Quotes & Sayings About Change Zen

WU WEI

flow of Life governed by Tao
flow of change

spontaneous
natural
effortless
acting through non-action

connecting with Earth and Moon and Sun
through
being

not inert or lazy or passive
but swimming swiftly
within the current
merging Life with Tao

quiet and watchful
not-interfering
receptive alert directly connected

acting without action
trusting detached without desire
spontaneous natural effortless
Living — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

People of this world are deluded. They're always longing for something-always, in a word, seeking. But the wise wake up. They choose reason over custom. They fix their minds on the sublime and let their bodies change with the seasons. All phenomena are empty. They contain nothing worth desiring. — Bodhidharma

But the ones who go posing as moralists are the worst. Cost-free morals. Full of great ways for others to improve without any expense to themselves. There's an ego thing in there, too. They use the morals to make someone else look inferior and that way look better themselves. It doesn't matter what the moral code is
religious morals, political morals, racist morals, capitalist morals, feminist morals, hippie morals
they're all the same. The moral codes change but the meanness and the egotism stay the same. — Robert M. Pirsig

What we are is what we receive. It is not about waiting for something outside ourselves to change - we must actively be the change if we wish to see the result. — Alaric Hutchinson

Light and flow is what shifts the world's vibration, not the stagnation and resistance that comes with opposition. — Alaric Hutchinson

All the time. A few months ago I came really close to losing it, I was getting really paranoid. And then I started a new job, things fixed themselves. I can't turn my back on the situation and ignore it. If tomorrow I say: "Okay, I've had enough, we're stopping everything" it won't change anything. Might as well try to accept it and stay zen as I have no control over it. — Robert Pattinson

Our call to action is to be in the flow of life, accepting life as it is and as it comes. We must allow life to be life in all its impermanent grandeur. Nothing remains the same, and those who fight change, or are in denial of it, create chaos within their own lives and the lives of those they have influence over. — Alaric Hutchinson

A great tree develops over time and can tell stories not only those of happiness, but also those that contain pain from what it has seen over the years, and as a result is the wise ancient tree that it is today. As the seasons change, the tree naturally goes through changes as well: where the leaves turn yellow and orange in the fall, falling by the Winter, returning in the Spring, and with full set of new leafs by the Summer. Love is no different in that there will be times when we are fully naked in the Winter, and left to wonder about Spring when it seemed so easy to love, yet the wise tree knows that no winter will last forever no matter how cold it may be. — Forrest Curran

Sometimes it takes a miracle to remind us that the only permanent condition is that of impermanence. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

People get stuck a lot because they're afraid to act; in the worst case, ... we get so attached to some end result that we can't function. We need help just to move on, only life doesn't wait. — Bernie Glassman

Everything real is in the present moment. Only here can we find happiness and harmony, feel alive and do something that will change our future. Only here can we be with the people we love, enjoy the things we like and see beautiful places. — Lidiya K.

What we can change is our perceptions, which have the effect of changing everything. — Donna Quesada

The more I can accept the fact that change is moving all the time, and that the change I am experiencing right now is just the change of this moment and that this moment will change into the next and the next, the less need I will have to clutch in fear. — Sharon Weil

Life is a river," a wise friend told me. "It's flowing. You're never at the same place twice. — Kamal Ravikant

Today most scientists would agree with the ancient Hindus that nothing exists or is destroyed, things merely change shape or form ... the cosmic radiation that is thought to come from the explosion of creation strikes the earth with equal intensity from all directions, which suggests either that the earth is at the center of the universe, as in our innocence we once supposed, or that the known universe has no center. — Peter Matthiessen

Often we suffer because we don't realize what's essential.
We may want to be rich, but the rich are lonely.
We see all those people on TV that have won the lottery and want to be at their place, but studies show that they are even more miserable after having won the big check. They don't really know what to do with all that money, take poor decisions on how to spend them, change themselves and their friends don't see them in the same way. — Lidiya K.

There is a Zen story (very funny - ha-ha) about a monk who, having failed to achieve "enlightenment" (brain-change) through the normal Zen methods, was told by his teacher to think of nothing but an ox. Day after day after day, the monk thought of the ox, visualized the ox, meditated on the ox. Finally, one day, the teacher came to the monk's cell and said, "Come out here - I want to talk to you." "I can't get out," the monk said. "My horns won't fit through the door." I can't get out . . . At these words, the monk was "enlightened." Never mind what "enlightenment" means, right now. The monk went through some species of brain change, obviously. He had developed the delusion that he was an ox, and awakening from that hypnoidal state he saw through the mechanism of all other delusions and how they robotize us. EXERCIZES — Robert Anton Wilson

Just so we're clear, I'm not zen by any stretch of the imagination. However, what I've read about change being the only constant is a concept that I can grab onto and have used quite a lot. — Patrick Fabian

The changeless is what knows the change, the changeless is unconditioned — Adyashanti

Kids want to be grown ups, adults want to be young and careless again.
Single people desperately want a relationship, but those who are in one still complain almost all the time and wish for freedom.
The poor want money, the rich want more of it.
This means that changing your situation doesn't prevent you from suffering, doesn't make your desires go away.
So you need to change something on the inside. — Lidiya K.

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

You are not your thoughts!! This simple yet powerful statement can greatly change the quality of your life. — Dawn Gluskin