Quotes About Impermanence

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn't mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don't have to feel it's happening because we personally made the wrong move.

imperfections into a nice smooth ride. 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.

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.

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

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.

maybe the only enemy is that we don't like the way reality is *now* and therefore wish it would go away fast. but what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

Decisions are made by men. Men are fallible; at their best their works do not last long. Even the best decision has a high probability of being wrong. Even the most effective one eventually becomes obsolete.

I could go at any time now.

It comes down to this. When we die, not only will our bodies be gone, but so will the people we remember. We live in the world, and we recall the world, and one day we won't do either anymore. The church bells will ring and the drunks will drink.

Had we but world enough, and time . . .

Nothing is whole, not for too damned long. The world is half night.

Zen teacher Lewis Richmond tells the story of hearing Shunryu Suzuki sum up Buddhism in two words. Suzuki had just finished giving a talk to a group of Zen students when someone in the audience said, "You've been talking about Buddhism for nearly an hour, and I haven't been able to understand a thing you said. Could you say one thing about Buddhism I can understand?" After the laughter died down, Suzuki replied calmly, "Everything changes.

For some reason, God is telling me to move on, and I must move on," he said. "People have to learn that nothing lasts forever." Then we tried to figure out a way that he could compete in the playoffs without playing

Everything wears out eventually; nothing is permanent. Change is the one constant of life.

This is an interval, ein Augenblick. The cosmic process is hurrying on, crushing life back into the granite and methane; the wheel turns for all life. It is all temporary. And

This rehearsal will end, the performance will end, the singers will die, eventually the last score of music will be destroyed in one wya or another; finally the name Mozart will vanish, the dust will have won. If not on this planet then another. We can evade it awhile.

WITH THEM, Joe Fernwright thought, there is not life but merely a synopsis of life. We are a thread that passes through their hands; always in motion, always flowing, we slip by and are never fully grasped. The slipping away is continuous, and carries all of us with it, on and on, toward the dreadful alchemy of the tomb.

All good things pass away.

Nothing lasts, and yet nothing passes, either. And nothing passes just because nothing lasts.

Yes, if only this and if only that, we'd all be together and alive forever and everything would work out fine.

Sembrava non capire o, anche in un momento di stanchezza, non ammettere che avere dei limiti non era poi una cosa così vergognosa, e che lui stesso non era una casa di pietra di centosettant'anni, il cui peso gravasse su imperturbabili travi di quercia: che era, insomma, qualcosa di più transitorio e misterioso.

Niente dura, e nondimeno niente passa. E niente passa proprio perché niente dura.

Siamo tutti foglie, amico mio. La nostra vita paragonata a quella delle montagne e a quella del mare è niente, qualche battito del cuore e via. Niente di ciò che noi costruiamo dura in eterno.

Nothing lasts forever. Not even the universe. What