Echoes

It is to this law that our souls must adjust themselves, this they should follow, this they should obey. Whatever happens, assume that it was bound to happen, and do not be willing to rail at Nature. That which you cannot reform, it is best to endure, and to attend uncomplainingly upon the God under whose guidance everything progresses; for it is a bad soldier who grumbles when following his commander.

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

Everything that happens is either endurable or not. If it's endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining. If it's unendurable . . . then stop complaining. Your destruction will mean its end as well.

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, but love it.

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together.

A man must shape himself to a new mark when the old one goes to ground.

Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life.

What cannot be eschewed must be embraced

The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die.

O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill.

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning.

Accept everything just the way it is.

The basic teaching of Buddhism is the teaching of transiency or change. That everything changes is the basic truth for each existence. No one can deny this truth and all teaching of Buddhism is condensed within it. This is the teaching for all of us. Wherever we go this teaching is true. This teaching is also understood as the teaching of selflessness. Because each existence is in constant change, there is no abiding self.

A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living.

The purpose of life...is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

Born under another sky, placed in the middle of an always-moving scene, himself driven by the irresistible torrent which sweeps along everything that surrounds him, the American has no time to tie himself to anything; he grows accustomed to naught but change, and concludes by viewing it as the natural state of man; he feels a need for it; even more, he loves it: for instability, instead of occurring to him in the form of disasters, seems to give birth to nothing around him but wonders...

So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.

He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.

Nothing is permanent in all the world. All things are fluid; every image forms, wandering through change. Time itself flows on in constant motion, just like a river, for neither the river nor the swift hour can stop its course; but as wave impels wave, and as each wave comes, the one before is both impelled by the next and impels the one ahead, so time both flees and follows and is always new.

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.