To be is to suffer. The narrower the circle of my self-identification, the more acute the suffering caused by desire and fear.

We are the cause of our own sufferings.

Our habitual identification with thought — that is, our failure to recognize thoughts *as thoughts,* as appearances in consciousness — is a primary source of human suffering. It also gives rise to the illusion that a separate self is living inside one’s head.

All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.

All suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their own happiness or satisfaction

Of most dreadful suffering, I am the cause.

The source of suffering is a false belief in permanence and the existence of separate selves.

We suffer but little from suffering itself; but from the manner wherein we accept it overwhelming sorrow may spring.

We are wrong in believing that it comes from without. For indeed we create it within us, out of our very substance.

When you see the suffering inside yourself, you can see the suffering in the other person, and you can see your part, your responsibility, in creating the suffering in yourself and in the other person.

The root of suffering is attachment.

Suffering comes from three quarters: from our own body, which is destined to decay and dissolution, and cannot even dispense with anxiety and pain as danger-signals; from the outer world, which can rage against us with the most powerful and pitiless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations with other men.

I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion and elimination of ignorance, selfishness and greed.

What you have to know is that suffering is just the refusal to accept what is.

It’s not impermanence per se, or even knowing we’re going to die, that is the cause of our suffering, the Buddha taught. Rather, it’s our resistance to the fundamental uncertainty of our situation. Our discomfort arises from all of our efforts to put ground under our feet, to realize our dream of constant okayness. 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 its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment, or awakening to our true nature, to our fundamental goodness. Another word for that is freedom — freedom from struggling against the fundamental ambiguity of being human.