Dalai Lama Desire Quotations

My desire to devolve authority has nothing to do with a wish to shirk responsibility.

Brute force, no matter how strongly applied, can never subdue the basic human desire for freedom.

Most of our troubles are due to our passionate desire for and attachment to things that we misapprehend as enduring entities.

We must recognize that all beings want the same thing we want. This is the way to achieve a true understanding, unfettered by artificial consideration.

Ethics: The indispensable interface between my desire to be happy and yours.

What unites all beings is their desire for happiness.

Whether we like it or not, we have all been born into this world as part of one great human family. Rich or poor, educated or uneducated, belonging to one nation or another, to one religion or another, adhering to this ideology or that, ultimately each of is just a human being like everyone else. We all desire happiness and do not want suffering.

Our purpose in life is to be happy. From the very core of our being, we simply desire contentment.

Sometimes, whether a desire is excessive or negative depends on the circumstances or society in which you live in.

If there are sound reasons or bases for the points you demand, then there is no need for violence. On the other hand, when there is no sound reason that concessions should be made to you but mainly your own desire, then reason cannot work and you have to rely on force. Thus using force is not a sign of strength but rather a sign of weakness.

The main cause of suffering is egoistic desire for one's own comfort and happiness.

The rationale for loving others is the recognition of the simple fact that every living being has the same right to and the same desire for happiness, and not suffering, and the consideration that you as one individual are one life unit as compared with the mulititude of others in their ceaseless quest for happiness.

It is my fundamental belief that all human beings share the same basic aspirations: that we all want hapiness and that we all share suffering. Asians, just like Americans, Europeans, and the rest of the world, share a desire to live life to its fullest, to better ourselves and the lives of our loved ones.

Just as you have the instinctive natural desire to be happy and overcome suffering, so do all sentient beings; just as you have the right to fulfill this innate aspiration, so do all sentient beings. So on what exact grounds do you discriminate?

It is in everybody's interest to seek those [actions] that lead to happiness and avoid those which lead to suffering. And because our interests are inextricably linked, we are compelled to accept ethics as the indispensable interface between my desire to be happy and yours.