Impermanence Quotes - Page 3

• If we start worrying whether our nose is too big or too small, we should think, “What if I had no head? - now that would be a problem!” As long as we have life, we should rejoice. If everything doesn't go exactly as we'd like, we can accept it. If we contemplate impermanence deeply, patience and compassion will arise. We will hold less to the apparent truth of our experience, and the mind will become more flexible. Realizing that one day this body will be buried or burned, we will rejoice in every moment we have rather than make ourselves or others unhappy.

  Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche

  Thinking, Compassion, Worry

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• The anitya doctrine is, again, not quite the simple assertion that the world is impermanent, but rather that the more one grasps at the world, the more it changes.

  Alan Watts

  Simple, Doctrine, World

  Alan W. Watts (2011). “The Way of Zen”, p.58, Vintage

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• Nothing retains its form; new shapes from old. Nature, the great inventor, ceaselessly contrives. In all creation, be assured, there is no death - no death, but only change and innovation; what we men call birth is but a different new beginning; death is but to cease to be the same. Perhaps this may have moved to that, and that to this, yet still the sum of things remains the same.

  Ovid

  Death, New Beginnings, Men

  Ovid,, A. D. Melville, E. J. Kenney (2008). “Metamorphoses”, p.359, Oxford University Press

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• The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Summer, Death, Lying

  'Tithonus' (1860, revised 1864) l. 1

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• You're already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

  Steve Jobs

  Change, Positive, Happiness

  Commencement Address at Stanford University, delivered 12 June 2005, Palo Alto, CA

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• Impermanence is the law of the universe.

  Carlene Hatcher Polite

  Law, Universe

  Carlene Hatcher Polite (1987). “The flagellants”, Beacon Pr

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• How strange to think that great pain may be impermanent. Something in us all seems to want to carve it in granite, as if only this would do full honor to its terrible significance. But even pain is blessed with impermanence... p 259

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Pain, Blessed, Thinking

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• This idea of how everything is interconnected, and the impermanence of things.. It sums up the human condition to me, and it helps me on my path.

  Jeff Bridges

  Ideas, Path, Helping

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• This physical world, though necessary to our evolution, is the embodiment of impermanence, of constant change. Thus, we take care not to become overly attached to it.

  Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

  Growth, World, Care

  Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (2003). “Dancing with Siva: Hinduism's Contemporary Catechism”, p.51, Himalayan Academy Publications

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• Meditation is a vehicle for opening to the truth of this impermanence on deeper and deeper levels.

  Jack Kornfield

  Meditation, Levels, Vehicle

  Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield (2001). “Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation”, p.26, Shambhala Publications

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• IF YOU WOULD BE FREE OF GREED, FIRST YOU HAVE TO LEAVE EGOTISM BEHIND.
  THE BEST MENTAL EXERCISE FOR RELINQUISHING EGOTISM IS CONTEMPLATING IMPERMANENCE.

  Dogen

  Exercise, Greed, Would Be

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• How keen everyone is to make this world their home forgetting its impermanence It's like trying to see and name constellations in a fireworks display.

  Nadeem Aslam

  Home, Names, Trying

  Nadeem Aslam (2008). “The Wasted Vigil”, p.354, Faber & Faber

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• Ask yourself these two questions: Do I remember at every moment that I am dying, and that everyone and everything else is, and so treat all beings at all times with compassion? Has my understanding of death and impermanence become so keen and so urgent that I am devoting every second to the pursuit of enlightenment? If you can answer "yes" to both of these, then you really understand impermanence.

  Sogyal Rinpoche

  Death, Compassion, Two

  FaceBook post by Sogyal Rinpoche from Mar 16, 2017

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• To the fuki plant, dandelions, and their kind that lie for long patiently under the fallen snow, comes the season of breezy spring. No sooner do they see the light of the world, stretching their longing heads out from the cracks in the snow, than they are instantly nipped off. For these plants isn't the sorrow as deep as that of the child's parents whose child had accidentally died? They say everything in the plant and tree kingdom attains Buddhahood. Then they, too, must have Buddha-nature.

  Kobayashi Issa

  Death, Children, Spring

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• EPITAPH Now I'm not the brightest knife in the drawer, but I know a couple things about this life: poverty silence, impermanence discipline and mystery The world is not illusory, we are From crimson thread to toe tag If you are not disturbed there is something seriously wrong with you, I'm sorry And I know who I am I'll be a voice coming from nowhere, inside-- be glad for me.

  Franz Wright

  Sorry, Couple, Who I Am

  Franz Wright (2009). “Walking to Martha's Vineyard”, p.89, Knopf

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• Come to the sunset tree! The day is past and gone; The woodman's axe lies free, And the reaper's work is done.

  John Milton

  Death, Lying, Sunset

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• Slowly, painstakingly, like ants, men would make their paths and civilization and their wars once again, only to have it wash away again.

  Kiran Desai

  War, Men, Civilization

  Kiran Desai (2006). “Inheritance of Loss”, p.323, Penguin Books India

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• Our lives are ruled by impermanence. The challenge is how to create something of enduring value within the context of our impermanent lives. Soka Gakkai
  Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.

  William Hazlitt

  Practice, Challenges, Endure

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• The constant recollection of death is the test of human conduct.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Death, Dying, Tests

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• The hardest thing for me is the sense of impermanence. All passes; nothing returns.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Return, Hardest, Hardest Thing

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1958). “Letters of Ellen Glasgow”

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• I can't say I was consciously thinking of the big changes in the music business when I was writing the lyrics, but change, uncertainty, flux, impermanence - these are things I'm acutely aware of. And I enjoy facing it all.

  Rivers Cuomo

  Writing, Thinking, Enjoy

  Source: music.avclub.com

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• If you have the insight of non-self, if you have the insight of impermanence, you should make that insight into a concentration that you keep alive throughout the day. Then what you say, what you think, and what you do will then be in the light of that wisdom and you will avoid making mistakes and creating suffering.

  Nhat Hanh

  Mistake, Thinking, Creating

  "This Is the Buddha’s Love". Interview with Melvin McLeod, www.lionsroar.com. March 1, 2006.

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• A thousand years ago five minutes were Equal to forty ounces of fine sand. Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and Infinite aftertime: above your head They close like giant wings, and you are dead.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Stars, Years, Wings

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “Pale Fire”, p.32, Vintage

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• The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.

  Mary Catherine Bateson

  Change, Death, Giving

  Mary Catherine Bateson (1984). “With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson”, William Morrow & Company

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• Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
  Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
  And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
  Thine individual being, shalt thou go
  To mix forever with the elements,
  To be a brother to the insensible rock
  And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
  Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
  Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.

  William C. Bryant

  Death, Brother, Rocks

  William Cullen Bryant, “Thanatopsis”

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