Quotes About Acceptance

Without giving up hope—that there's somewhere better to be, that there's someone better to be—we will never relax with where we are or who we are.

What happens with you when you begin to feel uneasy, unsettled, queasy? Notice the panic, notice when you instantly grab for something. (51)

Trying to run away is never the answer to being a fully human. Running away from the immediacy of our experience is like preferring death to life.

When we touch the center of sorrow, when we sit with discomfort without trying to fix it, when we stay present to the pain of disapproval or betrayal and let it soften us, these are times that we connect with bohdichitta.

Be grateful to everyone is about making peace with the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected... If we were to make a list of people we don't like - people we find obnoxious, threatening, or worthy of contempt - we would discover much about those aspects of ourselves that we can't face... other people trigger the karma that we haven't worked out.

None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine.

Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.

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 all the time—that is the basic message.

Don't let life harden your heart.

Pain is not a punishment, pleasure is not a reward.

Things are as bad and as good as they seem. There's no need to add anything extra.

Patience is the training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed.

we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.

Affirmations are like screaming that you're okay in order to overcome this whisper that you're not... maybe you're not okay. Well, no big deal. None of us is okay and all of us are fine.

The more we make friends with ourselves, the more we can see that our ways of shutting down and closing off are rooted in the mistaken thinking that the way to get happy is to blame somebody else.

Scrambling for security has never brought anything but momentary joy.

Maybe the most important teaching is to lighten up and relax. It's such a huge help in working with our crazy mixed-up minds to remember that what we're doing is unlocking a softness that is in us and letting it spread. We're letting it blur the sharp corners of self-criticism and complaint.

Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. We

Transformation occurs only when we remember, breath by breath, year after year, to move toward our emotional distress without condemning or justifying our experience.

The root of suffering is resisting the certainty that no matter what the circumstances, uncertainty is all we truly have.

It helps to remember that our spiritual practice is not about accomplishing anything—not about winning or losing—but about ceasing to struggle and relaxing as it is.

What causes misery is always trying to get away from the facts of life, always trying to avoid pain and seek happiness—this sense of ours that there could be lasting security and happiness available to us if we could only do the right thing.

Life's work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will. It's going to stick around until you learn your lesson, at any rate.

One of the main discoveries of meditation is seeing how we continually run away from the present moment, how we avoid being here just as we are.