Quotes on Grief, Pain and Suffering

Pain is not a punishment; pleasure is not a reward.–Pema Chodron

It is easy to keep your equanimity in heaven; can you keep it in hell? —Zen story

When someone says to us, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, “Darling, I care about your suffering,” a deep healing begins. —Tara Brach

O Seeker, pain and suffering make one aware of God.—Rumi

If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering. —Victor Frankl

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.—C. G. Jung

Trials are not arbitrary. When I speak about them, I am referring to the mindful suffering.Man has come to his present development thanks to his hardships and trials.These are what prepare man for the Coming of Love.—Peter Deunov

Think of suffering as being washed.—Hafiz

Suffering is not a result of one’s bad Karma; it is divine grace bestowed upon man.
—Hindu Texts

Suffering …is not random; God has created it in precisely this way because it is precisely in these conditions and only these conditions that certain aspects of love shine forth so luminously—and it is precisely this luminosity which God is trying to reveal, the innermost self-disclosure of the heart of divine love.
—Cynthia Bourgeault

According to the law that governs the universe,all sufferings are your labor of love to unveil your real self.—Meher Baba

Suffering makes us aware of our need, our weakness….It drives us to God.–Jerry Sittser

The sweetness and delights of the resting-place are in proportion to the pain endured on the Journey. Only when you suffer the pangs and tribulations of exile will you truly enjoy your homecoming.–Rumi

What is to give light must endure burning. —Viktor Frankl

The period of greatest gain in knowledge and experience is the most difficult period in one’s life. —His Holiness the Dalai Lama

I do think it’s a romanticism to suggest that advanced spiritual masters do not suffer anguish at the human level. Suffering and anguish are an inevitable and deeply sacramental reality of the human condition….Equanimity is not a state, but the laser point of the will.—Cynthia Bourgeault

Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.—Rumi

When inward tenderness finds the secret hurt,
Pain itself will crack the rock and
Ahhh! let the soul emerge.—Rumi

A deep seated trauma most of us share is abandonment. Being betrayed right from the start. Being born into a world that is not welcoming. Being born with a soul that remembers wholeness, but cannot find it in lived life. A soul that is subjected to terrible suffering if she does not remember her way back to the source of her belonging. –Heide Kolb, analyst

Trauma never goes away completely, it changes perhaps, softens some with time,
but never completely goes away. —Mark Epstein, MD

There is a sacredness in tears.
They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.
They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues.
They are messengers of overwhelming grief… and unspeakable love.-Washington Irving

When we mourn, we are in a state of freefall,our heart reaching out toward what we have seemingly lost but cannot help loving anyway.To mourn is by definition to live between the realms.–Cynthia Bourgeault

Mourning is indeed a brutal form of emptiness. But in this emptiness, if we can remain open, we discover that a mysterious ‘something’ does indeed reach back to comfort us. . .—Cynthia Bourgeault

With grief, you don’t get over it, you just get used to it.—Anonymous

From grief there was blossoming a completely unexpected sensual, erotic, and even sexual hunger for the world.—Robert Romanyshyn

An expansion of the soul’s capacity to love can be the gift of grief endured.—Robert Romanyshyn

Grief offers a wild alchemy that transmutes suffering into fertile ground.—Francis Weller

Catastrophic loss wreaks destruction like a massive flood. It is unrelenting, unforgiving, and uncontrollable. . .(it) leaves the landscape of one’s life forever changed.–Jerry Sittser

Once my bitterness
has found its way into words,
it dissipates,
Running deep into my heart
Anger replaced by sadness.
—Kyogk Tamkane

For only when faithfulness turns to betrayal
And betrayal into trust
Can any human being become part of the truth.—Rumi

When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help.—Thich Naht Hanh

Love is the first ingredient in the relief of suffering. —Padre Pio