Top 86 Quotes About Suffering Buddhism
#1. Attachment has to do with suffering, so it's really close to Buddhism, because Buddhism wants to relieve you from suffering; you're supposed to escape from suffering.
Gerald Stern
#2. Suffering usually relates to wanting things to be different from the way they are.
Allan Lokos
#3. Something in you wants to go beyond, wants to be free from this endless round of perception. Enlightenment is that.
Frederick Lenz
#4. Liberation means no rebirth. Now, does that mean you don't reincarnate? Well, you never did reincarnate.
Frederick Lenz
#5. Like a robe wears out over time and turns to rags, life wears out from day to day, from second to second.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
#6. Suffering has many faces. If we discover the roots of one suffering, we are at the same time discovering the roots of others.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#7. Life is fragile, like the dew hanging delicately on the grass, crystal drops that will be carried away on the first morning breeze.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
#8. To diminish the suffering of pain, we need to make a crucial distinction between the pain of pain, and the pain we create by our thoughts about the pain. Fear, anger, guilt, loneliness and helplessness are all mental and emotional responses that can intensify pain.
Howard Cutler
#9. In Buddhism, they say attachment to anything only leads to suffering. So when we laugh, it's our way of saying, 'I'm unattached to that.' You're tickled by it, it makes your lobes do something on their own. So humor is very important to me. I always take that to the stage first.
Jason Mraz
#10. We must especially learn the art of directing mindfulness into the closed areas of our life.
Jack Kornfield
#11. In Zen Buddhism an action is considered good when it brings happiness and well-being to oneself and others, evil when it brings suffering and harm to oneself and others.
Thich Thien-An
#12. We who are like senseless children shrink from suffering, but love its causes. We hurt ourselves; our pain is self-inflicted! Why should others be the object of our anger?
Santideva
#13. Outside of nirvana, the planes begin, the subtlest planes of light that vibrate fastest, all the way on down through the astral realms through the physical and so on.
Frederick Lenz
#15. There is a way to reach enlightenment and get beyond suffering.
Frederick Lenz
#16. How blissful it is, for one who has nothing. Attainers-of-wisdom are people with nothing. See him suffering, one who has something, a person bound in mind with people.
Gautama Buddha
#17. The first principle of monotheist religions is 'God exists. What does He want from me?' The first principle of Buddhism is 'Suffering exists. How do I escape it?
Yuval Noah Harari
#19. When you draw from the endless awareness of nirvana, you are no longer a slave to fortune. When pleasant experiences come your way, you can enjoy them. But if pain and misfortune befall you, you can rise above them and remain unaffected.
Frederick Lenz
#20. 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
#21. Buddhism has to do with your daily life, with your suffering and with the suffering of the people around you.
Nhat Hanh
#22. At the beginning and the middle and the end of all things, there is only the perfection of enlightenment that is nirvana.
Frederick Lenz
#23. If I don't understand you, I may be angry at you, all the time. We are not capable of understanding each other, and that is the main source of human suffering.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#24. The four noble truths: that there is suffering, that it has an origin, that there is a cessation of suffering, and that there is a path to that cessation.
Sid Brown
#25. Life is movement. The more life there is, the more flexibility there is. The more fluid you are, the more you are alive.
Arnaud Desjardins
#26. Look at the big picture of the wheel of life. Above it, there is a Buddha. He is pointing, not towards the wheel, but away from it. He is indicating that there is something else - nirvana.
Frederick Lenz
#27. Without being aware of it, you take many things as being your identity: your body, your race, your beliefs, your thoughts.
Jack Kornfield
#28. When we direct our attention toward our suffering, we see our potential for happiness. We see the nature of suffering and the way out. That is why the Buddha called suffering a holy truth. When we use the word "suffering" in Buddhism, we mean the kind of suffering that can show us the way out.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#29. The comedies, the tragedies we see played out on this earth before us, don't last. But we are eternal spirits. These events will come and go, but the planes of light and nirvana will always be there.
Frederick Lenz
#30. There is a still center of the universe. Within that still center are all things, all achievements, all loses, everything and nothing exist there.
Frederick Lenz
#31. Nirvana is a state of perpetual bliss and ecstasy, unaffected by the transient ups and downs of its own creations.
Frederick Lenz
#32. Nirvana is the center of things; then there are the outer bandings of attention. The universe is a mind. At the center of its mind is nirvana.
Frederick Lenz
#33. Nirvana and enlightenment exist just on the other side of your sensory perceptions and your thoughts.
Frederick Lenz
#34. The first principle of Buddhism is 'Suffering exists. How do I escape it?' Buddhism
Yuval Noah Harari
#35. Another condition can be attained ... a condition of ecstasy. A condition so far from what the people of planet Earth experience it's not even discussable.
Frederick Lenz
#36. Intentional suffering and the postponement of happiness is not yoga or Buddhism. It will not lead to a better incarnation.
Frederick Lenz
#37. In Buddhism, ignorance as the root cause of suffering refers to a fundamental misperception of the true nature of the self and all phenomena.
Dalai Lama
#38. That's what Buddhism has been trying to unravel - the mechanism of happiness and suffering. It is a science of the mind.
Matthieu Ricard
#39. In order to do anything about the suffering of the world we must have the strength to face it without turning away.
Sharon Salzberg
#40. How could sufferings be relieved through purification? To know the Path is to get lost at the ford. Indeed, sickness comes from worldly love And poverty begins with the pursuit of greed.
Wang Wei
#41. A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, "Why is there so much suffering?"
Suzuki Roshi replied, "No reason.
Shunryu Suzuki
#42. The essence of the Dharma (the teachings of the Buddha) is about identifying the cause of our suffering & alleviating it.
