Quote

Searching for happiness prevents us from ever finding it.

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
Findings
Finding
Happiness
Ever
Prevents
Searching

More quotes by Pema Chodron

Image
Ego is something that you come to know - something that you befriend by not acting out or by repressing all the feelings that you feel.
Pema Chodron
Image
That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. Everything is in process.
Pema Chodron
Image
Patience is not learned in safety.
Pema Chodron
Image
Allow situations in your life to become your teacher.
Pema Chodron
Image
How will we experience the world a month, a year, or five years from now? Will we be even angrier, more grasping and fearful, or will some shift have occurred? This depends entirely on the tendencies we reinforce today.
Pema Chodron
Image
Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live.
Pema Chodron
Image
We can put our whole heart into whatever we do but if we freeze our attitude into for or against, we're setting ourselves up for stress. Instead, we could just go forward with curiosity, wondering where this experiment will lead. This kind of open-ended inquisitiveness captures the spirit of enthusiasm, or heroic perseverance.
Pema Chodron
Image
When we feel left out, inadequate, or lonely, can we take a warrior’s perspective and contact bodhichitta?
Pema Chodron
Image
Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic-this is the spiritual path.
Pema Chodron
Image
The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last—that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.
Pema Chodron
Image
To live is to be willing to die over and over again.
Pema Chodron
Image
Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s the ground, that’s what we study, that’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.
Pema Chodron
Image
When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless.
Pema Chodron
Image
Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there's anywhere to hide.
Pema Chodron
Image
When we scratch the wound and give into our addictions we do not allow the wound to heal.
Pema Chodron
Image
What you do for yourself, you're doing for others, and what you do for others, you're doing for yourself.
Pema Chodron
Image
One can appreciate & celebrate each moment — there’s nothing more sacred. There’s nothing more vast or absolute. In fact, there’s nothing more!
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
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
Image
Each of us has a soft spot: the place in our experience where we feel vulnerable and tender. This soft spot is inherent in appreciation and love, and it is equally inherent in pain.
Pema Chodron