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The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.
Ram Dass
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Resisting unpleasant situations only causes us more suffering.

This quote by Ram Dass highlights the idea that our discomfort often stems from our unwillingness to accept and face unpleasant circumstances. Instead of fostering a mindset focused on fighting against what we dislike or find challenging, embracing acceptance can lead to a more peaceful state of existence and alleviation of suffering.

Themes

ResistanceSufferingAcceptanceMindfulnessPain

In practice

Example use cases

In a personal development seminar about overcoming challenges.

More from Ram Dass

Maharajji told me, 'Give up anger and I'll help you.' I found _x000D_ that love freed me back into the ocean of love and my righteous anger didn't do that. And I would rather be free than right.
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Let the natural flow of the universe, course through your being, and harmonize your soul.
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You can be still and still moving. Content even in your discontent.
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The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back. _x000D_ _x000D_ In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight. _x000D_ _x000D_ When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us.
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When I look at relationships, my own and others, I see a wide range of reasons for people to be together and ways in which they are together. I see ways in which a relationship - which means something that exists between two or more people - for the most part reinforces people's separateness as individual entities.
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