Quote

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

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
Resist
Enlightenment
Approach
Circumstances
Path
Use
Best
Unwanted
Way
Lean

More quotes by Pema Chodron

Image
When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into it’s dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment
Pema Chodron
Image
What you do for yourself, any gesture of kindness, any gesture of gentleness, any gesture of honesty and clear seeing toward yourself, will affect how you experience your world. In fact, it will transform how you experience the world. What you do for yourself, you’re doing for others, and what you do for others, you’re doing for yourself.
Pema Chodron
Image
There is no cultivation of patience when your pattern is to just try to seek harmony and smooth everything out. Patience implies willingness to be alive rather than trying to seek harmony.
Pema Chodron
Image
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
Image
The more neurosis the more wisdom.
Pema Chodron
Image
Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape - all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.
Pema Chodron
Image
It's important to remember, when we're out there aggressively working for reform, that, even if our particular issue doesn't get resolved, we are adding peace to the world. We have to do our best and at the same time give up all hope of fruition.
Pema Chodron
Image
The future is the result of what we do right now.
Pema Chodron
Image
Every small problem most likely stems from the same root as large problems, and so there is no need to always go deep. One can use anything for the therapeutic process and/if this link is made.
Pema Chodron
Image
Resisting what is happening is a major cause of suffering.
Pema Chodron
Image
Use your life to wake you up.
Pema Chodron
Image
We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.
Pema Chodron
Image
To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
Pema Chodron
Image
The only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn't continue to rule your life.
Pema Chodron
Image
Never give up on yourself. Then you will never give up on others.
Pema Chodron
Image
Awareness is the key. Do we see the stories that we're telling ourselves and question their validity?
Pema Chodron
Image
Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear.
Pema Chodron
Image
Each time you stay present with fear and uncertainty, you're letting go of a habitual way of finding security and comfort.
Pema Chodron
Image
None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine.
Pema Chodron
Image
My moods are continuously shifting like the weather.
Pema Chodron