Quotes from Pema Chodron

When you find yourself slumping, that's the motivation to sit up, not out of self-denigration but actually out of pride in everything that occurs to you, pride in who you are just as you are, pride in the goodness or the fairness or the worstness of yourself—however you find yourself—some sort of sense of taking pride and using it to spur you on.

When we become aware that we are thinking, we say to ourselves, "thinking," with an unbiased attitude and with tremendous gentleness. Then we return our focus to the breath. We regard the thoughts as bubbles and the labeling like touching them with a feather. There's just this light touch—"thinking"—and they dissolve back into the space.

Hatred never ceases by hatred But by love alone is healed. This is an ancient and eternal law.

How honest do we want to be with ourselves?

Be fully present. Feel your heart. And engage the next moment without an agenda.

The truth is that when we really begin to do this, we're going to be continually humbled. There's not going to be much room for the arrogance that holding on to ideals can bring. The arrogance that inevitably does arise is going to be continually shot down by our own courage to step forward a little further.

Thoughts will run us around in circles if we buy into them, but really they are like dream images. They are like an illusion—not really all that solid. They are, as we say, just thinking.

Meditation is about seeing clearly the body that we have, the mind that we have, the domestic situation that we have, the job that we have, and the people who are in our lives.

This very moment is the perfect teacher.

in the teachings of many other contemplative or mystical traditions, the basic view is that people are fundamentally good and healthy. It's as if everyone who has ever been born has the same birthright, which is enormous potential of warm heart and clear mind. The

But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not knowing is part of the adventure, and it's also what makes us afraid. Bodhichitta

being right on the spot nails us. It nails us right to the point of time and space that we are in. When we stop there and don't act out, don't repress, don't blame it on anyone else, and also don't blame it on ourselves, then we meet with an open-ended question that has no conceptual answer.

We don't like to have our basic assumptions challenged. It's too threatening.

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

This can be the value of our personal suffering. We can understand firsthand that we are all in the same boat and that the only thing that makes any sense is to care for one another.

What we hate in ourselves, we'll hate in others. To the degree that we have compassion for ourselves, we will also have compassion for others.

But if, instead of thinking of these feelings as bad, we could think of them as road signs or barometers that tell us we're in touch with groundlessness, then we would see the feelings for what they really are: the gateway to liberation, an open doorway to freedom from suffering, the path to our deepest well-being and joy.

WHAT KEEPS US unhappy and stuck in a limited view of reality is our tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain, to seek security and avoid groundlessness, to seek comfort and avoid discomfort. This is how we keep ourselves enclosed in a cocoon.

We don't need that kind of encouragement, because dissociating from fear is what we do naturally.

Unwise selfish people think only of themselves, and the result is confusion and pain. Wise selfish people know that the best thing they can do for themselves is to be there for others. As a result, they experience joy.

That's what we're going to discover again and again and again. Nothing is what we thought.

We put up protective walls made of opinions, prejudices, and strategies, barriers that are built on a deep fear of being hurt. These walls are further fortified by emotions of all kinds: anger, craving, indifference, jealousy and envy, arrogance and pride.

But fortunately for us, the soft spot—our innate ability to love and to care about things—is like a crack in these walls we erect. It's a natural opening in the barriers we create when we're afraid.

We fear losing our illusion of security—that's what makes us anxious.