“This is the non-duality principal of Buddhism: the flower is on its way to becoming refuse. The refuse is also on its way to becoming a flower. So there is nothing to throw away.
If a person has never suffered, he or she will never be able to know happiness. If a person does not know what hunger is, he or she will never know the joy of eating every day. Thus pain and suffering are a necessary condition of our understanding, of our happiness.
So do not say that you do not want to know anything about pain or about suffering, that you only want to know about happiness– that wou
ld be an impossible thing. We know well that suffering helps us to understand, that it nurtures our compassion, and that for this reason it is vitally necessary for us.
So we must know how to learn from suffering, we must know how to make use of it to gather the energy of compassion, of love, of understanding.”
Thich Nhat Hanh, “True Love,” p. 69-70.
