Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
If it's painful, you become willing not just to endure it but also to let it awaken your heart and soften you. You learn to embrace it.
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
Pain
Soften
Become
Awaken
Also
Endure
Heart
Painful
Embrace
Willing
Hurt
Learn
More quotes by Pema Chodron
Welcome the present moment as if you had invited it. It is all we ever have, so we night as well work with it rather than struggling against it. We might as well make it our friend and teacher rather than our enemy.
Pema Chodron
When you have made good friends with yourself, your situation will be more friendly too.
Pema Chodron
Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.
Pema Chodron
The Buddha taught that we're not actually in control, which is a pretty scary idea. But when you let things be as they are, you will be a much happier, more balanced, compassionate person.
Pema Chodron
The approach is that the best way to use unwanted circumstances on the path of enlightenment is not to resist but to lean into them.
Pema Chodron
Enlightenment is a direct experience with reality.
Pema Chodron
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
We can drop the fundamental hope that there is a better me who one day will emerge. We can't just jump over ourselves as if we were not there.
Pema Chodron
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
Rather than becoming more relaxed, you start pulling down the shades and locking the door. When you do go out, you find the experience more and more unsettling and disagreeable. You become touchier, more fearful, more irritable than ever. The more you try to get it your way, the less you feel at home.
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
Trying to change ourselves doesn't work in the long run because we're resisting our own energy. Self-improvemen t can have temporary results, but lasting transformation occurs only when we honor ourselves as the source of wisdom and compassion.
Pema Chodron
Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss, or tranquillity, nor is it attempting to become a better person. It is simply the creation of a space in which we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our self-deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes.
Pema Chodron
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
it is only to the extent that we are willing to expose ourselves again and again to annihilation that we are able to find that part of ourselves that is indestructible.
Pema Chodron
Let your curiosity be greater than your fear.
Pema Chodron
The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.
Pema Chodron
Unconditional good heart toward others is not even a possibility unless we attend to our own demons.
Pema Chodron
Meditation isn't really about getting rid of thoughts, it's about changing the pattern of grasping on to things, which in our everyday experience is our thoughts.
Pema Chodron
I equate ego with trying to figure everything out instead of going with the flow. That closes your heart and your mind to the person or situation that's right in front of you, and you miss so much.
Pema Chodron
