Pema Chodron Quotes

#1. Lean into the sharp points and fully experience them. The essence of bravery is being without self-deception. Wisdom is inherent in (understanding) emotions.

Pema Chodron

#2. Use your life to wake you up.

Pema Chodron

#3. Discomfort of any kind becomes the basis for practice. We breathe in knowing our pain is shared.

Pema Chodron

#4. Resentment, bitterness, and holding a grudge prevent us from seeing and hearing and tasting and delighting.

Pema Chodron

#5. At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.

Pema Chodron

#6. The difference between what is neurosis and what is wisdom is very hard to perceive, because somehow the energy underlying both of them is the same.

Pema Chodron

#7. This book stresses repeatedly that it is unconditional compassion for ourselves that leads naturally to unconditional compassion for others.

Pema Chodron

#8. It's even difficult to hear that what we reject out there is what we reject in ourselves, and what we reject in ourselves is what we are going to reject out there.

Pema Chodron

#9. Birth is painful and delightful. Death is painful and delightful. Everything that ends is also the beginning of something else. Pain is not a punishment; pleasure is not a reward. Inspiration

Pema Chodron

#10. Openness doesn't come from resisting our fears but rather from getting to know them well.

Pema Chodron

#11. One of the main discoveries of meditation is seeing how we continually run away from the present moment, how we avoid being here just as we are.

Pema Chodron

#12. The more you're willing to open your heart, the more challenges come along that make you want to shut it.

Pema Chodron

#13. Constantly apply cheerfulness, if for no other reason than because you are on this spiritual path. Have a sense of gratitude to everything, even difficult emotions, because of their potential to wake you up.

Pema Chodron

#14. MY teacher Trungpa Rinpoche encouraged us to lead our lives as an experiment, a suggestion that has been very important to me.

Pema Chodron

#15. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us. The trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion, to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance.

Pema Chodron

#16. Self-improvement can have temporary results, but lasting transformation occurs only when we honor ourselves as the source of wisdom and compassion.

Pema Chodron

#17. As Buddhism moved to the West, one of the big characteristics was the strong place of women. That didn't exist in the countries of origin. It's just a sign of our culture.

Pema Chodron

#18. Each time you stay present with fear and uncertainty, you're letting go of a habitual way of finding security and comfort.

Pema Chodron

#19. When thoughts come up, touch them very lightly, like a feather touching a bubble. Let the whole thing be soft and gentle, but at the same time precise.

Pema Chodron

#20. At some point, we realize that what we do for ourselves benefits others, and what we do for others benefits us.

Pema Chodron

#21. 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.

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#22. As the twelfth-century Tibetian yogi Milarepa said when he heard of his student Gampopa's peak experiences, 'They are neither good nor bad. Keep meditating.'

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#23. As long as we believe that there is something that will permanently satisfy our hunger for security, suffering is inevitable.

Pema Chodron

#24. Sometimes people's spiritual ideas become fixed and they use them against those who don't share their beliefs - in effect, becoming fundamentalist. It's very dangerous - the finger of righteous indignation pointing at someone who is identified as bad or wrong.

Pema Chodron

#25. Life is like stepping into a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink. - SHUNRYU SUZUKI ROSHI A

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#26. Attention to the present moment. We make the choice, moment by moment, to be fully here. Attending to our present-moment mind and body is a way of being tender toward self, toward other, and toward the world. This quality of attention is inherent in our ability to love.

Pema Chodron

#27. There's something delicious about finding fault with something. And that can be including finding fault with one's self, you know?

Pema Chodron

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

Pema Chodron

#29. Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment,

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#30. Enlightenment is a direct experience with reality.

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#31. In sitting meditation, we train in mindfulness and unconditional friendliness: in being steadfast with our bodies, our emotions, our thoughts.

Pema Chodron

#32. Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time - that is the basic message.

Pema Chodron

#33. Thinking that we can find some lasting pleasure and avoid pain is what in Buddhism is called samsara, a hopeless cycle that goes round and round endlessly and causes us to suffer greatly.

Pema Chodron

#34. Resistance to unwanted circumstances has the power to keep those circumstances alive and well for a very long time.

Pema Chodron

#35. The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last - that they don't disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.

Pema Chodron

#36. If we emphasized only precision, our meditation might become quite harsh and militant. ( ... ). One thing that is very helpful is to cultivate an overall sense of relaxation while you are doing the meditation.

Pema Chodron

#37. Meditation practice is not about later, when you get it all together and you're this person you really respect.

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#38. Searching for happiness prevents us from ever finding it.

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#39. Anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. It's the kind of place we usually want to avoid. The challenge is to stay in the middle rather than buy into struggle and complaint. The challenge is to let it soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid.

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#40. Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there's anywhere to hide.

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#41. We cannot be present and run our story-line at the same time.

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#42. Holding on to beliefs limits our experience of life. That doesn't mean that beliefs or ideas or thinking is a problem; the stubborn attitude of having to have things be a particular way, grasping on to our beliefs and thoughts, all these cause the problems.

Pema Chodron

#43. EMBARKING on the spiritual journey is like getting into a very small boat and setting out on the ocean to search for unknown lands. With wholehearted practice comes inspiration, but sooner or later we will also encounter fear.

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#44. As for our inner level of obstacle, perhaps the only enemy we have is that we don't like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. But what we need to acknowledge is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

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#45. There is no cultivation of patience when your pattern is to just try to seek harmony and smooth everything out. Patience implies willingness to be alive rather than trying to seek harmony.

