Quotes from Pema Chodron

Life's work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along

With unfailing kindness, your life always presents what you need to learn.

So when I would start to become depressed, I would remember, "Now wait a minute. Maybe I just have to figure out how to rouse myself genuinely, because there are a lot of people suffering like this, and if I can do it, they can do it.

to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will. It's going to stick around until you learn your lesson, at any rate. You can leave your marriage, you can quit your job, you can only go where people are going to praise you, you can manipulate your world until you're blue in the face to try to make it always smooth, but the same old demons will always come up until finally you have learned your lesson, the lesson they came to teach you.

The second reminder is impermanence. Life is very brief. Even if we live to be a hundred, it's very brief.

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

We can be with what's happening and not dissociate. Awakeness is found in our pleasure and our pain, our confusion and our wisdom, available in each moment of our weird, unfathomable, ordinary everyday lives.

If you realize that you don't have that many more years to live and if you live your life as if you actually had only a day left, then the sense of impermanence heightens that feeling of preciousness and gratitude.

Whether we experience what happens to us as obstacle and enemy or as teacher and friend depends entirely on our perception of reality. It depends on our relationship with ourselves.

Everything is equally precious and whole and good, and everyone is equally precious and whole and good.

Remembering impermanence motivates you to go back and look at the teachings, to see what they tell you about how to work with your life, how to rouse yourself, how to cheer up, how to work with emotions.

From a gesture of generosity, true letting go will evolve.

Compassion involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us.

When we're thinking that we're competent or that we're hopeless—what are we basing it on? On this fleeting moment? On yesterday's success or failure? We cling to a fixed idea of who we are and it cripples us.

What I have realized through practicing is that practice isn't about beng the best horse or the good horse or the poor horse or the worst horse.

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

It is unconditional compassion for ourselves that leads naturally to unconditional compassion for others.

Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear. When I was first married, my husband said I was one of the bravest people he knew. When I asked him why, he said because I was a complete coward but went ahead and did things anyhow.

I learned today that life is very precious. Even when we're determined to block the magic, it will get through and wake us up.

Vivir es una forma de no estar seguro, de no saber lo que vendrá después ni en qué forma. En el momento en que sepamos cómo, empezaremos a morir un poco. Los artistas nunca sabemos nada del todo. Suponemos. Podemos estar equivocados, pero aun así nos lanzamos de un salto a la oscuridad una y otra vez. AGNES DE MILLE

Impermanence can teach you a lot about how to cheer up.

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

The state of nowness is available in that moment of squeeze. In that awkward, ambiguous moment is our own wisdom mind. Right there in the uncertainty of everyday chaos is our own wisdom mind.

Fear can make you start asking a lot of questions. If it doesn't get you down, it's going to start you wondering, "What's this fear? Where did it come from? What am I scared of?" Maybe you're scared of the most exciting things you have yet to learn. Impermanence is a great reminder.