Quotes from Pema Chodron

To think that we can finally get it all together is unrealistic.

One popular way of relating to physical pain is mindfulness meditation. It involves directing your full attention to the pain and breathing in and out of the spot that hurts. Instead of trying to avoid the discomfort, you open yourself completely to it. You become receptive to the painful sensation without dwelling on the story your mind has concocted: It's bad; I shouldn't feel this way; maybe it will never go away.

It points out how we continually try to avoid the uncertainty inherent in our condition, how we continually try to get solid ground under our feet. The eight worldly concerns are presented as four pairs of opposites: pleasure and pain, gain and loss, fame and disgrace, praise and blame.

Everything in our lives can wake us up or put us to sleep, and basically it's up to us to let it wake us up.

If we're willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. This is the first step on the path.

The most heartbreaking thing of all is how we cheat ourselves of the present moment.

We're not trying to be something we aren't; rather, we're rediscovering, reconnecting with who we are.

We think we'd be delighted to have an unconditional relationship, but that's only as long as it's on our own terms.

Each day, we're given many opportunities to open up or shut down. Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape—all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.

We don't experience the world fully unless we are willing to give everything away.

think of a time when you were angry, when someone said or did something that you didn't like, a time when you wanted to get even or you wanted to vent. Now, what if you had been able to stop, breathe deeply, and slow the process down? Right on the spot you could connect with natural openness. You could stop, give space, and empower the wolf of patience and courage instead of the wolf of aggression and violence.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again.

It is with this unfixated mind of prajna that we practice generosity, discipline, enthusiasm, patience, and meditation, moving from narrow-mindedness to flexibility and fearlessness.

Not getting what you want. Getting what you do not want. This is the root of all suffering. ~ Pema Chodron

When we hear about compassion, it naturally brings up working with others, caring for others. The reason we're often not there for others - whether for our child or our mother or someone who is insulting us or someone who frightens us - is that we're not there for ourselves. There are whole parts of ourselves that are so unwanted that whenever they begin to come up we run away.

When we stop seeking the familiarity of samsara, when we stop fighting the groundlessness of freedom from imputed meaning, emptiness becomes an experience of awe, of the infinite, of limitless pace.

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn't mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don't have to feel it's happening because we personally made the wrong move.

In the most ordinary terms, egolessness is a flexible identity. It manifests as inquisitiveness, as adaptability, as humor, as playfulness. It is our capacity to relax with not knowing, not figuring everything out, with not being at all sure about who we are, or who anyone else is, either. Every moment is unique, unknown, completely fresh.

We can drop the fundamental hope that there is a better "me" who one day will emerge. We can't just jump over ourselves as if we were not there. It's better to take a straight look at all our hopes and fears.

For an aspiring bodhisattva, the essential practice is to cultivate maitri, or loving-kindness.

What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.

The first noble truth says simply that it's part of being human to feel discomfort.

We can make ourselves miserable, or we can make ourselves strong. The amount of effort is the same. Right

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