Quotes About Transformation

There are four maras. The first mara is called devaputra mara. It has to do with seeking pleasure. The second one, called skandha mara, has to do with how we always try to re-create ourselves, try to get some ground back, try to be who we think we are. The third mara is called klesha mara. It has to do with how we use our emotions to keep ourselves dumb or asleep. The fourth one, yama mara, has to do with the fear of death.

We turn our emotions into frozen objects and invest them with truth, and as a result they have so much power over us.

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.

It is only when we begin to relax with ourselves that meditation becomes a transformative process. Only when we relate with ourselves without moralizing, without harshness, without deception, can we let go of harmful patterns.

Self-improvement can have temporary results, but lasting transformation occurs only when we honor ourselves as the source of wisdom and compassion.

Meditation practice is regarded as a good and in fact excellent way to overcome warfare in the world: our own warfare as well as greater warfare.

be free of suffering and the root of suffering.

THE OPPOSITE OF samsara is when all the walls fall down, when the cocoon completely disappears and we are totally open to whatever may happen, with no withdrawing, no centralizing into ourselves. That is what we aspire to, the warrior's journey.

strengthening habitual patterns of suffering. We begin to see this more and more clearly, and we begin to realize that we can do something different.

An analogy for bodhichitta is the rawness of a broken heart. Sometimes this broken heart gives birth to anxiety and panic, sometimes to anger, resentment, and blame.

In reality, when you feel depressed, lonely, betrayed, or any unwanted feelings, this is an important moment on the spiritual path. This is when real transformation can take place.

Buddha nature, cleverly disguised as fear, kicks our ass into being receptive.

Life is like that. We don't know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don't know. When things fall apart and we're on the verge of we know not what, the test for each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize. The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that's really swell.

Anger is a rough water; if you can canalize it into a water mill, you can benefit from it. Anything bad can be transformed into good.

there is clearly a kind of anger that is healthy. It is the concentration of one's whole being in the determination: this must change.

we wish to make rage into a fire that cooks things rather than a fire of conflagration.

Some werewolves are hairy on the inside.

I sit before flowers hoping they will train me in the art of opening up I stand on mountain tops believing that avalanches will teach me to let go I know nothing but I am here to learn.

By being natural and sincere, one often can create revolutions without having sought them.

Art is a ripening, an evolution, an uplifting which enables us to emerge from darkness into a blaze of light.

If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces.

I wouldn't mind turning into a vermilion goldfish.

When you start a painting, it is somewhat outside you. At the conclusion, you seem to move inside the painting.

The good we get from art is not what we learn from it; it is what we become through it.