Quotes About Unsatisfactoriness

Suffering is an approximate translation of the Pali word dukkha. Dukkha implies impermanence, imperfection and unsatisfactoriness. The Buddha did not start teaching by talking of his enlightenment, of bliss or openness or clarity; he started by talking about the truth of suffering.

According to the Buddha, the human mind in its normal state generates dukkha, which can be translated as suffering, unsatisfactoriness, or just plain misery. He sees it as a characteristic of the human condition. Wherever you go, whatever you do, says the Buddha, you will encounter dukkha, and it will manifest in every situation sooner or later.

We say an unconditional yes to the given of life that our needs will not always be met and also to the first noble truth of Buddhism, that life includes unsatisfactoriness.

With Jesus, however, the device of parabolic utterance is used not to explain things to people's satisfaction but to call attention to the unsatisfactoriness of all their previous explanations and understandings.

Investigation helps us to go beyond the surface of things to discover the underlying laws of the universe and the three characteristics that the Buddha described as dukkha, anicca, and anatta, the Pali words for "unsatisfactoriness," "impermanence," and "selflessness.

The enjoyment of the senses becomes more refined when there's more purification in a person. The smallest thing can be enjoyed, but the danger lies in wanting it. This wanting — the craving — brings the unsatisfactoriness because the wanting can never be fully satisfied.

The unsatisfactoriness of definitions of poetry arises usually from one or other of two causes. If the definition is that of a critic, it is the resultant of a long analytical process, and therefore not very intelligible apart from the process by which it has been arrived at; if it is the definition of a poet, it is certain to contain that element of poetry which it professes to explain.