If the Buddha had started with the teaching that there is no suffering, none of us would have believed it: There certainly is! He certainly got that wrong! So he started with: There is suffering…
Theravada
A Good Dose of Dhamma: For meditators when they are ill, by Upasika Kee Nanayon.
You can’t prevent pleasure and pain, you can’t keep the mind from labelling things and forming thoughts, but you can put these things to a new use. If the mind labels a pain, saying, `I hurt,’ you have to read the label carefully, contemplating it until you see that it’s wrong. If the label were right, it would have to say that the pain isn’t me, it’s empty. Or if there’s a thought that `I’m in pain,’ this type of thinking is also wrong. You have to take a new approach to your thinking, to see that thinking is inconstant, stressful, and not yours…
In the moment of mindfulness, there is no suffering, by Ajahn Sumedho
In the moment of mindfulness, there is no suffering. I can’t find any suffering in mindfulness; it’s impossible; there’s absolutely none. But when there’s heedlessness, there is a lot of suffering in my mind…
Pointers to the Ultimate, by Ajahn Sumedho
In any religion there is the exoteric side — the tradition and forms, scriptures, ceremonies and disciplines—and the esoteric, which is the essential nature of that. So, in much of what we call religion, the emphasis is really on the external form.
We can always start anew, by Ajahn Sumedho
Emotions can be very convincing, very powerful, like a melodrama. They can sound real and true when they’re going on. But, at that time, there was that which was aware of them; an awareness of those emotions as mental objects was established already. And I trusted in that.
Self is Heavy, by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu
Often, when we say that there is no self, people get worried, or angry. Their attachment and identification to this idea of a self is so strong that they actually become hostile towards us if we begin to say there is no such thing. We need to explain this a bit, therefore, so that you don’t get mad at us. The idea of a self is common to everyone. Whether we come from the East or the West, we have some kind of idea and belief in a self, every one of us, absolutely; it is a fundamental illusion that arises in all human minds. Indians, Thais, Chinese, everybody, is walking around with this idea of a self, a soul, an atman, or whatever we want to call it.
We need to put ourselves into perspective, by Ajahn Sumedho
Existence is something that can strengthen us, rather than weaken us. We need to put ourselves into perspective; we need to see ourselves in terms of the mass as well as in terms of the individual. When we take life on the extreme level of ‘me’ as a person, we forget the common problem that we share with the rest of humanity…
Whom do we Believe? by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu
For instance, the Buddha taught that greed, anger, and misunderstanding are the causes that give rise to suffering. If we ourselves are not yet acquainted with greed, anger, and misunderstanding, then there is no way we can believe this. But to believe it would be foolish. When we know ourselves what greed, anger and delusion are like, and that whenever they arise in the mind, they produce suffering like a fire burning us, then we can believe it on the basis of our own experience…
Buddhism now 