Chogyam Trungpa Quotes

Our predicament is not the difficulty of attaining happiness, but the difficult of avoiding the misery to which the pursuit of happiness exposes us.

If there is no enjoyment in this world, there would not be so much suffering. As suffering really is the frustration of our attempts to enjoy.

No man leaves where he is and seeks a distant place unless he is in some respect a failure.

The present is never a happy state to any human being.

Pain is the difference between what is and what I want it to be.

Any object of desire is bound to bring frustration. Any expectation is bound to turn into frustration. Expectation is the beginning of frustration, the very seed. Beware of it!

Pleasure itself is painful at the bottom.

All that lives is striving for happiness; yet a thousand and one pains and fears attend upon every pleasure which man seeks through the ignorance of exclusiveness.

All objective pleasure in the long run must bring pain, because of the fact of change or death.

Now they stumbled in the shackles of humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they could not understand; their mock-human existence began in an agony, was one long internal struggle, one long dread of Moreau - and for what? It was the wantonness that stirred me.

Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.

If those sorts of moments would be the only pleasure life offered me, I'd be better off shutting out that one brilliant source of light to let my eyes begin to adjust to the darkness.

This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds; one man would like to suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would recover his health beside the window.

Suffering is getting what you do not want while wanting what you do not get.

Do we not see all humans unaware Of what they want, and always searching everywhere, And changing place, as if to drop the load they bear?

To die: - to sleep: No more; and, by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished.

There is room in the halls of pleasure for a large and lordly train, but one by one we must all file on through the narrow aisles of pain.

If they'd been dogs, they would have all been in the yard eating grass and trying to yak up whatever was making them feel so lousy. Not a bone gnawed, not a ball chased-all tails went unwagged. Oh, life is a fast cat, a short leash, a flea in that place where you just can't scratch.

The human being is constantly torn from calm and peace of simple existence by two things; wanting what you don't have, or disliking what you have.

Whichever way we look the prospect is disagreeable. Behind, we have left pleasures we shall never enjoy, and therefore regret; and before, we see pleasures which we languish to possess, and are consequently uneasy till we possess them.

The mass of men live lives of quiet exasperation.

Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.

one would suffer a great deal to be happy.

Personal happiness seems mysteriously and frustratingly elusive. Even when people achieve it, they can't hold onto it. That is the greatest clue, the biggest hint, the surest sign that something's amiss.