Allan Lokos
#43. We are all incarnate Buddhas. We just have not realized it deeply. We have not moved the mind - what our friend Don Juan calls the assemblage point.
Frederick Lenz
#44. What counts is not the enormity of the task, but the size of the courage.
Matthieu Ricard
#45. We see that the vast majority of our suffering is needless, and simply arises from the misidentification with our thinking mind.
Chris Matakas
#46. Nirvana is the pure and perfect schness of thatness of being.
Frederick Lenz
#48. Who has that perfect faith and trust? Only such a person with that faith and trust can be enlightened.
Frederick Lenz
#49. Buddhism teaches us not to try to run away from suffering. You have to confront suffering. You have to look deeply into the nature of suffering in order to recognize its cause, the making of the suffering.
Nhat Hanh
#50. You menace others with your deadly fangs. But in tormenting them, you are only tormenting yourselves.
Milarepa
#51. To be mindful entails examining the path we are traveling & making choices that alleviate suffering & bring happiness to ourselves & those around us.
Allan Lokos
#52. Universes collide and conjoin inside us and beyond all is nirvana, the final, absolute resting place of the soul.
Frederick Lenz
#53. Only the enlightened are consistently happy. Their happiness is not predicated upon the events and experiences that take place in this world. Instead it is based on the boundless inner energy they gain from their connection with the world of enlightenment.
Frederick Lenz
#54. Nirvana bears no resemblance to anything in your current perceptual field.
Frederick Lenz
#55. Nirvana is not really a physical place, although sometimes I talk about it as if it were. It is not really an experience, although sometimes I mention it as if it was.
Frederick Lenz
#56. Unlike the transient days of our lives that constantly come and go, nirvana has always been, is now, and always will be.
Frederick Lenz
#57. Every single one of the major traditions - Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, as well as the monotheisms - teaches a spirituality of empathy, by means of which you relate your own suffering to that of others.
Karen Armstrong
#58. Nothing goes right on the outside when nothing is going right on the inside.
Matthieu Ricard
#59. 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
#60. All beings want to be happy, yet so very few know how. It is out of ignorance that any of us cause suffering, for ourselves or for others
Sharon Salzberg
#61. Human beings are not so in harmony with the dharma. That is why they suffer so much. But you as an individual can reach a plane of attention and can become attention itself.
Frederick Lenz
#62. In the East, especially in contemplative traditions like those of Buddhism, being distracted by thought is understood to be the very wellspring of human suffering.
Sam Harris
#63. Simplifying our lives does not mean sinking into idleness, but on the contrary, getting rid of the most subtle aspect of laziness: the one which makes us take on thousands of less important activities.
Matthieu Ricard
#64. As far as ignorance is concerned, not just Buddhism, every religion recognizes it as the source of suffering.
Dalai Lama
#66. Precepts in Buddhism and commandments in Judiasm and Christianity are important jewels that we need to study and practice. They provide guidelines that can help us transform our suffering.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#67. You are going around on the wheel again and again. You go around and around from lifetime to lifetime. You never quite wake up. Enlightenment is waking up.
Frederick Lenz
#68. One day liberation will come, and it won't be a day; it won't be a year; it won't be a time, a place or a condition. It will be immortality reflecting through you. What will you do then?
Frederick Lenz
#69. Nothing is distinct and separate. The waves of the ocean arise and have a separate birth, crashing on the shore, but then back into the ocean they go. They never left it. There is no movement in Nirvana.
Frederick Lenz
#70. Envy and jealousy stem from the fundamental inability to rejoice at someone else's happiness or success
Matthieu Ricard
#71. Pain & suffering requires time, awareness, and an intentional practice of self-love to disentangle.
Sharon Salzberg
#72. The experience of light in a very pure form always creates happiness. The experience of desire and aversion tends to create unhappiness.
Frederick Lenz
#73. When fear and suffering are disliked by me and others equally what is so special about me that I protect myself and not the other?
Santideva
#74. We each need to make our lion's roar - to persevere with unshakable courage when faced with all manner of doubts and sorrows and fears - to declare our right to awaken.
Jack Kornfield
#75. Even the rich aren't often happy. Their wealth is at best only a temporary distraction. It doesn't make them immune to emotional and mental suffering, or to disease and death. They too must deal with loneliness, the deaths of loved ones and the frustrations and boredom of old age.
Frederick Lenz
#76. The experience of going to the other side to nirvana clarifies and simplifies your view of all things. You see the world with greater clarity, because it is not obscured by illusions.
Frederick Lenz
#77. You will bring yourself the suffering you need to bring yourself so that you may awaken.
T. Scott McLeod
#79. Nirvana is the other side, the source of all things, where all the aggregates come from, where the templates of infinity are.
Frederick Lenz
#80. It is the rub that polishes the jewel," Enso Roshi says. "Nobody ever gets to nirvana without going through samsara. Nobody ever gets to heaven, without going through hell. The center of all things, the truth, is surrounded by demons.
T. Scott McLeod
#81. The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last - that they don't disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.
Pema Chodron
#82. In the Buddhist scriptures, it said many births cause suffering, so Buddhism is not against family planning.
Mechai Viravaidya
#83. Nirvana has nothing do with any of this. None of this is there.
Frederick Lenz
#84. We could take all the pleasures that have ever been and will ever be in all the universes and add them up into one experience. If you were absorbed in nirvana, it wouldn't be noticed.
Frederick Lenz
#85. For many of us, especially being so fortunate to live in a first-world country, the vast majority of pain we experience is due to the seriousness with which we identify with our thoughts.
Chris Matakas
#86. Suffering has its beneficial aspects. It can be an excellent teacher.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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