Quotes About Forgiveness

I realized that it is these two things that staying with regrets offers: It can become the seed of compassion and empathy so that you can stand in the shoes of other people because you're feeling exactly what they feel. And it spurs you on to help people in the future rather than hurt them.

Right now, can you make an unconditional relationship with yourself? Just at the height you are, the weight you are, with the intelligence that you have, and your current burden of pain? Can you enter into an unconditional relationship with that?

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.

It's painful to face how we harm others, and it takes a while. It's a journey that happens because of our commitment to gentleness and honesty, our commitment to staying awake, to being mindful. Because of mindfulness, we see our desires and our aggression, our jealousy and our ignorance. We don't act on them; we just see them. Without mindfulness

When we hear about compassion, it naturally brings up working with others, caring for others. The reason we're often not there for others - whether for our child or our mother or someone who is insulting us or someone who frightens us - is that we're not there for ourselves. There are whole parts of ourselves that are so unwanted that whenever they begin to come up we run away.

IN ORDER to feel compassion for other people, we have to feel compassion for ourselves. In particular, to care about people who are fearful, angry, jealous, overpowered by addictions of all kinds, arrogant, proud, miserly, selfish, mean, you name it—to have compassion and to care for these people means not to run from the pain of finding these things in ourselves.

I realized that it is these two things that staying with regrets offers: It can become the seed of compassion and empathy so that you can stand in the shoes of other people because you'er feeling exactly what they feel. And it spurs you on to help people in the future rather than hurt them.

There comes a time when we are able to be pierced to the heart by our own suffering and the suffering of others, and by our own regrets, without it dragging us down. We can hold the sadness of life in our hearts while never forgetting the beauty of the world, and the goodness of being alive.

Often we think of the people we don't like as our enemies, but in fact, they're all-important to us. They're our greatest teachers: special messengers who show up just when we need them, to point out our fixed identity.

Booker T. Washington was right when he said, "Let no man pull you so low as to make you hate him.

If we were to come up with one word about each of the troublemakers in our lives, we would find ourselves with a list of descriptions of our own rejected qualities.

We are all children of the Great Spirit, we all belong to Mother Earth. Our planet is in great trouble and if we keep carrying old grudges and do not work together, we will all die. —CHIEF SEATTLE

From a gesture of generosity, true letting go will evolve.

It is unconditional compassion for ourselves that leads naturally to unconditional compassion for others.

Taking the leap involves making a commitment to ourselves and to the earth itself—making a commitment to let go of old grudges, to not avoid people and situations and emotions that make us feel uneasy, to not cling to our fears

Among them was a man who had killed people in the Vietnam War and was tortured by self-loathing and guilt. Chögyam Trungpa told him, "That was then. This is now. You can always connect with your true nature at any time and be free of everything that went before.

An analogy for bodhichitta is the rawness of a broken heart. Sometimes this broken heart gives birth to anxiety and panic, sometimes to anger, resentment, and blame.

when we harm another, we are harming ourselves.

If we find ourselves unworkable and give up on ourselves, then we'll find others unworkable and give up on them.

Did someone harm you in 1962.. let go of it! Control and ride the horses of anger.

Resentments are hardened chunks of anger. They loosen up and dissolve with forgiveness and letting go.

To abandon yourself to rage is often to bring upon yourself the fault of another.

I didn't enjoy working with Bill [Murray]. We fought a lot... but I've let go of some of the anger and we seem to get along fine now.

Every present anger derives from past weakness.