A Quote by Pema Chodron

Resisting what is happening is a major cause of suffering.

Pema Chodron

Quote Topics

Cause Happening Major Resisting Suffering

Quote Author

Pema Chodron
American - Priest
Born: July 14, 1936

What many fail to realize is that being attached to what we think we want and don't have while resisting what is happening in the moment is the cause, not the cure, of much personal suffering and interpersonal conflict.

Lee L Jampolsky

Poverty - the greatest cause of human suffering on the planet - is itself exacerbated by conflict, competition for resources, injustice, even the global downturn and climate change. Diseases like AIDS, TB and malaria cannot be tackled without adequate resources. So you see everything is connected. In order to address any major cause of human suffering, we have to work together across many fronts.

Desmond Tutu

Pain is physical; suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is no suffering. Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels you to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting; it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The whole idea of emotions being something we can't escape as humans, but that deep suffering that comes from resisting them, we can move out of that just by not resisting anymore. But it takes a really brave warrior soul to sit there in these emotions that admittedly don't feel good in the body.

Alanis Morissette

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.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Empathy should not be contingent on our proximity to suffering or the likelihood of it happening to us. Rather, it should stem from a disdain that suffering is happening at all.

Clint Smith

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.

Ajahn Chah

What is the cause, though, of the growth of an acorn? The oak that is to come! What is to happen in the future is then the cause of what is occurring now; and, at the same time, what occurred in the past is also the cause of what is happening now. In addition, a great number of things round about, on every side, are causing what is happening now. Everything, all the time, is causing everything else

Joseph Campbell

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.

Henepola Gunaratana

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.

Gautama Buddha

The root of suffering is resisting the certainty that no matter what the circumstances, uncertainty is all we truly have.

Pema Chodron

Trying to maintain a pleasant state and avoid an unpleasant state is actually the cause of sorrow. When you stop resisting, you see that what seems frightening is actually the absolute beauty of reality. When you see that everything is a momentary display of reality, then you stop resisting it. Resistance hurts, only every single time. Love is the state of nonresistance.

Adyashanti

Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting. It is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I think I get angry when people cause serious suffering or don't alleviate suffering when they could.

Peter Singer

Pacifism as a mass movement aims to avoid suffering; pacifists often say that no cause is worth suffering or dying for. The ethos of Solidarity is based on an opposite premise - that there are causes worth suffering and dying for.