A Quote by Edward Abbey

Desire, said the Buddha, is the cause of suffering. But without desire, what delight?

Edward Abbey

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Cause Delight Desire Said Suffering Without

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Edward Abbey
American - Author
January 29, 1927 - March 14, 1989

We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.

John Green

It is attachment to desire, not desire itself, that is the underlying cause of practically all of our pain and suffering.

Rod Stryker

The delight we take in our senses is an implicit desire to know the ultimate reason for things, the highest cause. The desire for wisdom that philosophy etymologically is is a desire for the highest or divine causes. Philosophy culminates in theology. All other knowledge contains the seeds of contemplation of the divine.

Josef Pieper

In one word, one should desire of God desirelessness. For desire alone is at the root of all suffering. It is the cause of repeated births and deaths. It is the obstacle in the way of liberation.

Sarada Devi

Buddha's doctrine: Man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep forever things which are essentially impermanent...this frustration of the desire to possess is the immediate cause of suffering.

Alan Watts

The desire for bad art is the desire bred of habit: like the smoker's desire for tobacco, more marked by the extreme malaise of denial than by any very strong delight in fruition.

C. S. Lewis

The word desire suggests that there is something we do not have. If we have everything already, then there can be no desire, for there is nothing left to want. I think that what the Buddha may have been trying to tell us is that we have it all, each of us, all the time; therefore, desire is simply unnecessary.

Tom Robbins

Desire is suffering. A simple equation, and a nice catchphrase. But flipped around, it is more troubling: suffering is desire.

Charles Yu

Spiritual seeking means knowing this negative part: that desiring is the root cause of frustration. To desire is to create, of one`s own accord, a shell. Desiring is the world. To be worldly is to desire and to go on desiring, never becoming aware that each desire comes to nothing but frustration. Once you become aware of this, then you do not desire, or your only desire is to know what is.

Rajneesh

I get up every morning with a desire to do some creative work. This desire is made of the same stuff as the sexual desire, the desire to make money, or any other desire.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

The intellect alone has an eye for viewing an essence, which it cannot see except in the true Cause, which is the Fount of all desire. Moreover, since all things seek to exist, then in all things there is desire from the Fount-of-desire, wherein being and desire coincide in the Same.

Nicholas of Cusa

The delight that consumes the desire, The desire that outruns the delight.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

The Buddha never intended to make desire itself the problem. When he said craving causes suffering, he was referring not to our natural inclination as living beings to have wants and needs, but to our habit of clinging to experience that must, by nature, pass away.

Tara Brach

The Zen philosophy posits that 'human beings suffer' and 'the cause of suffering is desire.' The way to put an end to suffering is to stop wanting everything, all the time.

Karl Albrecht

If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against temptation, why not get better at fulfilling desire? Salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb.

Tom Robbins

And yes, there definitely are many good desires. For example, without the desire for food we would not stay alive. It is when our desire becomes an unquenchable craving or obsession, or causes us to do harm to ourselves or others, that it creates suffering and unhappiness. If you have ever been hurt because you tied your happiness or well-being to a person, place, opinion, self-identity, behavior, or goal, then you have firsthand experience of desire.

Don Altman

A Quote by Edward Abbey

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