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Suffering comes from resisting what is

• All of your pain and suffering comes from your resistance to what is. Dick Sutphen’s one sentence summary of the teachings of Buddha
• I do a lot of reading on Buddhist philosophy, and a Buddhist nun named Pema Chödrön talks a lot about acceptance. It’s one of the main tenets of Buddhism – accepting that what is, is. The root of our suffering is when we just don’t want to accept a truth. We want something to be different than it is. Sara Bareilles
• It is not the feeling that causes suffering but our resistance to it. Rupert Spira
• I think the function of suffering is to let me know that my perception is skewed; what I’m doing is judging natural events in such a way that I am creating suffering within myself. For instance, you have pain over certain conditions, certain situations that occur. And if you just say ‘ok, here I am, I’m going to experience the pain,’ you don’t suffer. The resistance and the degree of the resistance to the natural phenomenon of life causes tremendous suffering. Hubert Selby, Jr.
• If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others. Eckhart Tolle
• It may look as if the situation is creating the suffering, but ultimately this is not so – your resistance is. Eckhart Tolle
• Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is… The only problem in your life is your mind’s resistance to life as it unfolds. Dan Millman
• Strictly speaking, [one does] not find God through [one’s] suffering, because suffering implies resistance. [One finds] God through surrender, through total acceptance of what is, into which [one was] forced by their intense suffering. Eckhart Tolle
• Suffering = Pain x Resistance. Shinzen Young
• The ego says, ‘I shouldn’t have to suffer,’ and that thought makes you suffer so much more. It is a distortion of the truth, which is always paradoxical. The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it. Eckhart Tolle
• The other thing that causes suffering is resistance to what is here now. “What is here now” is a brief way of saying, “what our physical, mental, and emotional reality is in this moment.” If we accept what is here in this moment, and just for this moment stay with what is here, suffering disappears. Alan H. Dawe
• The resistance and the degree of the resistance to the natural phenomenon of life causes tremendous suffering. Hubert Selby, Jr.
• The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering. Ram Dass
• The second noble truth says that this resistance is the…mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering. Pema Chodron
• Today I have a choice. I can resist reality and suffer pain or peacefully accept what I cannot change. Karan Casey
• When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task. . . . He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden. Viktor E. Frankl
• When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into it’s dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment. Pema Chodron

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The process of resistance is suffering

• The process of resisting and seeking which constitutes the experience of unhappiness or suffering is an activity of thinking and feeling. The separate self is not an entity; it is this very activity of resisting and seeking. When this resisting, seeking activity comes to an end, the apparently separate, inside self comes to an end. Because this activity is an appearance within our self, aware Presence, when it comes to an end all that remains is our self. We, aware Presence, no longer know the activity of thinking and feeling but just remain, open and empty, simply knowing our self. This simple knowing of our self, the simple knowing of our own being, is the experience of peace and happiness. Rupert Spira

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What we resist persists, including suffering

• What you resist persists. What you look at disappears. Neale Donald Walsch
• Whatever you resist you become. If you resist anger, you are always angry. If you resist sadness, you are always sad. If you resist suffering, you are always suffering. If you resist confusion,you are always confused. We think that we resist certain states because they are there, but actually they are there because we resist them. Adyashanti

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Suffering is non-acceptance

• Suffering is basically the mind’s refusal to accept reality as it is. Marcus Thomas
• Suffering: the sense that things should be different than they are. Wayne Liquorman
• The mental suffering you create is always some form of non-acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgement. The intensity of the suffering depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment. Eckhart Tolle
• The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want. Byron Katie
• The pain that you create now is always some form of non-acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. Eckhart Tolle
• Wanting things to be otherwise is the very essence of suffering. We almost never directly experience what pain is because our reaction to it is so immediate that most of what we call pain is actually our experience of resistance to that phenomenon. And the resistance is usually a good deal more painful than the original sensation. Stephen Levine
• We suffer because we want life to be different from what it is. We suffer because we try to make pleasurable what is painful, to make solid what is fluid, to make permanent what is always changing. Sakyong Mipham
• When you don’t want to be where you are, you create suffering for yourself. Change happens through acceptance, kindness and relaxation–not resistance, not warfare, not fights. Geneen Roth
• Suffering is already a rejection of the current situation, a lack of acceptance of the current situation as it is.   Rupert Spira

