Quotes from Pema Chodron

It is unconditional compassion for ourselves that leads naturally to unconditional compassion for others. If we are willing to stand fully in our own shoes and never give up on ourselves, then we will be able to put ourselves in the shoes of others and never give up on them. True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings.

Meditation is a totally nonviolent, nonaggressive occupation.

Bodhichitta is our heart—our wounded, softened heart. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die. This love is bodhichitta. It is gentle and warm; it is clear and sharp; it is open and spacious. The awakened heart of bodhichitta is the basic goodness of all beings.

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.

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.

Every situation is a passing memory.

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

When the resistance is gone, so are the demons. It's like a koan that we can work with by learning how to be more gentle, how to relax, and how to surrender to the situations and people in our lives.

We don't sit in meditation to become good meditators. We sit in meditation so that we'll be more awake in our lives.

There's a common misunderstanding among all the human beings who have ever been born on the earth that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and just try to get comfortable.

In other words, I would say that the drive to blame ourselves or others comes from our inability to stay present with what is, because the sense of failure challenges us. It's uncomfortable, unpleasant.

Leonard Cohen once said about the benefits of many years of meditation, "The less there was of me, the happier I got." Letting

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

We would like to believe that when things are still and calm, that's the real stuff, and when things are messy, confused, and chaotic, we've done something wrong, or more usually someone else has done something to ruin our beautiful meditation. As someone once said about a loud, bossy woman, "What is that woman doing in my sacred world?

While we are sitting in meditation, we are simply exploring humanity and all of creation in the form of ourselves.

Shielding ourselves from the vulnerability of all living beings—which includes our own vulnerability—cuts us off from the full experience of life. Our

We can learn to act and think in ways that sow seeds of our future well-being, gradually becoming more aware of what causes happiness as well as what causes distress.

Tonglen means taking in and sending out. This meditation practice is designed to help ordinary people like ourselves connect with the openness and softness of our hearts. Instead of shielding and protecting our soft spot, with tonglen we could let ourselves feel what it is to be human.

With the global economy in chaos and the environment of the planet at risk, with war raging and suffering escalating, it is time for each of us in our own lives to take the leap and do whatever we can to help turn things around.

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

As one student said, "Lower your standards and relax as it is.

In his talk, Suzuki Roshi says that meditation and the whole process of finding your own true nature is one continuous mistake, and that rather than that being a reason for depression or discouragement, it's actually the motivation.

There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride.

The calligraphy reads, "Pointing directly at your own heart, you find Buddha." Listening to talks about the dharma, or the teachings of Buddha, or practicing meditation is nothing other than studying ourselves.