Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we're stuck.
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
Obstacles
Stuck
Teach
Friends
More quotes by Pema Chodron
All situations teach you, and often it's the tough ones that teach you best.
Pema Chodron
Lean into the sharp points and fully experience them. The essence of bravery is being without self-deception. Wisdom is inherent in (understanding) emotions.
Pema Chodron
What you do for yourself, you're doing for others, and what you do for others, you're doing for yourself.
Pema Chodron
As for our inner level of obstacle, perhaps the only enemy we have is that we don't like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. But what we need to acknowledge is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
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
Things are as bad and as good as they seem. There's no need to add anything extra.
Pema Chodron
Just where you are-that's the place to start!
Pema Chodron
If you see a homeless person on the street, and they need food, housing, medical attention - if you can give that, do it. But at the same time, work with tonglen, because that is how you start dissolving the barrier between you and them.
Pema Chodron
When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.
Pema Chodron
Opening to the world begins to benefit ourselves and others simultaneously. The more we relate with others, the more quickly we discover where we're blocked.
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
Appreciate everything, even the ordinary... Especially the ordinary.
Pema Chodron
We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.
Pema Chodron
True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings.
Pema Chodron
Whatever you are doing, take the attitude of wanting it directly or indirectly to benefit others. Take the attitude of wanting it to increase your experience of kinship with your fellow beings.
Pema Chodron
All the terrible things we do to ourselves and others from alcoholism to character assignation to abuse to murder come from one cause: the inability to stay present with an uncomfortable feeling in the body and seek short-term relief.
Pema Chodron
If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it's fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there's an arrow in your heart.
Pema Chodron
Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.
Pema Chodron
Openness doesn’t come from resisting our fears but rather from getting to know them well.
Pema Chodron
Softening what is rigid in our hearts.
Pema Chodron