Quotes About Impermanence

The faces you clutch at desperately slip away; it's when you're not thinking about them that their features flash past. It can happen on a street corner, at the turn of a staircase, because somebody said a word, because some image, an image has passed. Then the face is there for a split second, very fragile. One mustn't grasp at it, or it whisks away. One might as well try and catch a cloud. It was a cloud.

Personally, I think, so what? Money's just a thing and things change. That's what I've found. One minute something's really there, right next to you, and you can cuddle up to it. The next it just melts away, like a Hershey's kiss.

eternal life and all fundamentalist attempts to describe it are self-defeating. Trying to nail down theological certainties is putting faith in our imagination rather than in God's. It is like me demanding an explanation from Lucy in that

Everything passes, everything breaks, everything wearies.

Que todo termina en un instante Planatera doloroso

Thus a person can be a Buddha one minute and a jackass three minutes later. You don't just become Buddha at the moment of your first enlightenment experience and then stay Buddha forever.

In order to deal with the fear of annihilation you have to face annihilation again and again and again. It's not enough just to understand this intellectually. It's not enough just to read about this. You need to watch yourself being annihilated right now. If you can manage to sit quietly as you disappear from existence moment by moment, then you can see it's really nothing to be afraid of. You gotta meditate. Nobody likes to hear that. But it's true.

So I do fear death in the sense that I find the prospect of dying pretty scary. But I no longer fear that I will one day be annihilated and cease to exist.

Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death.

A person is a Buddha when she acts like a Buddha, when she manifests wisdom. When she fails to do so, she's not a Buddha. Thus a person can be a Buddha one minute and a jackass three minutes later. You don't just become a Buddha at the moment of your first enlightenment experience and then stay a Buddha forever.

Part of the Zen way is learning to enjoy the fact that you cannot possibly have all the things you desire. In the truest sense none of your desires, no matter what they are, can ever be fulfilled because nothing will ever be the way you imagine it to be.

same as always. Beauty will fade. Prosperity will end. Singing will turn to lamentations. Old age will follow youth, and sickness will replace health. As soon as you are born, death is waiting, inevitable as nightfall. The rising tide of evil will swallow hope and truth and light until only the void remains.

For nothing is truly complete until the day it is finally destroyed.

E soprattutto, dentro tutto quanto, attorno a tutto quanto, c'era la nebbia. Era più costante del sole, poiché non poteva essere nascosta dalle nuvole. Era più potente delle tempeste, poiché poteva durare più della furia delle intemperie. Era sempre lì. Mutevole ma eterna

Nothing is eternal, not even time itself.

You could not stop times from changing, his mother said, no more than you could stop the surf from rolling.

When we feel joy, it is a place of incredible vulnerability—it's beauty and fragility and deep gratitude and impermanence all wrapped up in one experience. When we can't tolerate that level of vulnerability, joy actually becomes foreboding, and we immediately move to self-protection. It's as if we grab vulnerability by the shoulders and say, "You will not catch me off guard. You will not sucker-punch me with pain. I will be prepared and ready for you.

When we feel joy, it is a place of incredible vulnerability—it's beauty and fragility and deep gratitude and impermanence all wrapped up in one experience. When we can't tolerate that level of vulnerability, joy actually becomes foreboding, and we immediately move to self-protection.

everyone shares the handicap of mortality. Our individual physical, emotional, and spiritual failures are but symptoms of this disease.

The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed.

Os homens trabalham à sombra de um erro, lançando ao solo para adubo o que têm de melhor. Por uma sina ilusória, vulgarmente chamada necessidade, desgastam-se a amontoar tesouros que a traça e a ferrugem estragarão e que surgem ladrões para roubar. É uma vida de imbecis, como perceberão ao fim dela, se não antes.

There is no fundamental, unalterable difference between things: all is flux, all is perishable. The surface of your being is constantly crumbling; within however you grow hard as a diamond. And perhaps it is this hard, magnetic core inside you which attracts others to you willy-nilly.

Y cuando hayamos atravesado todas las calles y solo quede el polvo de nuestros pies frenéticos, todavía quedaría el recuerdo de tu ancha cara llena, tan blanca, y la gruesa boca con frescos labios entreabiertos, los dientes blancos como la tiza y todos ellos perfectos, y en ese recuerdo nada puede cambiar en modo alguno, porque esto, como tus dientes, es perfecto...

No existe una diferencia fundamental, inalterable entre las cosas: todo es flujo, todo es perecedero. La superficie de tu ser está desintegrándose constantemente; sin embargo, por dentro te vuelves duro como un diamante. Y quizá sea ese núcleo duro, magnético, dentro de ti lo que atrae a los otros hacia ti de buen o mal grado. Una cosa es segura: que cuando mueres y resucitas, perteneces a la tierra y lo que quiera que sea de la tierra es tuyo inalienablemente.