Ram Dass Suffering Quotations

Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.

Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings.

Suffering lets us see where are attachments are - and that helps us get free.

Suffering only shows where you are attached. That is why, to those on the path, suffering is grace.

As you look at many people's lives, you see that their suffering is in a way gratifying, for they are comfortable in it. They make their lives a living hell, but a familiar one.

Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.

Compassion and pity are very different. Whereas compassion reflects the yearning of the heart to merge and take on some of the suffering, pity is a controlled set of thoughts designed to assure separateness. Compassion is the spontaneous response of love; pity, the involuntary reflex of fear.

Do what you can on this plane to relieve suffering by constantly working on yourself to be an instrument for the cessation of suffering. To me, that's what the emerging game is all about.

When you look back at your own life, you see ... the sufferings you went through, each time you would have avoided it if you possibly could. And yet, when you look at the depth of your character now, isn't a part of that a product of those experiences? Weren't those experiences part of what created the depth of your inner being?

What the word God means is the mystery really. It's the mystery that we face as humans the mystery of existence, of suffering and of death.

My guru said that when he suffers, it brings him closer to God. I have found this, too.

Suffering brings me so close to God.

Birth, death, and suffering all bring us to the very edge of what our minds can understand.

Suffering brings your heart to bear. It gets you where you are!