Quotes About Change

Meditation is a process of transformation, instead of a process of becoming more and more set in our ways. And, as you know, as we get older it's very common to become increasingly fixed in our habits. But then you do meet people who, for some reason, are becoming more and more flexible and open as they age. Which kind of person do you want to be?

Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing

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's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

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. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don't get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It's a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs.

If we always stay in that narrow zone, how are we going to grow?

Things like disappointment and anxiety are messengers telling us that we're about to go into unknown territory.

Meditation is a totally nonviolent, nonaggressive occupation. Not filling the space, allowing for the possibility of connecting with unconditional openness—this provides the basis for real change. You might say this is setting ourselves a task that is almost impossible. Maybe that is true. But on the other hand, the more we sit with this impossibility, the more we find it's always possible after all.

We're always looking for a permanent reference point, and it doesn't exist. Everything is impermanent. Everything is always changing—fluid, unfixed, and open. Nothing is pin-down-able the way we'd like it to be.

That's what the dharma is about; turning all our habits around, reversing the process of how we make everything so solid, reversing the wheel of samsara. 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.

The path is uncharted. It comes into existence moment by moment and at the same time drops away behind us. It's like riding in a train sitting backwards. We can't see where we're headed, only where we've been.

relax gradually and wholeheartedly into the ordinary and obvious truth of change.

To be fully alive, fully human and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to always be 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.

The problem is that the desire to change is fundamentally a form of aggression toward yourself. The other problem is that our hang-ups, unfortunately or fortunately, contain our wealth. Our neurosis and our wisdom are made out of the same material. If you throw out your neurosis, you also throw out your wisdom.

Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news." – Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time—that is the basic message.

It's a peculiar thing to take a step forward in middle age, but having done it I don't intend to retreat.

I'm afraid I'm not accustomed to the poor light, Mrs James.' 'Look at the sky, father. Keep your eyes on the lightest part of the sky and they'll adapt little by little.

En ese momento se dio la vuelta, como movida por una ráfaga de viento.

A stone has been cast into the reliable immutable pond of the past, and as the ripples subside everything appears different. The reflections are quite other; everything has swung and shattered, it is all beyond recovery

They sat for several hours over a pot of tea and a plate of cake, and then they wandered the streets, impervious to time. By the end of the day, both realised that their lives had altered course.

Gina has always regarded relationships as shifty business: count on nothing, nothing is forever.

Life is a mess - a random muddle. Which is exactly why one is drawn to improving on it.

Is nausea always a manifestation of grief? Who am I to know? I have never been thus before. Grief-stricken. Stricken is right; it is as though you had been felled. Knocked to the ground; pitched out of life and into something else.

When the times are out of joint it is brought uncomfortably home to you that history is true and that unfortunately you are a part of it. One has this tendency to think oneself immune. This is one of the points when the immunity is shown up as fantasy. I'd rather like to go back to fantasising.