyaya özgürlüÄŸün gelmesi için bu kadar cinayetler ve alçakl?klar m? gerekli yani? Çünkü, oturup sana iÅŸlediÄŸimiz cinayetlerde yapt???m?z alçakl?klar? saysam tüylerin ürperir. Fakat sonuç ne oldu? Özgürlük! Tanr? y?ld?r?m?n? at?p bizi yakaca??na özgürlüÄŸü veriyor? Hiçbir ÅŸey anlayam?yorum!..

eli, eli, lema sabachtani

They were panting dwarfs, imps gasping for breath, and their beards dragged along the ground. Each carried a strange implement of torture. Some held bloody leather belts studded with iron, some clasp knives and ox goads, some thick, wide-headed nails. Three midgets whose behinds nearly scraped the ground carried a massive, unwieldy cross; and last of all came the vilest of the lot, a cross-eyed pygmy holding a crown of thorns.

Para contemplar la belleza de Layla hay que tener los ojos de Majnún.

La conciencia era un dolor insoportable.

Everything is impermanent. Every physical and mental experience arises and passes. Everything in existence is endlessly arising out of causes and conditions. We all create suffering for ourselves through our resistance, through our desire to have things different than the way they are - that is, our clinging or aversion.

We must do away with any shred of denial, minimization, justification, or rationalization. To recover, we must completely and totally understand and accept the truth that addiction creates suffering.

Everything is unfolding based on causes and conditions. Our happiness or suffering is dependent on how we relate to the present moment. If we cling now, we suffer later. If we let go and respond with compassion or friendliness, we create happiness and well-being for the future.

Renunciation is not about pushing something away, it is about letting go. It's facing the fact that certain things cause us pain, and they cause other people pain. Renunciation is a commitment to let go of things that create suffering. It is the intention to stop hurting ourselves and others.

With mindfulness we have the choice of responding with compassion to the pain of craving, anger, fear and confusion. Without mindfulness we are stuck in the reactive pattern and identification that will inevitably create more suffering and confusion.

When we pay attention to life, it is easy to recognize that every action has a consequence: when we cling, we suffer; when we act selfishly or violently, we cause suffering for ourselves or others. This is the teaching of karma: positive actions have positive outcomes; negative actions have negative outcomes.

Finally we are being told the truth: life isn't always easy and pleasant. We already know this to be true, but somehow we tend to go through life thinking that there is something wrong with us when we experience sadness, grief, and physical and emotional pain. The first truth points out that this is just the way it is. There is nothing wrong with you: you have just been born into a realm where pain is a given.

The cause of our suffering has always been our reaction to the thoughts, feelings, cravings, and circumstances of our lives. The cause of our addictions has always been the indulgence in the behaviors or substances.

An old man in Gaza held a placard that read: "You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all, humiliate us all, but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.

War is a racket. The few profit, the many pay.

It is easy to be carried away by the sheer horror of what the daily press reveals and to lose sight of the fact that this is merely the brutal exterior of a deeper crime, of commitment to a social order that guarantees endless suffering and humiliation and denial of elementary human rights

People live and suffer and endure in the real world of existing society, and any decent person should favor employing what means are available to safeguard and benefit them, even if a long-term goal is to displace these devices and construct preferable alternatives.