Quotes from Pema Chodron

The choices you make are creating your next moment, your next hour, your next day, your next month, your next year. Your whole lifetime is being determined moment by moment by the choices you make.

The main point is that we all need to be reminded and encouraged to relax with whatever arises and bring whatever we encounter to the path.

Things like disappointment and anxiety are messengers telling us that we're about to go into unknown territory.

Hacer una pausa en lugar de llenar inmediatamente el espacio es una experiencia transformadora. Cuando esperamos, empezamos a conectar tanto con la inquietud fundamental como con la amplitud fundamental.

Not harming ourselves or others in the beginning, not harming ourselves or others in the middle, and not harming ourselves or others in the end is the basis of enlightened society. This is how there could be a sane world. It starts with sane citizens, and that is us. The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.

What does this story mean? My understanding of it is that what we habitually regard as obstacles are not really our enemies, but rather our friends. What we call obstacles are really the way the world and our entire experience teach us where we're stuck.

Ritual is about joining vision and practicality, heaven and earth, samsara and nirvana. When things are properly understood, one's whole life is like a ritual or a ceremony.

It's a gradual awakening, and it's cumulative, but that's actually what happens. We don't sit in meditation to become good meditators. We sit in meditation so that we'll be more awake in our lives.

There isn't any hell or heaven except for how we relate to our world. Hell is just resistance to life. When you want to say no to the situation you're in, it's fine to say no, but when you build up a big case to the point where you're so convinced that you would draw your sword and cut off someone's head, that kind of resistance to life is hell.

Distraction is married to discontent

Without loving-kindness for ourselves it is difficult, if not impossible, to genuinely feel it for others.

Only to the degree that we've gotten to know our personal pain, only to the degree that we've related with pain at all, will we be fearless enough, brave enough, and enough of a warrior to be willing to feel the pain of others.

All the maras point the way to being completely awake and alive by letting go, by letting ourselves die moment after moment, at the end of each out-breath. When we wake up, we can live fully without seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, without re-creating ourselves when we fall apart.

Looking at the arrows and swords, and how we react to them, we can always return to basic wisdom mind. Rather than trying to get rid of something or buying into a dualistic sense of being attacked, we take the opportunity to see how we close down when we're squeezed. This is how we open our hearts. It is how we awaken our intelligence and connect with fundamental buddha nature.

When we are training in the art of peace, we are not given any promises that, because of our noble intentions, everything will be okay. In fact there are no promises of fruition at all. Instead we are encouraged to simply look deeply at joy and sorrow, at laughing and crying, at hoping and fearing, at all that lives and dies. We learn that what truly heals is gratitude and tenderness.

If your life is chaotic and stressful, there's plenty of advice here for you. If you're in transition, suffering from loss, or just fundamentally restless, these teachings are tailor made.

Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life, it might be the only strawberry we'll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." At

Buddha: Hatred never ceases by hatred But by love alone is healed.

we are all a paradoxical bundle of rich potential that consists of both neurosis and wisdom.

When your aspiration is to lighten up, you begin to have a sense of humor. Your serious state of mind keeps getting popped. In addition to a sense of humor, a basic support for a joyful mind is curiosity, paying attention, taking an interest in the world around you. Happiness is not required, but being curious without a heavy judgmental attitude helps. If you are judgmental, you can even be curious about that.

we ourselves can sort out what to accept and what to reject. We can discern what will make us complete, sane, grown-up people, and what—if we are too involved in it—will keep us children forever. This is the process of making friends with ourselves and with our world. It involves not just the parts we like, but the whole picture, because it all has a lot to teach us.

Bodhichitta is our heart – our wounded, softened heart. Right down here in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.

Fear is a universal experience. Even the smallest insect feels it.