Quotes About Change

Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about.

there's no end to the number of fresh starts you get. There's no fixed "you" doomed to stay in the same rut forever.

As we change our own dysfunctional habits, we are simultaneously changing society. Our own awakening is intertwined with the awakening of enlightened society. If we can lose our personal appetite for aggression and addiction, the whole planet will rejoice.

Being caught by the lord of speech may start with just a reasonable conviction about what we feel to be true. However, if we find ourselves becoming righteously indignant, that's a sure sign we've gone too far and that our ability to effect change will be hindered. Beliefs and ideals have become just another way to put up walls.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again.

It starts with catching ourselves when we spin off in the same old ways. Usually we feel that there's a large problem and we have to fix it. The instruction is to stop. Do something unfamiliar. Do anything besides rushing off in the same old direction, up to the same old tricks.

Whether the reality of change is a source of freedom for us or a source of horrific anxiety makes a significant difference. Do the days of our lives add up to further suffering or to increased capacity for joy? That's an important question.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. From the awakened point of view, that's life. Death is wanting to hold on to what you have and to have every experience confirm you and congratulate you and make you feel completely together.

What we're talking about is getting to know fear, becoming familiar with fear, looking it right in the eye—not as a way to solve problems, but as a complete undoing of old ways of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and thinking.

On the other hand, this need to cling, this need to hold the hand, this cry for Mom, also shows you that that's the edge of the nest. Stepping through right there—making a leap—becomes the motivation for cultivating maitri. You realize that if you can step through that doorway, you're going forward, you're becoming more of an adult, more of a complete person, more whole.

La impermanencia es la bondad de la realidad. Todo evoluciona constantemente, como las cuatro estaciones que están en continuo flujo: del invierno pasamos a la primavera, al verano y después al otoño; como el día que se convierte en noche: la luz que se convierte en oscuridad y pasa a ser nuevamente luz. La impermanencia es la esencia de todo:

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.

We suffer... because of three tragic misunderstandings. First, we expect that what is always in the process of change should be graspable and predictable... Second, we proceed as if we are separate from everything else, as if we are a fixed identity, when our true situation is egoless... Third, we look for happiness in all the wrong places. The Buddha called this habit "mistaking suffering for happiness.

The mind is always seeking zones of safety, and these zones of safety are continually falling apart.

A fresh attitude starts to happen when we look to see that yesterday was yesterday, and now it is gone; today is today and now it is new. It is like that—every hour, every minute is changing. If we stop observing change, then we stop seeing everything as new. —DZIGAR KONGTRUL RINPOCHE T

We can't control what's going to happen but we can grow in awareness of what is happening.

We sometimes think that dharma is something outside of ourselves—something to believe in, something to measure up to. However, dharma isn't a belief; it isn't dogma. It is total appreciation of impermanence and change.

We can get used to the fleeting quality of life in a natural, gentle, even joyful way, by watching the seasons change, watching day turning to night, watching children grow up, watching sand castles dissolve back into the sea. But if we don't find some way to make friends with groundlessness and the ever-changing energy of life, then we'll always be struggling to find stability in a shifting world.

We also change like the weather. We ebb and flow like the tides, we wax and wane like the moon. We fail to see that like the weather, we are fluid, not solid. And so we suffer.

From this point of view, the only time we ever know what's really going on is when the rug's been pulled out and we can't find anywhere to land. We use these situations either to wake ourselves up or to put ourselves to sleep.

to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will. It's going to stick around until you learn your lesson, at any rate. You can leave your marriage, you can quit your job, you can only go where people are going to praise you, you can manipulate your world until you're blue in the face to try to make it always smooth, but the same old demons will always come up until finally you have learned your lesson, the lesson they came to teach you.

The second reminder is impermanence. Life is very brief. Even if we live to be a hundred, it's very brief.

Remembering impermanence motivates you to go back and look at the teachings, to see what they tell you about how to work with your life, how to rouse yourself, how to cheer up, how to work with emotions.

Impermanence can teach you a lot about how to cheer up.