Quotes about Transformation

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.

We'd all like to increase pleasure and minimize pain, but the truth is, suffering, even collective suffering that we're going through, is often the earmark that some real change is happening.

If we're aware of the habit energies in us and can become more intentional in our thoughts, speech, and actions, then we can transform not only ourselves, but also our ancestors who planted the seeds. If we're able to do that, it means our ancestors are also able to smile at what is provoking them. If one person keeps calm and smiles at a provocation, the whole world will have a better chance for peace.

The truth is, when we burn the paper, it will change into something else and will continue on in other forms—as ash, smoke, and heat, in our body and the universe. The heat is one of the next lives of the paper, as is the smoke rising to the sky. The ash will return to the earth and become part of the soil. So the sheet of paper, in its next life, might be a cloud and a rose at the same time.

You don't have to run anywhere to become someone else.

Once a seed has been burnt, it cannot sprout anymore. If we are able to burn up the seeds of grief, sexual desire, and hatred, they will not sprout again.

You can transform your nation into a prison because you are committed to an ideology.

Transforming the past is possible, thanks to meditation practice.

Beginning anew" means being determined not to repeat the negative things we have done in the past. A new era begins when we commit ourselves to living in mindfulness. When we vow to ourselves, "I am determined not to behave as I did in the past," transformation occurs immediately.

if we face unpleasant feelings with care, affection, we can transform them to the kind that is healthy and that nourishes us.

When St Francis looked deeply at an all day treatment in winter and asked it to speak to him about God, the tree was instantly covered in blossoms.

By the same token, Christians find that, insofar as the "prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day" (the ordinary stuff of life) are taken and offered up to God in union with Jesus Christ's own self-offering, they are transfigured—transubstantiated—and restored to us, not as the inert routines of the day, or as sheer, intractable adversity, or as boredom, which they might otherwise appear to be, but rather as vessels for grace.