A Quote by Henepola Gunaratana

The principal cause of suffering is craving. Once craving is eliminated, much suffering will be eliminated. Still more suffering will be eliminated once ignorance is eliminated. Both craving and ignorance are equally powerful defilements that cause suffering.
Man is still by instinct a predatory animal given to devilish aggression. The discoveries of science have immensely increased productivity of material things. They have increased the standards of living and comfort. They have eliminated infinite drudgery. They have increased leisure. But that gives more time for devilment. The work of science has eliminated much disease and suffering. It has increased the length of life. That, together with increase in productivity, has resulted in vastly increased populations. Also it increased the number of people engaged in devilment.
No words, phrases, or sentences are capable of describing or naming the Way, because once it is named, it is a false name and has to be eliminated. Once it is eliminated, only emptiness is left. When the false is abandoned, the true emerges.
Now this, monks, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; seperation from what is pleasing is suffering... in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.
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.
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.
A tremendous amount of needless pain and suffering can be eliminated by ensuring that health insurance is universally available.
It is not true that evil, destructiveness , and perversion inevitably form part of human existence, no matter how often this is maintained. But it is true that we are daily producing more evil and, with it, an ocean of suffering for millions that is absolutely avoidable. When one day the ignorance arising from childhood repression is eliminated and humanity has awakened, an end can be put to this production of evil.
The world is full of suffering. Birth is suffering, decre- pitude is suffering, sickness and death are sufferings. To face a man of hatred is suffering, to be separated from a beloved one is suffering, to be vainly struggling to satisfy one's needs is suffering. In fact, life that is not free from desire and passion is always involved with suffering.
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.
All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.
My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated.
Other things being equal, ill will is worse than moral indifference (as in causing suffering for money vs causing suffering to cause suffering), though things are rarely equal.
Whenever we feel that we are definitely right, so much so that we refuse to open up to anything or anybody else, right there we are wrong. It becomes wrong view. When suffering arises, where does it arise from? The cause is wrong view, the fruit of that being suffering. If it was right view it wouldn't cause suffering.
The cause of all pain and suffering is ignorance.
There is not much sense in suffering, since drugs can be given for pain, itching, and other discomforts. The belief has long died that suffering here on earth will be rewarded in heaven. Suffering has lost its meaning.
Humans will always endure suffering - even accepting the fact that we're going to die will cause us suffering, and from that stems a little pessimism and negativity that all of us are susceptible to.
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