Nhat Hanh Suffering Quotations

We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.

Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.

Listening to and understanding our inner sufferings will resolve most of the problems we encounter.

When we have anger in us, we suffer. When we have discrimination in us, we suffer. When we have the complex of superiority, we suffer. When we have the complex of inferiority, we suffer also. So when we are capable of transforming these negative things in us, we are free and happiness is possible.

If the people who hurt us have anger or desperation within them then they suffer. When you see that someone suffers, you might be motivated by a desire to help him not to suffer anymore.

When you look deeply into your anger, you will see that the person you call your enemy is also suffering. As soon as you see that, the capacity of accepting and having compassion for them is there.

Compassion is a mind that removes the suffering that is present in the other.

Happiness is the cessation of suffering.

The first thing I learned was that even if you have a lot of money and power and fame, you can still suffer very deeply.

Buddhism has to do with your daily life, with your suffering and with the suffering of the people around you.

When someone does not know how to handle his own suffering, one allows it to spill all over the people around him or her. When you suffer, you make people around you suffer. That's very natural. This is why we have to learn how to handle our suffering, so we won't spread it everywhere.

When you learn how to suffer, you suffer much less.

Most of your suffering comes from the lack of understanding of yourself and others.

People kill and are killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. When we believe that ours is the only faith that contains the truth, violence and suffering will surely be the result.

The Buddha said that if we know how to look deeply into our suffering and recognize what feeds it, we are already on the path of emancipation.

It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.

Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful...How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? It is natural--you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.

The most important thing is that we need to be understood. We need someone to be able to listen to us and to understand us. Then we will suffer less.

The fact is that when you make the other suffer, he will try to find relief by making you suffer more. The result is an escalation of suffering on both sides.

When you say something really unkind, when you do something in retaliation your anger increases. You make the other person suffer, and he will try hard to say or to do something back to get relief from his suffering. That is how conflict escalates.

Freedom from suffering is a great happiness.

The buddha called suffering a holy truth, because our suffering has the capacity of showing us the path to liberation. Embrace your suffering and let it reveal to you the way to peace.

Nonviolent action, born of the awareness of suffering and nurtured by love, is the most effective way to confront adversity.

We need to be aware of the suffering, but retain our clarity, calmness and strength so we can help transform the situation.

A bodhisattva is someone who has compassion within himself or herself and who is able to make another person smile or help someone suffer less. Every one of us is capable of this.

Reconciliation is to understand both sides; to go to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, and then go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the first side.

When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight.

You do not suffer because things are impermanent. You suffer because things are impermanent and you think they are permanent.