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Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.
Shunryu Suzuki
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Acceptance of life's impermanence is essential to alleviate suffering.

Shunryu Suzuki's quote highlights the human struggle with the concept of transience, the idea that all things, including life itself, are temporary. By resisting the truth of impermanence, we create unnecessary suffering for ourselves; embracing this reality allows us to find peace and a deeper understanding of existence.

Themes

TransienceSufferingAcceptanceImpermanenceTruth

In practice

Example use cases

During a mindfulness seminar, this quote can illustrate the importance of accepting change.

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