Quotes from Pema Chodron

Even if you were the Buddha himself, if you were a fully enlightened person, you would experience death, illness, aging, and sorrow at losing what you love. All of these things would happen to you. If you got burned or cut, it would hurt.

What we're talking about is getting to know fear, becoming familiar with fear, looking it right in the eye—not as a way to solve problems, but as a complete undoing of old ways of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and thinking.

This is where, through my mindfulness and my tonglen and everything that I do, my whole life is a process of learning how to make friends with myself.

It's not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share.

The path of meditation and the path of our lives altogether ha to do with curiosity, inquisitiveness.

No one ever tells us to stop running away from fear. We are very rarely told to move closer, to just be there, to become familiar with fear. I once asked the Zen master Kobun Chino Roshi how he related with fear, and he said, "I agree. I agree." But the advice we usually get is to sweeten it up, smooth it over, take a pill, or distract ourselves, but by all means make it go away.

Hour after hour we sit here and just come back to the present moment as much as we can, acknowledge what's going on in our minds, come back to the present moment as much as we can, acknowledge what's going on in our minds, follow the out-breath, label our thoughts "thinking," come back to the present moment, acknowledge what's going on in our minds.

On the other hand, this need to cling, this need to hold the hand, this cry for Mom, also shows you that that's the edge of the nest. Stepping through right there—making a leap—becomes the motivation for cultivating maitri. You realize that if you can step through that doorway, you're going forward, you're becoming more of an adult, more of a complete person, more whole.

In Tibetan there are several words for mind, but two that are particularly helpful to know are sem and rikpa. Sem is what we experience as discursive thoughts, a stream of chatter that's always reinforcing an image of ourselves. Rikpa literally means "intelligence" or "brightness.

Uno de los muchos dones de la meditación es que nos ayuda a interesarnos por nuestras vidas con curiosidad y expansión, en lugar de adoptar la posición de ver todas las complejidades que se nos presentan como una lucha constante.

En la meditación enseñamos a dejar que la piedra, la emoción, caiga sin producir ondas.

Working with obstacles is life's journey. The warrior is always coming up against dragons. Of course the warrior gets scared, particularly before the battle. It's frightening. But with a shaky, tender heart the warrior realizes that he or she is just about to step into the unknown, and then goes forth to meet the dragon.

La impermanencia es la bondad de la realidad. Todo evoluciona constantemente, como las cuatro estaciones que están en continuo flujo: del invierno pasamos a la primavera, al verano y después al otoño; como el día que se convierte en noche: la luz que se convierte en oscuridad y pasa a ser nuevamente luz. La impermanencia es la esencia de todo:

Everything that occurs is not only usable and workable but is actually the path itself. We can use everything that happens to us as the means for waking up. We can use everything that occurs—whether it's our conflicting emotions and thoughts or our seemingly outer situation—to show us where we are asleep and how we can wake up completely, utterly, without reservations.

Don't make gods into demons.

In fact, anyone who stands on the edge of the unknown, fully in the present without reference point, experiences groundlessness. That's when our understanding goes deeper, when we find that the present moment is a pretty vulnerable place and that this can be completely unnerving and completely tender at the same time.

soften, to connect with your heart and engender a basic attitude of generosity and compassion toward yourself, the archetypal coward.

What makes maitri such a different approach is that we are not trying to solve a problem. We are not striving to make pain go away or to become a better person. In fact, we are giving up control altogether and letting concepts and ideals fall apart.

Suzuki Roshi gave the instructions, 'sit still. Don't anticipate...

Taking refuge in the buddha means that you are willing to spend your life acknowledging or reconnecting with your awakeness, learning that every time you meet the dragon you take off more armor, particularly the armor that covers your heart.

The Navajo teach their children that every morning when the sun comes up, it's a brand-new sun. It's born each morning, it lives for the duration of one day, and in the evening it passes on, never to return again.

The main question is, are we living in a way that adds further aggression and self-centeredness to the mix, or are we adding some much-needed sanity?

Acknowledging the preciousness of each day is a good way to live, a good way to reconnect with our basic joy.

No matter how committed we are to unkindness, selfishness, or greed, the genuine heart of bodhicitta cannot be lost. It is here in all that lives, never marred and completely whole.