Quotes About Clinging

Enduring comprises a strong activity of the soul, namely, a vigorous grasping of and clinging to the good; and only from this stout-hearted activity can the strength to support the physical and spiritual suffering of injury and death be nourished.

The challenge for us is to find some response that actually inspires change rather than clinging to the old ways that cause resentment, and more importantly, distract from the real problem.

What we're seeing out there is the projection of where we're at--the projection of the clingings of our minds.

You give up not meditating. It's called meditation action. There's no way out of it. Meditation means to be constantly extricating yourself from the clinging of mind.

What often happens when we face this stripping away of our models is that we will give up this and that, and instead grab onto that and this. It's too uncomfortable not to have anything to cling to, and so we substitute a new set of attachments for the old ones.

Wisdom is the clear seeing of the impermanent, conditioned nature of all phenomena, knowing that whatever arises has the nature to cease. When we see this impermanence deeply, we no longer cling; and when we no longer cling, we come to the end of suffering.

When we're not mindful, pleasant feelings habitually condition desire and clinging, unpleasant feelings condition dislike and aversion, and neutral feelings condition delusion — that is, not really knowing what is going on. Yet when we are mindful, these very same feelings become the vehicle of our freedom.

They're not doing much for themselves. I'm sure they'd rather slip away, relax their fingers and float, but they can't. They're not allowed. Effort is so painful; our knuckles are white, yet we keep clinging. The alternative is suicide- and we are too fearful for that.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

It was nine o'clock, cloudy, and a little like one of those science fiction movies where a few survivors are clinging to the wreckage, living out their days in the dry husk of civilization.

The boat rocked perilously as they heaved and tore at the clinging weeds, razor-sharp and strong as grave-bands.

The point is, the Four Stages are not for ego-development or attainment; they are a skilful means for recognizing the way we cling to things.

And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.

We need the compassion and the courage to change the conditions that support our suffering. Those conditions are things like ignorance, bitterness, negligence, clinging, and holding on.

but I suspect that for many people the main reason they cling to religion is not that it is consoling, but that they have been let down by our educational system and don't realize that non-belief is even an option.

So now he better understood how couples clung to their own story—each, often, to a separate part of it—long after it had gone cold on them, even to the point where they were not sure they could bear one another. Bad love still contained the remnant, the memory, of good love—somewhere, deep down, where neither of them any longer wanted to dig.

Are you saying that the people here aren't desperate? I think you're wrong. I think they are and they just don't know it. Oh, they're desperate, all right, but so desperate that they're clinging to what they have.

So often we have a kind of vague, wistful longing that the promises of Jesus should be true. The only way really to enter into them is to believe them with the clutching intensity of a drowning man.

A drowning man will clutch at a straw.

A man must have something to cling to. Without that he is as a pea vine sprawling in search of a trellis.... I was all asprawl, clinging to Beauty, which is a very restless trellis.

My mother wanted to shrink from my clinging, but did not.

If, despite not having pursued wealth, we find ourselves wealthy, we should enjoy our affluence; it was the Cynics, not the Stoics, who advocated asceticism. But although we should enjoy wealth, we should not cling to it; indeed, even as we enjoy it, we should contemplate its loss. •

Holiness is not a merit by which we can attain communion with God, but a gift of Christ, which enables us to cling to him, and to follow him.

If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.