Quotes About Transformation

The amount of surgeries I've had are absolutely minimal compared to the reconstructive surgeries I've had. Probably 300.

We'd all like to increase pleasure and minimize pain, but the truth is, suffering, even collective suffering that we're going through, is often the earmark that some real change is happening.

When I saw Courtney Love in 1994, I knew what I wanted to do. The minute I saw a female-fronted rock n' roll band, that changed my life.

If I make a film about now, the minute it was done, it wouldn't be about now; it'd be about then.

If we're aware of the habit energies in us and can become more intentional in our thoughts, speech, and actions, then we can transform not only ourselves, but also our ancestors who planted the seeds. If we're able to do that, it means our ancestors are also able to smile at what is provoking them. If one person keeps calm and smiles at a provocation, the whole world will have a better chance for peace.

The truth is, when we burn the paper, it will change into something else and will continue on in other forms—as ash, smoke, and heat, in our body and the universe. The heat is one of the next lives of the paper, as is the smoke rising to the sky. The ash will return to the earth and become part of the soil. So the sheet of paper, in its next life, might be a cloud and a rose at the same time.

The point of meditation is not to turn yourself into a battlefield, one side opposing the other. Conscious breathing soothes and calms the anger, and mindfulness penetrates it. Anger is just an energy, and all energies can be transformed. Meditation is the art of using one kind of energy to transform another.

Most of us walk without chains, yet we aren't free. We're tethered to regret and sorrow from the past. We return to the past and continue to suffer. The past is a prison. But now you have the key to unlock the door and arrive in the present moment. You breathe in, you bring your mind home to your body, you make a step, and you arrive in the here and the

Sitting and watching our breath is a wonderful practice, but it is not enough. For transformation to take place, we have to practice mindfulness all day long, not just on our meditation cushion. Mindfulness is the Buddha. Just as vegetation is sensitive to sunlight, mental formations are sensitive to mindfulness. Mindfulness is the energy that can embrace and transform all mental formations.

We have a seed of anger in us. We have a seed of compassion in us. The practice is to help the seed of compassion to grow and the seed of anger to shrink.

As children, we were very vulnerable. We got hurt easily. This pain is still inside us. The wounded five-year-old child in us is still there and needs to be heard. If we want to be able to connect with others and understand them, we have to be able to do the same for ourselves first. We can practice getting in touch with our inner child, to recognize, embrace, and transform their pain.

Right View is to have faith and confidence that there are people who have been able to transform their suffering.

We can practice watering the seeds in us that we want to grow and transform. Our mind is like a garden in which there are all kinds of seeds: seeds of joy, peace, mindfulness, understanding, and love, but also seeds of craving, anger, fear, hate, and forgetfulness.

Our children learn reading, writing, math, science, and other subjects in school that can help them earn a living. But ver few school programs teach young people how to live - how to deal with anger, how reconcile conflicts, how to breathe, smile, and transform internal formations. There needs to be a revolution in education

My child, you should practice for your mind to be like water. When people put fragrant oils or milk into the water, it does not rejoice, and when people put excrement, mud, or urine into the water, the water is not angry, because the water has a tremendous capacity of acceptance and transformation. Water can purify everything.

We need to not only recognize the suffering, pain, and difficulties within us, we need to devote time to dealing with them and transforming them

Once a seed has been burnt, it cannot sprout anymore. If we are able to burn up the seeds of grief, sexual desire, and hatred, they will not sprout again.

One cannot become a practitioner of Zen just by imitating the way of eating, sitting, or dressing of Chinese or Japanese practitioners. Zen is life, Zen does not imitate. If Zen is to fully take root in the West, it must acquire a Western form, different from Oriental Zen.

Hold onto your anger and use it as compost for your garden.

You can transform your nation into a prison because you are committed to an ideology.

we had practiced watering the positive seeds in him every day, he would not be the way he is today.

No mud, no lotus.

The practice of Right Speech is to try to change our habits so that our speech arises from the seed of Buddha that is in us, and not from our unresolved, unwholesome seeds.

Suppose you are in the desert, and you only have one glass of muddy water. You have to transform the muddy water into clear water to drink, you cannot just throw it away. So you let it settle for a while, and clear water will appear. In the same way, we have to convert anger into some kind of energy that is more constructive, because anger is you. Without anger you have nothing left. That is the work of meditation.