A Quote by Pema Chodron

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

Pema Chodron

Quote Topics

Death Impermanence Noble Put Resist Suffer Truth

Quote Author

Pema Chodron
American - Priest
Born: July 14, 1936

Impermanence is very important, crucial for life. That is why instead of complaining about impermanence you have to say "Long live impermanence!"

Nhat Hanh

We are often sad and suffer a lot when things change, but change and impermanence have a positive side. Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible... If your daughter is not impermanent, she cannot grow up to become a woman. Then your grandchildren would never manifest.

Nhat Hanh

Nothing is bigger than life. There's nothing noble in death. What's noble about never seeing the sunshine again? What's noble about having your legs and arms blown off? What's noble about being an idiot? What's noble about being blind and deaf and dumb? What's noble about being dead?

Dalton Trumbo

None will be able to resist truth and love and sincerity. Are you sincere? Unselfish even unto death, and loving? Then fear not, not even death.

Swami Vivekananda

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

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

Nhat Hanh

In general, when the imagination is at all noble, it is irresistible, and therefore those who can at all resist it ought to resist it. Be a plain topographer if you possibly can; if Nature meant you to be anything else, she will force you to it; but never try to be a prophet.

John Ruskin

It is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.

Karl Popper

There would be no chance at all of getting to know death if it happened only once. But fortunately, life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change. Every time I hear the rush of a mountain stream, or the waves crashing on the shore, or my own heartbeat, I hear the sound of impermanence. These changes, these small deaths, are our living links with death. They are death's pulses, death's heartbeat, prompting us to let go of all the things we cling to.

Sogyal Rinpoche

The ego says, ‘I shouldn’t have to suffer,’ and that thought makes you suffer so much more. It is a distortion of the truth, which is always paradoxical. The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it.

Eckhart Tolle

Whatever you resist you become. If you resist anger, you are always angry. If you resist sadness, you are always sad. If you resist suffering, you are always suffering. If you resist confusion,you are always confused. We think that we resist certain states because they are there, but actually they are there because we resist them.

Adyashanti

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

For usually people resist as long as they can to dismiss the fool they harbor in their bosom, they resist to confess a major mistake or to admit a truth that makes them despair.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To suffer with the other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves - these are fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy man himself.

Pope Benedict XVI

Before me now there is only one real fact -- Death. The truth I have been seeking -- this truth is Death. Yet Death is also a seeker. Forever seeking me. So -- we have met at last. And I am prepared. I am at peace. Because I will conquer death with death.