Quote

Allow situations in your life to become your teacher.

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
Situations
Allow
Teacher
Situation
Become
Life

More quotes by Pema Chodron

Image
Few of us are satisfied with retreating from the world and just working on ourselves. We want our training to manifest and to be of benefit. The bodhisattva-warrior, therefore, makes a vow to wake up not just for himself but for the welfare of all beings.
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
Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.
Pema Chodron
Image
It has a lot to do with developing patience, not with the check-out person so much, but with your own pain that arises, the rawness and the vulnerability, and sending some kind of warmth and love to that rawness and soreness. I think that's how we have to practice.
Pema Chodron
Image
It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately fill up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness. -Pema Chodron, from When Things Fall Apart
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
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
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
Enlightenment is a direct experience with reality.
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
Our neurosis and our wisdom are made out of the same material. If you throw out your neurosis, you also throw out your wisdom.
Pema Chodron
Image
Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum and don't interrupt our patterns slightly. When we feel betrayed or disappointed, does it occur to us to practice?
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
A heartfelt sense of aspiring cuts through negativity about yourself it cuts through the heavy trips you lay on yourself.
Pema Chodron
Image
Treat yourself as your own beloved child.
Pema Chodron
Image
This is the tendency of all living things: to avoid pain and to cling to pleasure.
Pema Chodron
Image
Don't worry about achieving. Don't worry about perfection. Just be there each moment as best you can. When you realize you've wandered off again, simply very lightly acknowledge that. This light touch is the golden key to reuniting with our openness.
Pema Chodron
Image
In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves.
Pema Chodron
Image
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
Image
Being preoccupied with our self-image is like being deaf and blind. It's like standing in the middle of a vast field of wildflowers with a black hood over our heads. It's like coming upon a tree of singing birds while wearing earplugs.
Pema Chodron