Change Buddhist Quotes & Sayings

If we are not empty, we become a block of matter. We cannot breathe, we cannot think. To be empty means to be alive, to breathe in and to breathe out. We cannot be alive if we are not empty. Emptiness is impermanence, it is change. We should not complain about impermanence, because without impermanence, nothing is possible. — Nhat Hanh

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. — Sharon Salzberg

Buddhist monks have known for centuries that meditation can change the mind. Now we are inspired by His Holiness to examine with our technology the precise brain changes that occur with practice ... The unique collaboration on meditation is just beginning. — Richard Davidson

Buddhism is the study of power initially. It takes a certain amount of power to even know your potential - to have the sense that you can change the way you perceive. — Frederick Lenz

While the primary function of formal Buddhist meditation is to create the possibility of the experience of "being," my work as a therapist has shown me that the demands of intimate life can be just as useful as meditation in moving people toward this capacity. Just as in formal meditation, intimate relationships teach us that the more we relate to each other as objects, the greater our disappointment. The trick, as in meditation, is to use this disappointment to change the way we relate. — Mark Epstein

The dialectical change of mind that occurs in Buddhism is not simply the assimilation of a new philosophical basis or religious basis for viewing and interpreting experience. Rather it is the complete structural revision of that which is. — Frederick Lenz

I think the whole system of education would change if I were in charge and had the ability to make changes. I don't think I would keep Princeton exactly being Princeton. — Wallace Shawn

Meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree. It completely changes your brain and therefore changes what you are. — Matthieu Ricard

Denigrating ourselves is probably the major way that we cover over bodhichitta [open heart]. Does not trying to change mean we have to remain angry and addicted until the day we die? This is a reasonable question. Trying to change ourselves doesn't work in the long run because we're resisting our own energy. Self-improvement can have temporary results, but lasting transformation occurs only when we honor ourselves as the source of wisdom and compassion. We are, as the eighth-century Buddhist master Shantideva pointed out, very much like a blind person who finds a jewel buried in a heap of garbage. Right here in what we'd like to throw away, in what we find repulsive and frightening, we discover the warmth and clarity of bodhichitta. — Pema Chodron

By changing our inner state of mind, we can change any suffering or hardship into a source of joy, regarding it as a means for forging and developing our lives. To turn even sorrow into a source of creativity - this is the way of life of a Buddhist — Daisaku Ikeda

If science proves facts that conflict with Buddhist understanding, Buddhism must change accordingly. We should always adopt a view that accords with the facts. — Dalai Lama

Buddhist nirvana ... is based on egolessness and is not anthropocentric but rather cosmological. In Buddhism, humans and the things of the universe are equally subject to change, equally subject to transitoriness or transmigration. A person cannot achieve emancipation from the cycle of birth and death until he or she can eliminate a more universal problem: the transience common to all things in the universe. — Masao Abe

MRA is the good road of an ideology inspired by God upon which all can unite. Catholic, Jew and Protestant, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Confucianist - all find they can change, where needed, and travel along this good road together. — Frank Buchman

Death for [the Buddhist] is the shadow on the face of life, for the opposite of death is birth, not life; that which is born must die. Life has no opposite, for life goes on; only its forms must change unceasingly. It is life which creates, uses and then destroys each form of life, whether yours or mine or that of the mountain, the empire or the fly. — Christmas Humphreys

First one must change. I first watch myself, check myself, then expect changes from others. — Dalai Lama

When words are both true and kind, they can change the world. — Gautama Buddha

There is an enormous amount of evidence that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, is doing his best to develop more lethal weapons, and funds and supports terrorism. — Mike Pence

Where there is never sunshine darkness isn't a scary thing — Peter Adejimi

I don't know what religious people do. I kind of wished I'd been a Christian with the blind faith that God is doing the right thing. As a Buddhist, you feel like you have more control over the situation, and that you can change your karma. — Marcia Wallace

True change is within; leave the outside as it is. — Dalai Lama XIV

Finally, therefore, remember your retreat into this little domain which is yourself, and above all be not disturbed nor on the rack, but be free and look at things as a man, a human being, a citizen, a creature that must die. — Marcus Aurelius

