Best 103 quotes in «impermanence quotes» category

The perfume of incense reminds us of the pervading influence of virtue, the lamp reminds us of light of knowledge and the flowers which soon fade and die, reminds us of impermanence. When we bow, we express our gratitude to the Buddha for what his teachings have given us. This is the nature of Buddhist worship.

The perfume of incense reminds us of the pervading influence of virtue, the lamp reminds us of the light of knowledge and the flowers, which soon fade and die, reminds us of impermanence.

The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but that we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock.

The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but what we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock.

The rare opportunity to exist, no matter how brief, is worth the pain left in the wake of its disappearance.

The route of true happiness, the Buddha argued, was to achieve a visceral understanding of impermanence, which would take you off the emotional roller coaster and allow you to see your dramas and desires through a wider lens. To truly tame the 'monkey mind' and defeat our habitual tendency toward clinging, meditation was the prescription, and sitting and actively facing the 'voice in your head' mindfully for a few minutes a day might be the hardest thing you'll ever do. Accept that challenge and improve your life drastically. It's about mitigation, not alleviation. It's that simple. The only way out is through.

There in bed, happiness comes over me. Not like something that belongs to me, but like a wheel of fire rolling through the room and the world.

This world of withering leaves and melting snow may not be a perfect world, but it's the only real one.

These of us who have risen highest merely have a deeper awareness of how uncertain and empty everything is.

Time is a river that carries us along. We have to leave everything behind.

Those who were known as sultans and emperors are gone to dust. Their palaces are now known as ruins. This is ultimate power and commands of nature.

Unlike a painting or a sculpture, food is an impermanent, fleeting art form. A momentary artistic offering, the enjoyment of which necessitates its destruction.

To know yourself you must know the transience of your self.

Trees, O trees, why can't you hold on to your leaves?

We will lost everything that matters, or everything that matters will lose us. It is predestined, the nature of life.

We know the longest kiss will end but that doesn't stop us from enjoying it.

We are snowflakes, melting on the tongue of the universe.

We need to cease allowing the past to define us. We are evolving as a human race, and just because war and aggressive competition has always been a part of our heritage, that doesn’t mean we are forever destined to war and engage in aggressive competition. We are moving forward to a time when the heart will guide us. We once had to fight to survive, and some still do. Yet now it is time to lay down our weapons and open our hearts to the expansive potential of human compassion and creativity. Where our attention goes, energy flows. Do we continue to focus on opposition and give it our energy? Or do we begin to focus our energy on our own authentic freedom to shine and help to illuminate the world? The choice is ours. There are no mistakes – you are exactly where you need to be, and you were born with the precise gifts needed to transform a dying world into a thriving planet.

Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment. (From 'Fukan zazengi')

What indeed is the half-life of a mortal consciousness? What is the half-life of a memory of that mortal consciousness? Of course, this is purely an academic question and of no immediate concern to those of us existing in the world of the living, for we possess already a memory, in its stead, which serves as a basis of our perception of the past. Accurate or not, this nature of memory allows us to understand the past according to the positions occupied by the flesh about which we seek to know, but, unfortunately, not in a way relative to the flesh itself—that flesh stripped of identity and circumstance, that flesh which, in its most rudimentary capacity, had once collided, interacted, fought, competed, negotiated, cooperated, and mated with other flesh: there is no history of this kind, thoroughly naked and telling enough, which is accessible to us, for we are composed of the very same substance, the very same flesh, and sadly incapable of stepping outside of it, even momentarily.

When we hold on too tightly to our attachments we are trying to keep them just as they are, to make them permanent. But nothing in life is permanent.

Why did I think that this improvisation could never end? If I had seen that it could, what would I have done differently? What would he?

Why are the desert blooms that spring to life after a monsoon so magnificent? The answer is – their impermanence. The lush growth and blooming flowers do not last very long here in the desert, and this new growth only happens once a year. If this growth was never-ending, we would soon take it for granted. Likewise, our human lives. What makes them so special and unique? Our fleeting impermanence.

You are as the yellow leaf. The messengers of death are at hand. You are to travel far away. What will you take with you? You are the lamp To lighten the way. Then hurry, hurry. When your light shines Without impurity or desire You will come into the boundless country. Your life is falling away. Death is at hand. Where will you rest on the way? What have you taken with you? You are the lamp To lighten the way. Then hurry, hurry. When your light shines purely You will not be born And you will not die.

What solidity of sentiment it takes not to let an awareness of the moment's impermanence dilute its richness, its sweetness, but purify it and saturate it with the utmost "fullness of being.

When you truly embrace your human impermanence you connect with the power you have, and influence you have, over the time you have.

Impermanence is not something to be afraid of. It's the evolution, a never-ending horizon.

Breathe and you dwell in the here and now, breath and you see impermanence is life.

It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.

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

Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.

Our lives are written in disappearing ink.

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.

That's the hell of sand castles. They are always doomed. That's part of their beauty — their impermanence.

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

The impermanence of the universe is manifest, inescapable. I know that, yet I am immoderately attached to this life, these pleasures, this place.

Consider the sunlight. You may see it is near, yet if you follow it from world to world you will never catch it in your hands. Then you may describe it as far away and, lo, you will see it just before your eyes. Follow it and, behold, it escapes you; run from it and it follows you close. You can neither possess it nor have done with it. From this example you can understand how it is with the true Nature of all things and, henceforth, there will be no need to grieve or to worry about such things.

A great future doesn’t require a great past and great present doesn't assure a great future.

And suddenly you realize: you are in every dot of the universe vanishing and arising.

A pleasurable sensation that lasts a moment is worth more than a bronze statue that lasts a thousand years.

Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened, like winter, which even now is passing. For beneath the winter is a winter so endless that to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart. Be forever dead in Eurydice, and climb back singing. Climb praising as you return to connection. Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient, be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings. Be. And, at the same time, know what it is not to be. The emptiness inside you allows you to vibrate in full resonance with your world. Use it for once. To all that has run its course, and to the vast unsayable numbers of beings abounding in Nature, add yourself gladly, and cancel the cost.

Buddhist teachings discourage us from clinging and grasping to those we hold dear, and from trying to control the people or the relationship. What’s more, we’re encouraged to accept the impermanence of all things: the flower that blooms today will be gone tomorrow, the objects we possess will break or fade or lose their utility, our relationships will change, life will end.

By identifying impermanence as a fundamental characteristic of existence itself, rather than a problem to be solved, the Buddhists are encouraging us to let go our hold on illusory solidity and learn to swim freely in the sea of change.

To put it concisely, we suffer when we resist the noble and irrefutable truth of impermanence and death.

After you've seen behind the facade of a stage set you can't take the play seriously any more. You can't go backwards and regain your ignorance; you have to move forward.

As historian Albert L. Hurtado wrote, "War, pestilence, and famine blow books around the planet like so many hostages to uncertain fortune. Thieves steal, vandals deface, pious clergy burn, and worms eat books. Whether threatened by worms or war, there is nothing permanent about books and libraries.

But because day at her dawning hours hath so bewitched me, must I yet love her when glutted with triumph she settles to garish noon? . . . Who dares call me turncoat, who do but follow now as I have followed this rare wisdom all my days: to love the sunrise and the sundown and the morning and the evening star.

Detachment is not giving up the things in this world, but accepting the fact and to be continuously aware that nothing is permanent.

Do not compromise yourself and put your goodness in the same impermanent category as whatever circumstance happening. Be the best you in every circumstance.

Drama of life may get gripping, intense or interesting but eventually it's still a drama.