Quotes from Pema Chodron

This is the path we take in cultivating joy: learning not to armor our basic goodness, learning to appreciate what we have.

The innocent mistake that keeps us caught in our own particular style of ignorance, unkindness, and shut-downness is that we are never encouraged to see clearly what is, with gentleness.

The path is uncharted. It comes into existence moment by moment and at the same time drops away behind us. It's like riding in a train sitting backwards. We can't see where we're headed, only where we've been.

relax gradually and wholeheartedly into the ordinary and obvious truth of change.

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. It's about seeing how we react to all these things.

When you do tonglen, you invite the pain in. That's what opens your eyes, even though that's what shamatha is all about—seeing pain, seeing pleasure, seeing everything with gentleness and accuracy, without judging it, without pushing it away, becoming more open to it.

When the world is filled with evil, Transform all mishaps into the path of bodhi.

As adults, we can begin to cultivate a sense of loving-kindness for ourselves—by ourselves, for ourselves.

that a psychotic person is drowning in the very same things that a mystic swims in.

our minds wander off into all kinds of stories and fabrications and manufactured realities

Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we're going to be more cheerful in the future, it's because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.

si podemos mantener aunque sólo sea una relación incondicional con una persona, podemos tener una relación incondicional con el mundo.

Life is a good teacher and a good friend

Once I was sitting next to a man on an airplane who kept interrupting our conversation to take various pills. I asked him, "What is that you're taking?" He answered that they were tranquilizers. I said, "Oh, are you nervous?" and he said, "No, not now, but I think when I get home I'm going to be." You can laugh at this story, but what happens with you when you begin to feel uneasy, unsettled, queasy?

Even though there are so many teachings, so many meditations, so many instructions, the basic point of it all is just to learn to be extremely honest and also wholehearted about what exists in your mind—thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, the whole thing that adds up to what we call "me" or "I." Nobody else can really begin to sort out for you what to accept and what to reject in terms of what wakes you up and what makes you fall asleep.

Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what's out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it.

The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. . . Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there's some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. . . Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.

We are all capable of becoming fundamentalists because we get addicted to other people's wrongness.

True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings.

We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs - or we don't. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality- or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha's opinion, to train in staying open and curious - to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs - is the best use of our human lives.

Abandon hope.

The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.

It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately fill up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness. -Pema Chodron, from When Things Fall Apart

Everybody loves something, even if it's only tortillas.