Love is blind, but a broken heart sees everything. — Matshona Dhliwayo

happy hunting-grounds — James Fenimore Cooper

On Friday I was in Washington for a meeting with Administration officials. In the course of that meeting, they requested that I 'step aside' as CEO of GM, and so I have. — Rick Wagoner

After a week in front of the screen, the opportunity to work with my hands - with all my senses, in fact - is always a welcome change of pace, whether in the kitchen or in the garden. There's something about such work that seems to alter the experience of time, helps me to reoccupy the present tense. I don't want you to get the idea it's made a Buddhist of me, but in the kitchen, maybe a little bit. When stirring the pot, just stir the pot. — Michael Pollan

My ethics, my sense of morality, my work ethic, my sense of compassion for suffering humanity, all of that comes directly out of the practice of poetry, as does my Buddhist practice. Poetry is a very important element in the history of Buddhism in general and in Zen in particular. It was really Zen that motivated me to change the way I perceive the world. — Sam Hamill

If there is one maverick molecule in all the universe, then God is not sovereign. And if God is not sovereign, He is not God. — R.C. Sproul

The beauty of life is, while we cannot undo what is done, we can see it, understand it, learn from it and change. So that every new moment is spent not in regret, guilt, fear or anger, but in wisdom, understanding and love. — Jennifer Edwards

The perpetuators of the Buddha dharma have a moral responsibility to the rest of humanity to be at the forefront of the change away from blood-letting and killing, and not surreptitiously fostering it because of their lack of will to change their habits or mode of thinking concerning the animal kingdom. — Bodo Balsys

You can call it tathata, suchness. 'Suchness' is a Buddhist way of expressing that there is something in you which always remains in its intrinsic nature, never changing. It always remains in its selfsame essence, eternally so. That is your real nature. That which changes is not you, that is mind. That which does not change in you is buddha-mind. You can call it no-mind, you can call it samadhi, satori. It depends upon you; you can give it whatsoever name you want. You can call it christ-consciousness. — Rajneesh

There's a new generation of entrepreneurs in the Valley who have arrived since 2000, after the dotcom bust. They're completely fearless. — Marc Andreessen

From the Buddhist perspective, the only lasting way to bring about change is for people themselves to change. — Pat Allwright

Let's say there are 500 sons and daughters like you in each state. Then we could control the government. — Sun Myung Moon

PROCESS PHILOSOPHY, a school greatly influenced by Alfred North Whitehead, holds that mind and brain are manifestations of a single reality, one that is in constant flux. It thus is compatible with classical Buddhist philosophy, which views clear and penetrating awareness of change and impermanence (anicca in Pali) as the essence of insight. Thus, as Whitehead put it, "The reality is the process," and it is a process made up of vital transient "drops of experience, complex, and interdependent." This view is strikingly consistent with recent developments in quantum physics. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Buddhism is not concerned just with private destiny, but with the lives and consciousness of all beingsAny attempt to understand Buddhism apart from its social dimension is fundamentally a mistake. Until Western Buddhists understand this, their embrace of Buddhism will not help very much in the efforts to bring about meaningful and positive social change, or even in their struggle to transform their ego. — Sulak Sivaraksa

Fanaticism is the opposite of love,' I said, recalling one of Khaderbhai's lectures. A wise man once told me - he's a Muslim, by the way - that he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Jew than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. He has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Christian or Buddhist or Hindu than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. In fact, he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded atheist than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. I agree with him, and I feel the same way. I also agree with Winston Churchill, who once defined a fanatic as someone who won't change his mind and can't change the subject. — Gregory David Roberts

I like change. There's something Buddhist about it - continuous change is wonderful. — David Bailey

The good renounce everything. The pure don't babble about sensual desires. Whether touched by pleasure or pain, the wise show no change of temper. — Gautama Buddha

Craving and desire are the cause of all unhappiness. Everything sooner or later must change, so do not become attached to anything. Instead devote ... — Gautama Buddha