Quote

Our patterns are well established, seductive, and comforting. Just wanting for them to be ventilated isn't enough. Those of us who struggle with this know.

Pema Chodron

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Pema Chodron
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: July 14
Clergyman
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Deirdre Blomfield-Brow
Enough
Karma
Established
Wanting
Patterns
Struggle
Practice
Wells
Seductive
Well
Comforting

More quotes by Pema Chodron

Image
When we feel left out, inadequate, or lonely, can we take a warrior’s perspective and contact bodhichitta?
Pema Chodron
Image
We don’t sit in meditation to become good meditators. We sit in meditation so that we’ll be more awake in our lives.
Pema Chodron
Image
We see how beautiful and wonderful and amazing things are, and we see how caught up we are. It isn’t that one is the bad part and one is the good part, but that it’s a kind of interesting, smelly, rich, fertile mess of stuff. When it’s all mixed up together, it’s us: humanness.
Pema Chodron
Image
Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important. The reason it's important is that, fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn't just ourselves that we're discovering. We're discovering the universe.
Pema Chodron
Image
Let your curiosity be greater than your fear.
Pema Chodron
Image
Patience is not learned in safety.
Pema Chodron
Image
we come to realize that other people's welfare is just as important as our own. In helping them, we help ourselves. In helping ourselves, we help the world.
Pema Chodron
Image
In truth, there is enormous space in which to live our everyday lives.
Pema Chodron
Image
Mindfulness is loving all the details of our lives, and awareness is the natural thing that happens: life begins to open up, and you realize that you're always standing at the center of the world.
Pema Chodron
Image
It isn't what happens to us that causes us to suffer it's what we say to ourselves about what happens.
Pema Chodron
Image
One way to practice staying present is to simply sit still for a while and listen. For one minute, listen to the sounds close to you. For one minute, listen to the sounds at a distance. Just listen attentively.
Pema Chodron
Image
Even if you don't feel appreciation, just look. Feel what you feel take an interest and be curious.
Pema Chodron
Image
People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all.
Pema Chodron
Image
Instead of asking ourselves, 'How can I find security and happiness?' we could ask ourselves, 'Can I touch the center of my pain? Can I sit with suffering, both yours and mine, without trying to make it go away? Can I stay present to the ache of loss or disgrace-disapp ointment in all its many forms-and let it open me?' This is the trick.
Pema Chodron
Image
At some point, we realize that what we do for ourselves benefits others, and what we do for others benefits us.
Pema Chodron
Image
If there's any possibility for enlightenment, it's right now, not at some future time. Now is the time.
Pema Chodron
Image
It becomes increasingly clear that we won’t be free of self-destructive patterns unless we develop a compassionate understanding of what they are.
Pema Chodron
Image
If your everyday practice is open to all your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that - then that will take you are far as you can go. And then you'll understand all the teachings that anyone has ever taught.
Pema Chodron
Image
The biggest obstacle to taking a bigger perspective on life is that our emotions capture and blind us.
Pema Chodron
Image
Honesty without kindness, humor, and goodheartedness can be just mean.
Pema Chodron