Top 454 Quotes & Sayings by Pema Chodron - Page 7

To cultivate equanimity we practice catching ourselves when we feel attraction or aversion, before it hardens into grasping or negativity.

My experience with forgiveness is that it sort of comes spontaneously at a certain point and to try to force it it's not really forgiveness. It's Buddhist philosophy or something spiritual jargon that you're trying to live up to but you're just using it against yourself as a reason why you're not okay.

The idea is to develop sympathy for your own confusion.

We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.

If you work with your mind, that will alleviate all the suffering that seems to come from the outside.

We can spend our whole lives escaping from the monsters of our minds. (36)

It is possible to move through the drama of our lives without believing so earnestly in the character that we play.

Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear?

We could learn to stop when the sun goes down and when the sun comes up. We could learn to listen to the wind; we could learn to notice that it's raining or snowing or hailing or calm. We could reconnect with the weather that is ourselves, and we could realize that it's sad. The sadder it is, and the vaster it is, the more our heart opens. We can stop thinking that good practice is when it's smooth and calm, and bad practice is when it's rough and dark. If we can hold it all in our hearts, then we can make a proper cup of tea.

Honesty without kindness, humor, and goodheartedness can be just mean.

You see, there really is no separation between you and everyone else.

Ego is like a room of your own, a room with a view with the temperature and the smells and the music that you like. You want it your own way. You'd just like to have a little peace, you'd like to have a little happiness, you know, just gimme a break.

Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

The Buddha’s principal message that day was that holding on to anything blocks wisdom. Any conclusion that we draw must be let go. The only way to fully understand the bodhichitta teachings, the only way to practice them fully, is to abide in the unconditional openness of the prajna, patiently cutting through all our tendencies to hang on.

It's important to remember, when we're out there aggressively working for reform, that, even if our particular issue doesn't get resolved, we are adding peace to the world. We have to do our best and at the same time give up all hope of fruition.

Difficult people are the greatest teachers.

If your mind is expansive and unfettered, you will find yourself in a more accommodating world, a place that's endlessly interesting and alive. That quality isn't inherent in the place but in your state of mind.

What you do for yourself, you're doing for others, and what you do for others, you're doing for yourself.

Only in an open, nonjudgmental space can we acknowledge what we are feeling. Only in an open space where we're not all caught up in our own version of reality can we see and hear and feel who others really are, which allows us to be with them and communicate with them properly.

Ego is something that you come to know - something that you befriend by not acting out or by repressing all the feelings that you feel.

If it's painful, you become willing not just to endure it but also to let it awaken your heart and soften you. You learn to embrace it.

Fear itself is the vanguard of wisdom

Few of us are satisfied with retreating from the world and just working on ourselves. We want our training to manifest and to be of benefit. The bodhisattva-warrior, therefore, makes a vow to wake up not just for himself but for the welfare of all beings.

If we Pause and breathe in and out, then we can have the experience of timeless presence, of the inexpressible wisdom and goodness of our own minds. We can look at the world with fresh eyes and hear things with fresh ears.

The most complete and true happiness comes in moments when you feel right there, completely present, with no ideas about good and bad, right and wrong - just a sense of open heart and open mind.

Trying to run away is never the answer to being a fully human. Running away from the immediacy of our experience is like preferring death to life.

We don’t experience the world fully unless we are willing to give everything away. Samaya means not holding anything back, not preparing our escape route, not looking for alternatives, not thinking that there is ample time to do things later

Words themselves are neutral. It's the charge we add to them that matters

Patience is the training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed.

Holding on to anything blocks wisdom.

We are undoing a pattern... It's the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of attaining resolution.

If you have rage and righteously act it out and blame it all on others, it's really you who suffers. The other people and the environment suffer also, but you suffer more because you're being eaten up inside with rage, causing you to hate yourself more and more

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both...Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both.

Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.

But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake.

Tonglen practice begins to dissolve the illusion that each of us is alone with this personal suffering that no one else can understand.

None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine.

Every small problem most likely stems from the same root as large problems, and so there is no need to always go deep. One can use anything for the therapeutic process and/if this link is made.

Patience has nothing to do with suppression. In fact, it has everything to do with a gentle, honest relationship with yourself.

Many people hope a spiritual practice will let them avoid what they are ashamed of. But when you hide something from yourself, you are going to project it onto your world. You continually find it in others and it becomes the source of prejudices and dogmatic views. On top of that, you feel bad about yourself, because you aren't the loving, open-minded, "spiritual" person you'd like to be.

Surrendering, letting go of possessiveness, and complete nonattachment-all are synonyms for accumulating merit.

That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. Everything is in process.

In a nutshell, when life is pleasant, think of others. When life is a burden, think of others.

Meditation is not about getting out of ourselves or achieving something better. It is about getting in touch with what you already are.

We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment.

The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we find out that something is not what we thought.

Patience is not learned in safety.

For arousing compassion, the nineteenth-century yogi Patrul Rinpoche suggested imagining beings in torment - an animal about to be slaughtered, a person awaiting execution. To make it more immediate, he recommended imagining ourselves in their place. Particularly painful is his image of a mother with no arms watching as a raging river sweeps her child away. To contact the suffering of another being fully and directly is as painful as being in the woman's shoes.

There are many changes in the weather of a day.

Opening to the world begins to benefit ourselves and others simultaneously. The more we relate with others, the more quickly we discover where we're blocked.

Never underestimate the desire to bolt.

Sitting meditation gives us a way to move closer to our thoughts and emotions and to get in touch with our bodies.

I'm here to tell you that the path to peace is right there, when you want to get away.

Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.

A heartfelt sense of aspiring cuts through negativity about yourself; it cuts through the heavy trips you lay on yourself.

Being fully present isn’t something that happens once and then you have achieved it; it’s being awake to the ebb and flow and movement and creation of life, being alive to the process of life itself.

We see how beautiful and wonderful and amazing things are, and we see how caught up we are. It isn’t that one is the bad part and one is the good part, but that it’s a kind of interesting, smelly, rich, fertile mess of stuff. When it’s all mixed up together, it’s us: humanness.

Mindfulness is loving all the details of our lives, and awareness is the natural thing that happens: life begins to open up, and you realize that you're always standing at the center of the world.

In truth, there is enormous space in which to live our everyday lives.

We can stop thinking that good practice is when it’s smooth and calm, and bad practice is when it’s rough and dark. If we can hold it all in our hearts, then we can make a proper cup of tea.