Pema Chödrön Quotes
If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
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.
A further sign of health is that we don't become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it's time to stop struggling and look directly at what's threatening us.
While we are sitting in meditation, we are simply exploring humanity and all of creation in the form of ourselves.
Patience is the training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed.
Sitting meditation gives us a way to move closer to our thoughts and emotions and to get in touch with our bodies.
Words themselves are neutral. It's the charge we add to them that matters
The problem is that the desire to change is fundamentally a form of aggression toward yourself.
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.
The path of meditation and the path of our lives altogether ha to do with curiosity, inquisitiveness.
We're here to get to know and study ourselves. The path, the way to do that, our main vehicle, is going to be meditation, and some sense of general wakefulness.
Meditation is a process of lightening up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and of realizing that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have.
We don't have to be harsh with ourselves when we think, sitting here, that our meditation or our oryoki or the way we are in the world is in the category of worst horse.
In order to work with difficult outer circumstances, we need to gather our inner strength. If even ten or twenty minutes of meditation a day helps us to do this, let's go for it!
Making good use of our limited time - the limited time from birth to death, as well as our limited time each day - is the key to developing inner steadiness and calm.
The meditation technique itself cultivate precision, gentleness, and the ability to let go - qualities that are innate within us.
The first noble truth says simply that it’s part of being human to feel discomfort.
there’s more to liberation than trying to avoid discomfort, more to lasting happiness than pursuing temporary pleasures, temporary relief.
As the twelfth-century Tibetian yogi Milarepa said when he heard of his student Gampopa's peak experiences, 'They are neither good nor bad. Keep meditating.'
In reality, when you feel depressed, lonely, betrayed, or any unwanted feelings, this is an important moment on the spiritual path. This is when real transformation can take place.
A much more interesting, kind, adventurous, and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiviness is bitter or sweet.
Meditation practice is not about later, when you get it all together and you’re this person you really respect.
IN practicing meditation, we’re not trying to live up to some kind of ideal—quite the opposite.
Many religions have meditations on death to let it penetrate our thick skulls that life doesn’t last forever.
In sitting meditation, we train in mindfulness and unconditional friendliness: in being steadfast with our bodies, our emotions, our thoughts.
Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better.
PATIENCE is the antidote to anger, a way to learn to love and care for whatever we meet on the path.
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.
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.
Pointing directly at your own heart, you find Buddha.
There isn’t any hell or heaven except for how we relate to our world. Hell is just resistance to life.
In sitting meditation, our practice is to watch our thoughts arise, label them "thinking", and return to the breath.
It's helpful to always remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing withwhatever arises, without picking and choosing.
Sitting meditation begins with good posture.
Meditation practice is how we discover basic goodness and learn to cultivate bodhichitta. With this view, practice, and activity, even the most mundane situation becomes a vehicle for awakening.
Yesterday I talked about cultivating precision, gentleness, and openess, and described how the meditation technique helps us to remember the qualities that we already possess.
We can learn to act and think in ways that sow seeds of our future well-being, gradually becoming more aware of what causes happiness as well as what causes distress.