Quotes from Pema Chodron

Podemos toparnos con un perro de lanas o con un furioso perro guardián, pero lo interesante es: ¿qué ocurre a continuación?

But Ponlop Rinpoche added something really important to this statement. He said that without having a direct experience of our emotions, we can never touch the heart of buddha nature. We

We start with ourselves. We make ourselves right or we make ourselves wrong, every day, every week, every month and year of our lives. We feel that we have to be right so that we can feel good. We don't want to be wrong because then we'll feel bad. But we could be more compassionate toward all these parts of ourselves.

The path of the bodhisattva-warrior WHEREVER we are, we can train as a warrior. The practices of meditation, loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity are our tools.

El camino espiritual implica ir más allá de la esperanza y del miedo, entrar en territorio desconocido, avanzar continuamente.

If we begin to get in touch with whatever we feel with some kind of kindness, our protective shells will melt, and we'll find that more areas of our lives are workable. As we learn to have compassion for ourselves, the circle of compassion for others—what and whom we can work with, and how—becomes wider.

When we're feeling uncomfortable and irritable and fed up, our thoughts and emotions are probably revolving around something like pain, loss, disgrace, or blame.

When we practice discipline with flexibility, we become less moralistic and more tolerant.

Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news.

Loneliness is not a problem. Loneliness is nothing to be solved. The same is true for any other experience we might have.

What you do for yourself, any gesture of kindness, any gesture of gentleness, any gesture of honesty and clear seeing toward yourself, will affect how you experience your world. In fact, it will transform how you experience the world. What you do for yourself, you're doing for others, and what you do for others, you're doing for yourself. When you exchange yourself for others in the practice of tonglen, it becomes increasingly uncertain what is out there and what is in

If we commit ourselves to staying right where we are, then our experience becomes very vivid. Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape.

When people ask me how long this will take, I say, "At least until you die.

It's as if you just looked at yourself in the mirror, and you saw a gorilla. The mirror's there; it's showing you, and what you see looks bad. You try to angle the mirror so you will look a little better, but no matter what you do, you still look like a gorilla. That's being nailed by life, the place where you have no choice except to embrace what's happening or push it away.

A thoroughly good relationship with ourselves results in being still, which doesn't mean we don't run and jump and dance about. It means there's no compulsiveness. We don't overwork, overeat, oversmoke, overseduce. In short, we begin to stop causing harm.

When anything difficult arises—any kind of conflict, any notion of unworthiness, anything that feels distasteful, embarrassing, or painful—instead of trying to get rid of it, we breathe it in. The three poisons are passion (this includes craving or addiction), aggression, and ignorance (which includes denial or the tendency to shut down and close out). We would usually think of these poisons as something bad, something to

threefold purity—no big deal about the doer, no big deal about the action, no big deal about the result. This joyful exertion is rooted in no expectation, no ambition, no hope of fruition.

The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we find out that something is not what we thought.

problem." On the contrary, the idea isn't to get rid of ego but actually to begin to take an interest in ourselves, to investigate and be inquisitive about ourselves. The path of meditation and the path of our lives altogether has to do with curiosity, inquisitiveness. The

This was because I could see it for what it was, instead of getting immersed in it and sowing more seeds of feeling rejected.

We point our fingers at the wrongdoers, but we ourselves are mirror images; everyone is outraged at everyone else's wrongness.

if we look below the surface of the aggression, we'll generally find fear. There's something beneath the solidity of anger that feels very raw and sore.

A warrior begins to take responsibility for the direction of her life. It's as if we are lugging around unnecessary baggage. Our training encourages us to open the bags and look closely at what we are carrying. In doing this we begin to understand that much of it isn't needed anymore.

This starts with realizing that whatever occurs is neither the beginning nor the end. It is just the same kind of normal human experience that's been happening to everyday people from the beginning of time.