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Non-resistance is the antidote to suffering

• Misery needs your conspiracy; it needs your help. Without your resistance misery cannot survive. Adyashanti
• Suffering is, by definition, a resistance to the current situation and the inevitable search for an alternative in the future. If there is no resistance to the current situation, there is no suffering. If the current situation is the experience of suffering, and if there is absolutely no resistance to that suffering, then the suffering cannot stand, because suffering is resistance. The suffering is immediately transformed into happiness. Suffering stands revealed as happiness as soon as all resistance to it ceases. Thus, happiness is the essential nature even of suffering. It lies quietly at the heart of all experience, including suffering, waiting to be recognised, waiting for our resistance to drop, waiting for us to have the courage and the love to turn around, as it were, and face the suffering without the slightest desire to resist it or move away. It is for this reason that even in our darkest moments of despair we are never completely overtaken by unhappiness. If we were, there would be no room for anything else, not even room for thought to separate out a self to look back at the suffering and try to get rid of it, and then it would be perfect non-duality, and therefore perfect happiness. There is no such thing as absolute suffering. Suffering is always mixed with something else, with a desire to get rid of it in an imaginary future, that is, with a desire for happiness. However, there is absolute happiness that is not mixed with the slightest tinge of anything else. That is our self. Rupert Spira

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Acceptance is the antidote to suffering

• And remember, you shall suffer all things and again suffer: until you have sufficient sufferance to accept all things. Austin Osman Spare
• If you abide in this state of acceptance, you create no more negativity, no more suffering, no more unhappiness. You then live in a state of nonresistance, a state of grace and lightness, free of struggle. Eckhart Tolle
• In a basic way, acceptance is seeing clearly what’s happening and holding it with kindness. This is a radical antidote to the suffering of judging mind. Tara Brach
• It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love. Pope Benedict XVI
• Most people wish they could erase suffering out of the dictionary. Today’s culture of comfort and instant gratification has no patience for suffering – most people want to drug it, escape it, divorce it; do anything but live with it. Joni Eareckson Tada

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Relinquish resistance and accept

• It seems that most people need to experience a great deal of suffering before they will relinquish resistance and accept – before they will forgive. Eckhart Tolle
• Life is suffering. Life is not resistance to suffering. The point of life is to suffer. This is why we’re here: We’re here to suffer. I believe in a higher power that compassionately allows suffering for us as a race, to grow and mature. Rainn Wilson

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To acknowledge and accept is to transcend

• Many spiritual people are involved in a radical denial of what is happening. They want to transcend it, get rid of it, get out of it, get away from it. There’s nothing wrong with that feeling, but the approach doesn’t work because it’s escapism in spiritual clothing. It’s wearing spiritual clothing and spiritual concepts, but it is really no different than a drunk in the gutter who doesn’t want to feel the pain anymore. When you abide and accept everything completely and fully, you automatically go beyond. Adyashanti

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Accept life…

• When we accept all of life’s contradictions, when we can comfortably flow between the banks of pleasure and pain, experiencing them both while getting stuck in neither, then we are free. Deepak Chopra

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…and its challenges

• The pain will not go away by getting angry or bitter, it will go away when you learn to accept life’s challenges with grace and ease. Leon Brown
• Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. Scott Peck
• Patience is the ability to accept trouble, suffering, delay without getting angry or upset, I feel like if you can master patience you can master anything. Big Sean

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Accept transience

• Real wisdom is recognizing and accepting that every experience is impermanent. With this insight you will not be overwhelmed by ups and downs. And when you are able to maintain an inner balance, you can choose to act in ways that will create happiness for you and for others. Living each moment happily with an equanimous mind, you will surely progress toward the ultimate goal of liberation from all suffering. N. Goenka
• To put it concisely, we suffer when we resist the noble and irrefutable truth of impermanence and death. Pema Chodron
• Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer. Shunryu Suzuki

