Pema Chodron
If we begin to get in touch with whatever we feel with some kind of kindness, our protective shells will melt, and we'll find that more areas of our lives are workable. AS we learn to have compassion for ourselves, the circle of compassion for others-what and whom we can work with, and how-becomes wider.Collection: Kindness
We are not given any promises that, because of our noble intentions, everything will be okay. We learn that what truly heals is gratitude and tenderness. We [need] to transform our minds and actions for the sake of other people and for the future of the world.Collection: Gratitude
You must learn to sit with the restless, painful energy and not let the momentum pull you under and cause you to do the same thing over and over that's ruining your life and the lives of those around you.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Able
The sad part is that all we're trying to do is not feel that underlying uneasiness. The sadder part is that we proceed in such a way that the uneasiness only gets worse. The message here is that the only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, learn to stay with the itch and urge of shenpa, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn't continue to rule our lives, and the patterns that we consider unhelpful don't keep getting stronger as the days and months and years go by.Collection: Pain
Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what is going on, but that there is something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.Collection: Our World
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.Collection: Self
Things are as bad and as good as they seem. There's no need to add anything extra.Collection: Needs
You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts.Collection: Inner Strength
Feeling irritated, restless, afraid, and hopeless is a reminder to listen more carefully.Collection: Feelings
This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great compassion. It can humble us when we're arrogant and soften us when we are unkind.Collection: Heart
To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.Collection: Men
For one day, or for one day for a week, refrain from something you habitually do to run away, to escape. Pick something concrete, such as overeating or excessive sleeping or overworking or spending too much time texting or checking e-mails. Make a commitment to yourself to gently and compassionately work with refraining from this habit for this one day. Really commit to it. Do this with the intention that it will put you in touch with the underlying anxiety or uncertainty that you've been avoiding. Do it and see what you discover.Collection: Running
When you have made good friends with yourself, your situation will be more friendly too.Collection: Good Friend
If you ask why we meditate, I would say it's so we can become more flexible and tolerant to the present moment.Collection: Moments
Things become clear when there is no escape.Collection: Clear
So war and peace start in the human heart. Whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.Collection: Peace
All situations teach you, and often it's the tough ones that teach you best.Collection: Tough
Next, feel your heart, literally placing your hand on your chest if you find that helpful. This is a way of accepting yourself just as you are in that moment, a way of saying, "This is my experience right now, and it's okay." Then go into the next moment without any agenda.Collection: Heart
Sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears. We can bring ourselves back to the spiritual path countless times every day simply by exercising our willingness to rest in the uncertainty of the present moment—over and over again.Collection: Spiritual
The more we witness our emotional reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain.Collection: Emotional
When resistance is gone, the demons are gone.Collection: Inspirational
Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way.Collection: Keys
Compassion isn't some kind of self-improvement project or ideal that we're trying to live up to. Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves, all those imperfections that we don't even want to look at.Collection: Compassion
In the most ordinary terms, egolessness is a flexible identity. It manifests as inquisitiveness , as adaptability, as humor, as playfulness. It is our capacity to relax with not knowing, not figuring everything out, with not being at all sure who we are, or who anyone else is, either.Collection: Wisdom
The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are.Collection: Real
When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless.Collection: Soulmate
So many of us start along the spiritual path because we are suffering. But you must realize that for real healing to occur, there must first be deep compassion for yourself, especially the parts of yourself you dislike or consider ugly.Collection: Spiritual
All the wars, all the hatred, all the ignorance in the world come out of being so invested in our opinions.Collection: War
Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.Collection: Dies
We are like children building a sand castle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off limits to others. We’re willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea.Collection: Beautiful
Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. Even if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other side of the continent, we find the very same problem awaiting us when we arrive.Collection: Running
How do we cultivate the conditions for joy to expand? We train in staying present.Collection: Joy
We think that by protecting ourselves from suffering, we are being kind to ourselves. The truth is we only become more fearful, more hardened and more alienated. We experience ourselves as being separate from the whole. This separateness becomes like a prison for us - a prison that restricts us to our personal hopes and fears, and to caring only for the people nearest to us. Curiously enough, if we primarily try to shield ourselves from discomfort, we suffer. Yet, when we don't close off, when we let our hearts break, we discover our kinship with all beings.Collection: Truth
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Buddhist
This moving away from comfort and security, this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted and shaky - that's called liberation.Collection: Buddhist
As each breath goes out, let it be the end of that moment and the birth of something new. . .Collection: Birth
Appreciate everything, even the ordinary... Especially the ordinary.Collection: Appreciate
Openness doesn’t come from resisting our fears but rather from getting to know them well.Collection: Openness
Clarity and decisiveness come from the willingness to slow down, to listen to and look at what’s happening.Collection: Looks
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.Collection: Pain
Since death is certain and the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?Collection: Important
The peace that we are looking for is not peace that crumbles as soon as there is difficulty or chaos. Whether we’re seeking inner peace or global peace or a combination of the two, the way to experience it is to build on the foundation of unconditional openness to all that arises. Peace isn’t an experience free of challenges, free of rough and smooth, it’s an experience that’s expansive enough to include all that arises without feeling threatened.Collection: Two
Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.Collection: Challenges
It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up space.Collection: Filling Up
Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world.Collection: Warrior
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.Collection: Believe
Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.Collection: Fall