Pema Chodron

#46. We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.

Pema Chodron

#47. What causes misery is always trying to get away from the facts of life, always trying to avoid pain and seek happiness - this sense of ours that there could be lasting security and happiness available to us if we could only do the right thing.

Pema Chodron

#48. Seeing when you justify yourself and when you blame others is not a reason to criticize yourself, but actually an opportunity to recognize what all people do and how it imprisons us in a very limited perspective of this world.

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#49. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we're doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we're doing.

Pema Chodron

#50. Rikpa literally means "intelligence" or "brightness." Behind all the planning and worrying, behind all the wishing and wanting, picking and choosing, the unfabricated, wisdom mind of rikpa is always here. Whenever we stop talking to ourselves, rikpa is continually here.

Pema Chodron

#51. The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.

Pema Chodron

#52. According to this very simple teaching, becoming immersed in these four pairs of opposites - pleasure and pain, loss and gain, fame and disgrace, and praise and blame - is what keeps us stuck in the pain of samsara.

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#53. the life span of any particular emotion is only one and a half minutes. After that we have to revive the emotion and get it going again.

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#54. If right now our emotional reaction to seeing a certain person or hearing certain news is to fly into a rage or to get despondent or something equally extreme, it's because we have been cultivating that particular habit for a very long time.

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#55. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Samuel Beckett

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#56. The experience of a sad and tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness.

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#57. When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.

Pema Chodron

#58. You begin where you are, you see what a child you are, and you don't criticize that.

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#59. We already have everything we need.

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#60. If you work with your mind, instead of trying to change everything on the outside ... that's how your temper will cool down.

Pema Chodron

#61. Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what's out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it.

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#62. The central question of a warrior's training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort. How do we practice with difficulty, with our emotions, with the unpredictable encounters of an ordinary day?

Pema Chodron

#63. BEING ABLE to lighten up is the key to feeling at home with your body, mind, and emotions, to feeling worthy to live on this planet.

Pema Chodron

#64. Dharma is the study of what is, and the only way you can find out what is true is through studying yourself.

Pema Chodron

#65. Make the dharma personal, explore it wholeheartedly, and relax.

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#66. The idea is to develop sympathy for your own confusion.

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#67. Fear is a natural reaction of moving closer to the truth.

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#68. Our neurosis and our wisdom are made out of the same material.

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#69. IN practicing meditation, we're not trying to live up to some kind of ideal - quite the opposite.

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#70. When there's a disappointment, I don't know if it's the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure.

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#71. Compassionate action involves working with ourselves as much as working with others.

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

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#73. All the wars, all the hatred, all the ignorance in the world come out of being so invested in our opinions.

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#74. You are never going to get it all together, you're never going to get your act together, fully, completely. You're never going to get all the little loose ends tied up.

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#75. Meditation is a process of lightening up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and of realizing that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have.

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#76. Difficult people are the greatest teachers.

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#77. An interesting practice that combines mindfulness and refraining is just to notice your physical movements when you feel uncomfortable.

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#78. If we want there to be peace in the world, we have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid in our hearts, to find the soft spot and stay with it. We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility. That's the true practice of peace.

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#79. Things are as bad and as good as they seem. There's no need to add anything extra.

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#80. addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it.

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#81. The essence of practice is always the same: instead of falling prey to a chain reaction of revenge or self-hatred, we gradually learn to catch the emotional reaction and drop the story lines.

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#82. Pain is not a punishment, pleasure is not a reward.

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#83. 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.

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

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#85. Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.

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#86. When you connect with your own suffering, reflect that countless beings at this very moment are feeling exactly what you feel. Their story line is different, but the feeling of pain is the same. When

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#87. TURNING YOUR MIND toward the dharma does not bring security or confirmation. Turning your mind toward the dharma does not bring any ground to stand on. In fact, when your mind turns toward the dharma, you fearlessly acknowledge impermanence and change and begin to get the knack of hopelessness.

Pema Chodron

#88. The only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn't continue to rule your life.

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#89. Even when our neurosis feels far more basic than our wisdom, even when we're feeling most confused and hopeless, bodhichitta - like the open sky - is always here, undiminished by the clouds that temporarily cover it.

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#90. Better to join in with humanity than to set ourselves apart.

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#91. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are.

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#92. The opposite of patience is aggression - the desire to jump and move, to push against our lives, to try to fill up space.

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#93. Making good use of our limited time - the limited time from birth to death, as well as our limited time each day - is the key to developing inner steadiness and calm.

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#94. Nothing in its essence is one way or the other.

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#95. Without giving up hope - that there's somewhere better to be, that there's someone better to be - we will never relax with where we are or who we are.

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#96. It isn't what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it's what we say to ourselves about what happens.

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#97. Appreciate everything, even the ordinary ... Especially the ordinary.

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#98. From this point of view, the only time we ever know what's really going on is when the rug's been pulled out and we can't find anywhere to land. We use these situations either to wake ourselves up or to put ourselves to sleep.

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#99. Patience takes courage. It is not an ideal state of calm. In fact, when we practice patience we will see our agitation far more clearly.

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#100. When you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha means that when you see that you're grasping or clinging to anything, whether conventionally it's called good or bad, make friends with that. Look into it. Get to know it completely and utterly. In that way it will let go of itself.

Pema Chodron