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Most of all, accept your pain

• ‘Going home’ is a journey to the heart of who we are, a place where we can be ourselves and welcome the reality of our beauty and our pain. From this acceptance of ourselves, we can accept others as they are and we can see our common humanity. Jean Vanier
• Accept periods of suffering with gratitude, knowing that suffering can teach you very important lessons. Barbara Ann Kipfer
• Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it — that is what you must do. Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Acceptance of one’s life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary, it means accepting it as it comes, with all the handicaps of heredity, of suffering, of psychological complexes and injustices. Paul Tournier
• All happiness comes from awareness. The more we are conscious the deeper the joy. Acceptance of pain, non-resistance, courage and endurance – these open deep and perennial sources of real happiness, true bliss. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
• And you would accept the seasons of your heart just as you have always accepted that seasons pass over your fields and you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief. Khalil Gibran
• Don’t be bitter. Everybody suffers. If you can accept your suffering then you will understand other people better. Be grateful for pain. Love life. Stephen Colbert
• I’ll accept the pain and the suffering, because I know that in that there’s a lot of beauty, too. Wayne Coyne
• If there is suffering, then it’s best to accept it, because it won’t go away just because you pretend it’s not there. If there is joy, then it’s best to accept that too, even though you’re afraid it might end one day. Paulo Coelho
• If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you. Hugh Jackman
• If you want to experience all of the successes and pleasure in life, you have to be willing to accept all the pain and failure that comes with it. Mat Hoffman
• In tonglen practice, when we see or feel suffering, we  breathe in with the notion of completely feeling it, accepting it, and owning it. Then we breathe out, radiating compassion, lovingkindness, freshness – anything that encourages relaxation and openness.  So you’re training in softening, rather than tightening, your heart. In this practice, it’s not uncommon to find yourself blocked, because you come face to face with your own fear, resistance, or whatever your personal “stuckness” happens to be at that moment. Pema Chodron
• It is only by practicing through a continual succession of agreeable and disagreeable situations that we acquire true strengths. To accept that pain is inherent and to live our lives from this understanding is to create the causes and conditions for happiness. Shunryu Suzuki
• It’s good to suffer. Dont complain. Bear, bow, accept – and be grateful that God has made you suffer. For this makes you better than the people who are laughing and happy. Ayn Rand
• Look on each day that comes as a challenge, as a test of courage. The pain will come in waves, some days worse than others, for no apparent reason. Accept the pain. Little by little, you will find new strength, new vision, born of the very pain and loneliness which seem, at first, impossible to master. Daphne du Maurier
• Lord, help us to accept the pains and conflicts that come to us each day as opportunities to grow as people and become more like you. Mother Teresa
• Pain, I came to feel, might well prove to be the sole proof of the persistence of consciousness within the flesh, the sole physical expression of consciousness. As my body acquired muscle, and in turn strength, there was gradually born within me a tendency towards the positive acceptance of pain, and my interest in physical suffering deepened. Yukio Mishima
• Suffering, if it is accepted together, borne together, is joy. Mother Teresa
• The denial of suffering is, in fact a better definition of illness than its acceptance. Scott Peck
• The only valid cure for any kind of depression is the acceptance of real suffering. To climb out of it any other way is simply laying the foundation for the next depression. Helen M. Luke
• To experience emotional freedom, we must accept, surrender, and let go of our wounds. We must be willing to take responsibility for what we’re holding on to, which is usually a hurt or pain from the past that leaves us feeling victimized. Debbie Ford
• To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern – and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values. Erich Fromm
• We must accept our pain Change what we can and laugh at the rest. Camille Paglia
• Whether joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure; whatsoever may befall thee, accept it serenely with an unvanquished heart. Rabindranath Tagore
• You must be willing to accept the fact that pain is a part of the process of revelation. Stanley Crouch

