15 Quotes About Suffering & Pain
Pain is inevitable; suffering, the Buddhists argue, is optional. These quotes hold the difference — and the strange doorway that hardship keeps opening.
“He whose mind is undisturbed in sorrow, who craves no pleasure, and from whom attachment, fear, and anger have departed — he is called a sage of steady wisdom.”
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
“The four phases of the flow cycle: struggle, release, flow, recovery. Skip any one and you cannot get the next.”
“When you say I love you to your body, it remembers it was loved before it was hurt.”
“Most people quit when it gets hard because the hard part is where the work is. Everyone wants to be the person on the other side of the suffering. Almost no one wants to be the person in it.”
“Suffering teaches you what comfort cannot.”
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
“The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else's highlight reel. Stop watching the reel. Live the scene.”
“When you breathe in, you take in someone else's pain. When you breathe out, you send out relief. The practice is about reversing the habit of avoidance.”
“Whenever we follow our wandering, scattered minds, we are creating the conditions for suffering. Whenever we are present, here, now — even for a moment — we are creating the conditions for liberation.”
“All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from seeking pleasure for others.”
“Tonglen reverses the usual logic of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure. In the process, we become liberated from a very ancient prison of selfishness.”
“When elephants fight, the grass suffers. When they make love, the grass also suffers.”