Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find compassion.
Pema Chodron
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Pema Chodron
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: July 14
Clergyman
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Deirdre Blomfield-Brow
Learn
Find
Orientation
Long
Unconditional
Never
Perfection
Friendship
Toward
Compassion
Success
More quotes by Pema Chodron
We don't set out to save the world we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people's hearts.
Pema Chodron
I can't overestimate the importance of accepting ourselves exactly as we are right now, not as we wish we were or think we ought to be.
Pema Chodron
Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear.
Pema Chodron
Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us.
Pema Chodron
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.
Pema Chodron
It's helpful to remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing with whatever arises, without picking and choosing.
Pema Chodron
Someone needs to encourage us not to brush aside what we feel. Not to be ashamed of the love and grief that it arouses in us. Not to be afraid of pain. Someone needs to encourage us: that this soft spot in us could be awakened, and that to do this would change our lives.
Pema Chodron
When there's a disappointment, I don't know if it's the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure.
Pema Chodron
If we begin to get in touch with whatever we feel with some kind of kindness, our protective shells will melt, and we'll find that more areas of our lives are workable. AS we learn to have compassion for ourselves, the circle of compassion for others-what and whom we can work with, and how-becomes wider.
Pema Chodron
Clarity and decisiveness come from the willingness to slow down, to listen to and look at what’s happening.
Pema Chodron
It isn't the things that are happening to us that cause us to suffer, it's what we say to ourselves about the things that are happening. The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
Pema Chodron
If you work with your mind, instead of trying to change everything on the outside, that's how your temper will cool down.
Pema Chodron
It isn't what happens to us that causes us to suffer it's what we say to ourselves about what happens.
Pema Chodron
Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.
Pema Chodron
To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always 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.
Pema Chodron
I have all the support I need to simply relax and be with the transitional, in-process quality of my life. I have all I need to engage in the process of awakening.
Pema Chodron
The future is the result of what we do right now.
Pema Chodron
At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.
Pema Chodron
It is possible to move through the drama of our lives without believing so earnestly in the character that we play.
Pema Chodron
Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what is going on, but that there is something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.
Pema Chodron