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Accept the pain body

• Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don’t think about it – don’t let the feeling turn into thinking. Don’t judge or analyze. Don’t make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of “the one who observes,” the silent watcher. This is the power of the Now, the power of your own conscious presence. Then see what happens. Eckhart Tolle

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To accept pain is to accept life

• The thing is, the only real sign of life is growth. And growth requires pain. So to choose life is to accept pain. Richard Paul Evans

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Accept pain as a natural part of existence

• LIFE is a mosaic of pleasure and pain – grief is an interval between two moments of joy. Peace is the interlude between two wars. You have no rose without a thorn; the diligent picker will avoid the pricks and gather the flower. There is no bee without the sting; cleverness consists in gathering the honey nevertheless. Sathya Sai Baba
• Life is both pleasure and pain, is it not? But why should we cling to pleasure and avoid pain? Why not merely live with both? If you cling to pleasure what happens? You get attached, do you not? Jiddu Krishnamurti
• One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying. Morris West

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Pain cannot be avoided so we should not even try

• … a warrior could not avoid pain and grief but only the indulging in them. Carlos Castaneda
• If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution. Scott Peck
• It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater. Pope Benedict XVI
• Love is messy. If you really love someone, you can’t avoid the pain. People die, people leave, things change, but sometimes it all works. Danielle Steel
• Pain is essential. Often I cannot avoid it. Therefore all one can do is redeem it; and the only way to redeem it is through literature, art, poetry, music.  Elie Wiesel
• There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain. D. Laing
• Trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job. Charles Bukowski
• We tend to run our whole life trying to avoid all that hurts or displeases us, noticing the objects, people, or situations that we think will give us pain or pleasure, avoiding one and pursuing the other. Joko Beck
• You can’t avoid pain in life. It’s how you handle pain, that’s what defines you. Marc Maron

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Avoidance turns pain into suffering

• When we are willing to accept our experience, just as it is, a strange thing happens: it changes into something else. When we avoid pain, struggle not to feel it, pain turns into suffering. Brenda Shoshanna
• When you try to avoid the pain, it creates greater pain. Jennifer Aniston

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Realise pain and even suffering is not wrong

• Pain is not wrong. Reacting to pain as wrong initiates the trance of unworthiness. The moment we believe something is wrong, our world shrinks and we lose ourselves in the effort to combat the pain. Tara Brach
• The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personally made the wrong move. In reality, however, when we feel suffering, we think that something is wrong. As long as we’re addicted to hope, we feel that we can tone our experience down or liven it up or change it somehow, and we continue to suffer a lot. Pema Chodron
• To be shocked at how deeply rejection hurts is to ignore what acceptance involves. We must never allow our suffering to be compounded by suggestions that there is something odd in suffering so deeply. There would be something amiss if we didn’t. Arthur Schopenhauer

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Pain is necessary for spiritual growth and the evolution of consciousness

• There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. Carl Jung
• To accept struggle as part of life, to accept all of it, even the darkest moments of anguish; to be motivated by love rather than fear, by confidence rather than insecurity: these are the benchmarks of high self-esteem. The wish to avoid fear and pain is not the motive that drives the lives of highly evolved men and women; rather, it is the life force within them, thrusting toward its unique form of expression-the actualization of personal values. Nathaniel Branden
• To proceed very far through the desert, you must be willing to meet existential suffering and work it through. In order to do this, the attitude toward pain has to change. This happens when we accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth. Scott Peck

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Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional

• Pain is inevitable, but misery is optional. We cannot avoid pain, but we can avoid joy. Tim Hansel
• Though we may not always be able to avoid pain, we can choose how much we suffer. Judy Tatelbaum

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The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer

• The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most. Thomas Merton

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The way out of suffering is through the heart of it

• The only way out of suffering is right through the heart of it. If we deny this possibility, we are stuck. It is denial masquerading as acceptance, fear masquerading as peace. Rupert Spira

