Quotes About Buddhist Suffering

#1. Buddhist practice is aimed primarily at cultivating the antidotes to these afflictive thoughts and emotions, with the goal of eradicating the root of our unenlightened existence to bring about liberation from suffering.

Dalai Lama XIV

#2. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.

Gautama Buddha

#3. When one drives away the negligent through vigilance, he climbs the heights of wisdom, and can see the suffering masses. Serene, you look upon the lost like one that stands on a mountain sees those that stand upon the plain.

Gautama Buddha

#4. There is a way to be purified, to overcome sorrows and grief, to release suffering, to secure the right path to realize nirvana. This is to be mindful.

Gautama Buddha

#5. 'I've got children', 'I've got wealth.' This is the way a fool brings suffering on himself. He does not even own himself, so how can he have children or wealth?

Gautama Buddha

#6. The Buddhist approach to this collective suffering is to turn toward it. We understand that genuine happiness and meaning will come through tending to suffering. We overcome out own despair bby helping other to overcome theirs.

Jack Kornfield

#7. Reconciliation is to understand both sides; to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, and then go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the first side.

Nhat Hanh

#8. Rather than encouraging apathy through submissive responses, let us deliver the message loudly and clearly, that needles killing and suffering is wrong.

Bodo Balsys

#9. A Buddhist scholar once explained to me that most Westerners mistakenly think that Nirvana is what you arrive at when your suffering is over and only an eternity of happiness stretches ahead. But such bliss would always be shadowed by the sorrow of the past and would therefore be imperfect.

Andrew Solomon

#10. Looking deeply into the wrong perceptions, ideas, and notions that are at the base of our suffering is the most important practice in Buddhist meditation.

Nhat Hanh

#11. He who causes suffering shall suffer. There is no escape.

Gautama Buddha

#12. Although the Buddhists will tell you that desire is the root of suffering, my personal experience leads me to point the finger at system administration.

Philip Greenspun

#13. A fool thinks it like honey so long as the bad deed does not bear fruit, but when it does bear fruit he experiences suffering.

Gautama Buddha

#14. "All conditioned things are impermanent" - when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.

Gautama Buddha

#15. The gift of the Truth beats all other gifts. The flavour of the Truth beats all other tastes. The joy of the Truth beats all other joys, and the cessation of desire conquers all suffering

Gautama Buddha

#16. It came to me that I should teach this truth for it is real happiness and joy. The cessation of suffering is possible.

Gautama Buddha

#17. Both formerly and now, it is only suffering that I describe, and the cessation of suffering.

Gautama Buddha

#18. As I cooked in the cauldron of motherhood, the incredible love I felt for my children opened my heart and brought me a much greater understanding of universal love. It made me understand the suffering of the world much more deeply.

Tsultrim Allione

#19. I teach one thing and one only: that is, suffering and the end of suffering.

Gautama Buddha

#20. It is our very search for perfection outside of ourselves that causes suffering.

Gautama Buddha

#21. It is ignorance that smothers, and it is carelessness that makes it invisible. The hunger of craving pollutes the world, and the pain of suffering causes the greatest fear.

Gautama Buddha

#22. In the Buddhist scriptures, it said many births cause suffering, so Buddhism is not against family planning.

Mechai Viravaidya

#23. Every living thing is sacred to me. Compassion and love can heal this world, which is set on fire of violence and hatred. I will teach the world about compassion, and end the suffering by halting these floods of sorrow. Said Prince Siddhartha and began his journey of saving the man kind." ,

Ama H. Vanniarachchy

#24. The root of suffering is attachment

Gautama Buddha

#25. Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.

Gautama Buddha

#26. Thus all things are subject to death, sorrow and suffering. I became aware that I too was of the same nature, the nature of beginning and end. What if I searched for that which underlies all creation, that which is nirvana, the perfect freedom from unconditioned existence?

Gautama Buddha

#27. Although social and personal circumstances will play their part in contributing to how an individual suffers, in Buddhist thought blame is seen as a "poison" that will only lead to negative actions and will do nothing to reduce suffering.

Desmond Biddulph

#28. At an emotional level, we feel that things should be happy and when things are difficult or painful, something is wrong. According to the Buddhist teachings this is what causes suffering.

Krissy Pozatek

#29. I think China's view of freedom has to do with material wealth and modernity, and the Dalai's Lama view of freedom is liberation in the Buddhist sense, which is freedom from ignorance and freedom from suffering.

Pico Iyer

#30. I saw then how I could be a good Buddhist and a good chef, and serve meat that is given freely, without suffering.

Matthew Johnson

#31. Suffering does not befall him who is without attachment to names and forms.

Gautama Buddha

#32. By changing our inner state of mind, we can change any suffering or hardship into a source of joy, regarding it as a means for forging and developing our lives. To turn even sorrow into a source of creativity - this is the way of life of a Buddhist

Daisaku Ikeda