Love to throw yourself on the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it with an unceasing, consuming love. Love all men, love everything. Seek that rapture and ecstasy. Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears. … ‘What is hell?’ I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 1880, trans. Constance Garnett (via proustitute)
Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.Ram Dass
If I want happiness, I simply need to stop causing myself suffering and cultivate happiness. How? It is a process of developing awareness, cultivating determination, and actually doing. But it is a long and difficult process. Sometimes I am so confused and do not understand these basic, simple facts. Instead, I follow delusions when they arise, give power to them, and expect to have happiness as the result. I continue to do non-virtuous actions and don’t know why I am unhappy.Thubten Pemo
Physical pain is not the only kind of pain that lets us know our attention is needed. Emotional pain provides us with valuable information about the state of our psyche, letting us know that we have been affected by something and that we would do well to focus our awareness inward. Just as we tend to a cut on our arm by cleaning and bandaging it, we treat a broken heart by surrounding ourselves with love and support. In both cases, if we listen to our pain we will know what to do to heal ourselves. It’s natural to want to resist pain, but once we understand that it is here to give us valuable information, we can relax a bit more, and take a moment to listen before we reach for medication. Sometimes this is enough to noticeably reduce the pain, because its message has been heard. Perhaps we seek to medicate pain because we fear that if we don’t, it will never go away. It can be empowering to realize that, at least some of the time, it is just a matter of listening and responding.
If somebody is waking for the first time from a deep sleep, she might see the midnight stars. But if she waits long enough without going back to sleep, she will begin to see not only stars but the dawn, then the sunrise, and then the whole landscape being lit by a brilliant light coming from the sky. She will begin to see her hands, her palms, her toes, and she will also begin to see her tables, her chairs, and the world around her. And if she is clever enough to look at a mirror, she will also see herself. Similarly, the truth of the cessation of suffering is a personal discovery. It is not mystical and it does not have any connotations of religion or psychology. It is simply your experience.Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
The third noble truth that the Buddha taught is the truth of cessation. The truth of cessation (gokpa) is related to the concept of tharpa, or “liberation.” In discussing the possibility of cessation, we should get rid of fictitious stories about how great it is to get there and become somebody at last. Such ideas may be obstacles. In relating to cessation, the question is whether we have to use our imagination or whether we actually can experience a sense of relief or freedom. The truth of the matter is, that in regard to cessation, imagination does not play a very important role. It does not help at all in getting results. The experience of cessation is very personal and very real, like the practice of meditation. Generally, however, our experiences of freedom or liberation are quite sparse and minute — and when we do have an occasional glimpse of freedom, we try to catch it, so we lose it. But it is possible to extend such glimpses.Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Frustration, anger, hatred, and sadness are part of life. We cannot avoid them or dispel them. They are not the cause of suffering; our aversion to them is.Matthew Bortolin