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Face your pain

• Pain is subtle. He has cold grey fingers. His voice is horse from crying and screaming… When people try to avoid him, he follows them silently and turns up as the bartender, or the bus driver… Pain has an elaborate filing system for keeping track of everyone… Pain respects people who are willing to take risks. If you… face him directly, he will give you a special ointment so your wounds don’t fester. J. Ruth Gendler
• Some of us have a hard time believing that we are actually able to face our own pain. We have convinced ourselves that our pain is too deep, too frightening, something to avoid at all costs. Yet if we finally allow ourselves to feel the depth of that sadness and gently let it break our hearts, we may come to feel a great freedom, a genuine sense of release and peace, because we have finally stopped running away from ourselves and from the pain that lives within us. Wayne Muller
• The only thing that suffering cannot stand is to be understood, that is, to be clearly seen. Suffering is ultimately an illusion, but in order to see it as such we have to face it with courage.  Rupert Spira

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Look deeply into the heart of your pain

• The second noble truth states that we must discover why we are suffering. We must cultivate the courage to look deeply, with clarity and courage, into our own suffering. We often hold the tacit assumption that all of our suffering stems from events in the past. But, whatever the initial seed of trauma, the deeper truth is that our suffering is more closely a result of how we deal with the effect these past events have on us in the present.  Peter A. Levine

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To fully feel is to heal

• We think we want to avoid the grief, but really it is the pain of the loss we want to avoid. Grief is the healing process that ultimately brings us comfort in our pain. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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Say yes to pain

• The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it. Eckhart Tolle
• We are not here to triumph by fighting, by strata gem, or by resistance, not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast and have conquered. We have only to conquer now, by suffering. This is the easier victory. S. Eliot

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Move towards the pain

• We often move away from pain, which is helpful only before being hurt. Once in pain, it seems the only way out is through. Like someone falling off a boat, struggling to stay above the water only makes things worse. We must accept we are there and settle enough so we can be carried by the deep. The willingness to do this is the genesis of faith, the giving over to currents larger than us. Even fallen leaves float in lakes, demonstrating how surrender can hold us up. Mark Nepo
• Move towards the pain. See if you can soften around any resistance you may feel towards it. This is counter- intuitive but if you try to ignore it or push it away, it will just scream louder. Use the breath to help with this. Vidyamala

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Enter the pain

• We are motivated more by aversion to the unpleasant than by a will toward truth, freedom, or healing. We are constantly attempting to escape our life, to avoid rather than enter our pain we, and we wonder why it is so difficult to be fully alive. Stephen Levine

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Surrender to the pain

• Surrender to the grief, despair, fear, loneliness, or whatever form the suffering takes. Witness it without labeling it mentally. Embrace it. Then see how the miracle of surrender transmutes deep suffering into deep peace. This is your crucifixion. Let it become your resurrection and ascension. Eckhart Tolle
• You are just one step away from something incredible: a complete alchemical transmutation of the base metal of pain and suffering into gold. That one step is called surrender. Eckhart Tolle

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Allow yourself to feel the pain fully

• Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the isness of the Now. You can’t argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer. Eckhart Tolle
• If we live, we live; if we die, we die; if we suffer, we suffer; if we are terrified, we are terrified. There is no problem about it. Alan Watts
• Our sadness is an energy we discharge in order to heal. …Sadness is painful. We try to avoid it. Actually discharging sadness releases the energy involved in our emotional pain. To hold it in is to freeze the pain within us. The therapeutic slogan is that grieving is the ‘healing feeling.’ John Bradshaw

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Love and embrace the pain

• Love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is only your aversion to it that hurts, nothing else. Hermann Hesse
• You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation…and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else. Hermann Hesse

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Let go of the pain

• Suffering is not holding you. You are holding suffering. When you become good at the art of letting sufferings go, then you’ll come to realize how unnecessary it was for you to drag those burdens around with you. You’ll see that no one else other than you was responsible. The truth is that existence wants your life to become a festival. Rajneesh