Quotes from Pema Chodron

It is only when we begin to relax with ourselves that meditation becomes a transformative process. Only when we relate with ourselves without moralizing, without harshness, without deception, can we let go of harmful patterns. Without maitri (metta), renunciation of old habits becomes abusive. This is an important point.

Once you create a self-justifying storyline, your emotional entrapment within it quadruples.

My experience with forgiveness is that it sort of comes spontaneously at a certain point and to try to force it it's not really forgiveness. It's Buddhist philosophy or something spiritual jargon that you're trying to live up to but you're just using it against yourself as a reason why you're not okay.

Times are difficult globally; awakening is no longer a luxury or an ideal. It's becoming critical. We don't need to add more depression, more discouragement, or more anger to what's already here. It's becoming essential that we learn how to relate sanely with difficult times. The earth seems to be beseeching us to connect with joy and discover our innermost essence. This is the best way that we can benefit others.

To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is. (The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 3)

In truth, there is enormous space in which to live our everyday lives.

When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast and limitless.

An emotion like anger that's an automatic response lasts just ninety seconds from the moment it's triggered until it runs its course. One and a half minutes, that's all. When it lasts any longer, which it usually does, it's because we've chosen to rekindle it.

Let the hard things in life break you. Let them effect you. Let them change you. Let these hard moments inform you. Let this pain be your teacher. The experiences of your life are trying to tell you something about yourself. Don't cop out on that. Don't run away and hide under your covers. Lean into it.

Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions.

Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world.

To be fully alive, fully human and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to always be in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.

The problem is that the desire to change is fundamentally a form of aggression toward yourself. The other problem is that our hang-ups, unfortunately or fortunately, contain our wealth. Our neurosis and our wisdom are made out of the same material. If you throw out your neurosis, you also throw out your wisdom.

One piece of advice that Don Juan gave to Carlos Castaneda 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.

Sometimes people's spiritual ideas become fixed and they use them against those who don't share their beliefs - in effect, becoming fundamentalist. It's very dangerous - the finger of righteous indignation pointing at someone who is identified as bad or wrong.

Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news." – Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher." - "You are the sky. Everything else – it's just the weather."-

All ego really is, is our opinions, which we take to be solid, real, and the absolute truth about how things are.

Quando la nostra mente è riempita dal calore dell'umorismo, entriamo in contatto con il meglio che c'è in noi. accogliere l'inaccettabile p#120

Hell is just resistance to life.

The teachings say that when we die, we experience it as waking up from a very long dream. When I heard this teaching, I remembered my friend's nightmares. It struck me right then that if all this is really a dream, I might as well spend it trying to look at what scares me instead of running away.

The way to dissolve our resistance to life is to meet it face to face. When we feel resentment because the room is too hot, we could meet the heat and feel its fieriness and its heaviness.

Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time—that is the basic message.

this letting things go is sometimes called nonattachment, but not with the cool, remote quality often associated with that word. this nonattachment has more kindness and more intimacy than that. it's actually a desire to know, like the questions of a three-year-old. we want to know our pain so we can stop endlessly running. we want to know our pleasure so we can stop endlessly grasping.