Quotes from Pema Chodron

key instruction is to stay in the present. Don't get caught up in hopes of what you'll achieve and how good your situation will be some day in the future. What you do right now is what matters.

When one thought has ended and another has not begun, we can rest in that space.

Existe muito ressentimento e resistência à vida. Em todos países, isso é como uma praga que fugiu ao controle e está envenenando a atmosfera do mundo. Nesta altura dos acontecimentos, seria sensato pensar sobre essa situação e acostumar-se a desenvolver a bondade amorosa.

Trying to get lasting security teaches us a lot, because if we never try to do it, we never notice that it can't be done. Turning our minds toward the dharma speeds up the process of discovery.

The path of meditation isn't always a linear path. It's not like you begin to open, and you open more and more and you settle more and more, and then all of a sudden the confining box is gone forever. There are setbacks. Change happens, even in our practice. This is a fundamental truth. Everything is always changing because it's alive and dynamic.

Learning not to cause harm to ourselves or others is a basic Buddhist teaching on the healing power of nonaggression.

31 Don't malign others.     COMMENTARY You speak badly of others thinking it will make you feel superior. This only sows seeds of meanness in your heart, causing others not to trust you and causing you to suffer.

Realizing our wealth would end our bewilderment and confusion. But the only way to do that is to let things fall apart. And that's the very thing that we dread the most—the ultimate defeat. Yet letting things fall apart would actually let fresh air into this old, stale basement of a heart that we've got.

Everywhere we go, we see the misery that comes from buying into the eight worldly dharmas. It's also pretty obvious that people need help and that there's no way to benefit anybody unless we start with ourselves.

Being caught by the lord of speech may start with just a reasonable conviction about what we feel to be true. However, if we find ourselves becoming righteously indignant, that's a sure sign that we've gone too far and that our ability to effect change will be hindered.

Then I remembered: sitting still in the middle of a fire or a tornado or an earthquake or a tidal wave, sitting still. This provides the opportunity to experience once again the living quality of our life's energy—earth, air, fire, and water.

the cessation of suffering is letting go of holding on to ourselves.

May I enjoy happiness and the root of happiness. May you enjoy happiness and the root of happiness. May all beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.

Traditionally it's said that the cause of suffering is clinging to our narrow view. Another way to say the same thing is that resisting our complete unity with all of life, resisting the fact that we change and flow like the weather, that we have the same energy as all living things, resisting that is what's called ego.

This is the happiness of egolessness. It's the joy of realizing there is no prison; there are only very strong habits, and no sane reason for strengthening them further. In essence these habits are insubstantial. Moreover, there is no solid self-identity or separateness. We've invented it all. It is this realization that we want for the endless multitudes of beings.

We don't deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.

resentful or we can touch in on that throbbing quality. There is definitely something tender and throbbing about groundlessness.

Meditation is a process of transformation, instead of a process of becoming more and more set in our ways. And, as you know, as we get older it's very common to become increasingly fixed in our habits. But then you do meet people who, for some reason, are becoming more and more flexible and open as they age. Which kind of person do you want to be?

But please don't go away from here thinking that meditation is a vacation from irritation.

One piece of advice that Don Juan gave to Carlos Casteneda was to do everything as if it were the only thing in the world that mattered, while all the time knowing that it doesn't matter at all. That attitude leads to more appreciation and less burnout, because we do the job wholeheartedly and we care.

We can use our lives, in other words, to wake up to the fact that we're not separate: the energy that causes us to live and be whole and awake and alive is just the energy that creates everything, and we're part of that. We can use our lives to connect with that, or we can use them to become resentful, alienated, resistant, angry, bitter. As always, it's up to us.

They were tested and failed and still kept exploring how to just stay there, not seeking solid ground.

Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing

When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience our fear of pain. Compassion practice is daring.