A Quote by Pema Chodron

Compassion starts with making friends with ourselves.

Pema Chodron

Quote Topics

Compassion Friends Making Making Friends Ourselves Starts

Quote Author

Pema Chodron
American - Priest
Born: July 14, 1936

Compassion isn't some kind of self-improvement project or ideal that we're trying to live up to. Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves, all those imperfections that we don't even want to look at.

Pema Chodron

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.

Pema Chodron

The Making of Friends Life is sweet because of the friends we have made And the things which in common we share; We want to live on, not because of ourselves, But because of the ones who would care. It's living and doing for somebody else On that all of life's splendor depends, And the joy of it all, when we count it all up, Is found in the making of friends.

Edgar Guest

It is lack of love for ourselves that inhibits our compassion toward others. If we make friends with ourselves, then there is no obstacle to opening our hearts and minds to others.

Dalai Lama

Compassion can be described as letting ourselves be touched by the vulnerability and suffering that is within ourselves and all beings. The full flowering of compassion also includes action: Not only do we attune to the presence of suffering, we respond to it.

Tara Brach

Training in compassion is a mental activity. but our mind should also be brought to the level where every action we take is influenced by compassion. That means engaging ourselves in compassion in action.

Gelek Rimpoche

Yeah, we definitely have screenings; we just don't have screenings out on the street. We bring in - it starts internally, so its people who work at Bad Robot, then it starts going to our friends outside of Bad Robot, and then it starts going to friends of friends outside so we get really fresh people who don't have to pretend to like us.

Bryan Burk

Live with compassion. Work with compassion. Die with compassion. Meditate with compassion. Enjoy with compassion. When problems come, experience them with compassion.

Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

Meditation practice is a way of making friends with ourselves. Whether we are worthy or unworthy, that's not the point. It's developing a friendly attitude to ourselves, accepting the hidden neurosis coming through.

Chogyam Trungpa

The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves "inside the skin" of the other. We "go inside" their body, feelings, and mental formations, and witness for ourselves their suffering. Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to see their suffering. We must become one with the subject of our observation. When we are in contact with another's suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, "to suffer with."

Nhat Hanh

As we learn to have compassion for ourselves, the circle of compassion for others - what and whom we can work with, and how - becomes wider.

Pema Chodron

Resilience is based on compassion for ourselves as well as compassion for others

Sharon Salzberg

In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves.

Pema Chodron

Compassion makes no distinction between friends and enemies, neighbors and outsiders, compatriots and foreigners. Compassion is the gate to human community.

Joan D. Chittister

A lot of my friends in my student days complained about how their parents made them play an instrument when they were kids. I always felt compassion for them and didn't believe a parent could be so cruel, but when I check today, those complaining friends grew up to be quite successful, and many of them are now making their children play.