Suffering

Who is it that loves and who that suffers? He alone stages a play with Himself. The individual suffers because he perceives duality. Find the One everywhere and in everything and there will be an end to pain and suffering. Ananandamayi Ma.

And then he allows some of us to fall more severely and distressingly than before -- at least that is how we see it. And then it seems to us, who are not always wise, that all we set our hands to is lost. But it is not so. For if we never fell we should not know how weak and pitiable we are in ourselves.  Julian of Norwich

Amnesiac (man) suffers from illusorily feeling himself abandoned by God, while he is in reality God himself.  Benoit

It was as though the courteous Lord had said. 'Should I not award (my beloved servant) a gift which would serve him better and be more excellent than his own health would have been?'  Julian of Norwich

Man's destiny is indeed to partake fully of the divine nature, but this means putting away the superficial logic and expectations of the humanistic man-god and taking on the humility and suffering of the God-man who came to raise the world from suffering to eternal life.  Martin Israel

God gives us the cross and the cross gives us to God.  Madame Guyon

There's simply no such thing as not feeling pain. Since the Buddha Mind is endowed with a marvellously illuminating dynamic function, not only illness but everything there is can be clearly recognized and distinguished. That's why, when you're faced with suffering or illness, if you simply don't get involved with them or attached to them, there's nothing you won't be able to endure.  Bankei

When we conceive the love of suffering, we lose the sensibility of the senses and, dead, we will live in that garden.  St. Catherine of Siena

He who suffers for love does not suffer, for all suffering is forgot.  Meister Eckhart

There is a place where all problems have but one universal solution.  Anandamayi Ma

This does not involve the cessation of suffering, but of the sorrow, the anxiety, the bitterness of suffering.  Madame Guyon

Why should one who knows his Self to be That in which universes rise and fall like waves in the sea, run hither and thither like a suffering creature.  Ashtavakra Gita

There is the personal sorrow and the sorrow of the world. There is the sorrow of ignorance and the sorrow of time. This ignorance is the lack of knowing oneself, and the sorrow of time is the deception that time can cure, heal and change. In all this the trouble is the utter lack of knowing oneself. Knowing oneself is the ending of sorrow.  J. Krishnamurti

When the kingdom of Pure Consciousness has been attained, form is revealed as the Essence itself. What was sorrow from the worldly point of view is now Viraha, separation from THAT; in other words, the agony of existing in a particular form.  Anandamayi Ma

Thou talk'st of Antichrist
and Beast, and dost not see
(If thou be not in God)
that they are both in thee.  Angelus Silesius

Were we to be in all the pain that heart can think and tongue can tell, if at that time we could see his fair and blessed face, then all this pain could not grieve us.  Julian of Norwich

Pain is physical; suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is no suffering. Pain is merely a signal that the body is in danger and requires attention. Similarly, suffering warns us that the structure of the memories and habits which we call the person is threatened by loss or change. Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting, it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life. The essence of saintliness is total acceptance of the present moment, harmony with things as they happen. A saint does not want things to be different from what they are; he knows that, considering all factors, they are unavoidable. He is friendly with the inevitable and therefore does not suffer. Pain he may know, but it does not shatter him. If he can, he does the needful to restore the lost balance -- or he lets things take their course.  Nisargadatta

I have been crucified with Christ: the life I now live is not my life, but the life which Christ lives in me.  St. Paul

When a person is confronted with the fact of his powerlessness in the face of ill-health or indefinite imprisonment, he undergoes different phases of response. There is first his childish incredulity that anything so final and irrevocable could happen to him. Of course we all know that these things are to be, but they are for others only, never for ourselves, because we are in some way special. Indeed, each one of us is special in his own way, but the uniqueness of that person lies in his particular contribution to the whole and not in his exemption from suffering.  Martin Israel

We are inflicting a grievous wound upon (the world) and it's bleeding to death from that wound. We have split it into two unequal fragments called OURSELF and THE REST, or ME and NOT ME. The result is that we have on our hands not a Universe but a Duoverse, a Duality and no Unity. And it's hardly surprising that the severed parts should be deficient, tragically and incurably sick, so long as the dreadful wound isn't closed and healed.  D.E. Harding

The answer to your problem is to see who has it.  Ramana Maharshi

Most of our tensions and frustrations stem from the compulsive need to act the role of someone we are not.  Dr. Hans Selye

Who suffers much makes the devil envious, and is thrown out into heaven. Nietzsche

All men have matter for sorrow: but most especially he felted matter of sorrow that knoweth and felted that he is. The Cloud of Unknowing (Anonymous) 

Watch a man in times of adversity to discover what kind of man he is, for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off. Lucretius. 

The cause of your sickness is that you have forgotten who you are. Boethius. 

When there is no ‘I’ there is no karma. Ramana Maharshi 

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