On Suffering

-->H.H. the Dalai Lama:
The basic thing is that everyone wants happiness, no one wants suffering. And happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy.

ERGO: My mental attitude is wrong and my state in unsound.


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.


ERGO: I'd better start loving the things that make me suffer, starting with myself.


Simone Weil:
The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle.

ERGO: Value the people who understand your suffering even when you hide it in silence and fake laughter.


Victor Frankl:
We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a value; and (3) by suffering.

ERGO: We will never stop suffering, its a cycle... either cope or die...


Wallace Stegner:
Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.

ERGO: If you are still bleeding and the scars just own't heal either you have not suffered enough or you have not learned your lesson.