Pema Chodron Quotes

“There's something delicious about finding fault with something. And that can be including finding fault with one's self, you know?”

— Pema Chodron

I equate ego with trying to figure everything out instead of going with the flow. That closes your heart and your mind to the person or situation that's right in front of you, and you miss so much.

— Pema Chodron

“You see, there really is no separation between you and everyone else.”

— Pema Chodron

All situations teach you, and often it's the tough ones that teach you best.

— Pema Chodron

By not knowing, not hoping to know and not acting like we know what's happening, we begin to access our inner strength.

— Pema Chodron

Use your life to wake you up.

— Pema Chodron

“Share the wealth. Be generous with your joy. Give away what you most want. Be generous with your insights and delights.”

— Pema Chodron

“When you have made good friends with yourself, your situation will be more friendly too.”

— Pema Chodron

“Unconditional good heart toward others is not even a possibility unless we attend to our own demons.”

— Pema Chodron

“If we want there to be peace in the world, we have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid in our hearts, to find the soft spot and stay with it. We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility. That's the true practice of peace.”

— Pema Chodron

“Although it is embarrassing and painful, it is very healing to stop hiding from yourself. It is healing to know all the ways that you're sneaky, all the ways that you hide out, all the ways that you shut down, deny, close off, criticize people, all your weird little ways. You can know all of that with some sense of humor and kindness. By knowing yourself, you're coming to know humanness altogether. We are all up against these things. We are all in this together.”

— Pema Chodron

“Let your curiosity be greater than your fear.”

— Pema Chodron

“If you ask why we meditate, I would say it's so we can become more flexible and tolerant to the present moment.”

— Pema Chodron

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.

— Pema Chodron

“Compassion starts with making friends with ourselves.”

— Pema Chodron

“Everything in our lives has the potential to wake us up or put us to sleep. Allowing it to awaken us is up to us.”

— Pema Chodron

Well, it starts with being willing to feel what we are going through. It starts with being willing to have a compassionate relationship with the parts of ourselves that we feel are not worthy of existing on the planet. If we are willing through meditation to be mindful not only of what feels comfortable, but also of what pain feels like, if we even aspire to stay awake and open to what we're feeling, to recognize and acknowledge it as best we can in each moment, then something begins to change.

— Pema Chodron

“Allow situations in your life to become your teacher.”

— Pema Chodron

“There isn't anything except your own life that can be used as ground for your spiritual practice. Spiritual practice is your life, twenty-four hours a day.”

— Pema Chodron

“When you refrain from habitual thoughts and behavior, the uncomfortable feelings will still be there. They don't magically disappear. Over the years, I've come to call resting with the discomfort "the detox period," because when you don't act on your habitual patterns, it's like giving up an addiction. You're left with the feelings you were trying to escape. The practice is to make a wholehearted relationship with that”

— Pema Chodron

“When we start out on a spiritual path we often have ideals we think we're supposed to live up to. We feel we're supposed to be better than we are in some way. But with this practice you take yourself completely as you are. Then ironically, taking in pain - breathing it in for yourself and all others in the same boat as you are heightens your awareness of exactly where you're stuck.”

— Pema Chodron

“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.”

— Pema Chodron

“The happiness we seek cannot be found through grasping, trying to hold on to things. It cannot be found through getting serious and uptight about wanting things to go in the direction we think will bring happiness. We are always taking hold of the wrong end of the stick. The point is that the happiness we seek is already here and it will be found through relaxation and letting go rather than through struggle.”

— Pema Chodron

“Our wisdom is all mixed up with what we call our neurosis. Our brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is all mixed up with our craziness and our confusion, and therefore it doesn't do any good to try to get rid of our so-called negative aspects, because in that process we also get rid of our basic wonderfulness. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we're doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we're doing. The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves.”

— Pema Chodron

If we Pause and breathe in and out, then we can have the experience of timeless presence, of the inexpressible wisdom and goodness of our own minds. We can look at the world with fresh eyes and hear things with fresh ears.

— Pema Chodron

Anyone who stands on the edge of the unknown, fully in the present without reference point, experiences groundlessness. That's when our understanding goes deeper, when we find that the present moment is a pretty vulnerable place and that this can be completely unnerving and completely tender at the same time.

— Pema Chodron

It's also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that's sitting right here right now ... with its aches and it pleasures ... is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.

— Pema Chodron

Better to join in with humanity than to set ourselves apart.

— Pema Chodron

Our patterns are well established, seductive, and comforting. Just wanting for them to be ventilated isn't enough. Those of us who struggle with this know.

— Pema Chodron

“What's encouraging about meditation is that, even if we shut down, we can no longer shut down in ignorance. We see very clearly that we're closing off. That in itself begins to illuminate the darkness of ignorance.”

— Pema Chodron

“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

“Sometimes we find that we like our thoughts so much that we don't want to let them go.”

— Pema Chodron

“If you have rage and righteously act it out and blame it all on others, it's really you who suffers. The other people and the environment suffer also, but you suffer more because you're being eaten up inside with rage, causing you to hate yourself more and more”

— Pema Chodron

“Resistance to unwanted circumstances has the power to keep those circumstances alive and well for a very long time.”

— Pema Chodron

“If you look back at history or you look at any place in the world where religious groups or ethnic groups or racial groups or political groups are killing each other, or families have been feuding for years and years, you can see - because you're not particularly invested in that particular argument - that there will never be peace until somebody softens what is rigid in their heart.”

— Pema Chodron

“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

“Nobody else can really begin to sort out for you what to accept and what to reject in terms of what wakes you up and what makes you fall asleep. No one else can really sort out for you what to accept - what opens up your world - and what to reject - what seems to keep you going round and round in some kind of repetitive misery.”

— Pema Chodron

“What if rather than being disheartened by the ambiguity, the uncertainty of life, we accepted it and relaxed into it?”

— Pema Chodron

“To put it concisely, we suffer when we resist the noble and irrefutable truth of impermanence and death.”

— Pema Chodron

We come to realize that other people's welfare is just as important as our own. In helping them, we help ourselves. In helping ourselves, we help the world.

— Pema Chodron

Whole-heartedn ess is a precious gift, but no one can actually give it to you. You have to find the path that has heart and then walk it impeccably ... It' s like someone laughing in your ear, challenging you to figure out what to do when you don't know what to do. It humbles you. It opens your heart.

— Pema Chodron

“When we cling to thoughts and memories, we are clinging to what cannot be grasped. When we touch these phantoms and let them go, we may discover a space, a break in the chatter, a glimpse of open sky. This is our birthright-the wisdom with which we were born, the vast unfolding display of primordial richness, primordial openness, primordial wisdom itself. When one thought has ended and another has not yet begun, we can rest in that space.”

— Pema Chodron

“Meditation is not about getting out of ourselves or achieving something better. It is about getting in touch with what you already are.”

— Pema Chodron

“Buddhist words such as compassion and emptiness don't mean much until we start cultivating our innate ability simply to be there with pain with an open heart and the willingness not to instantly try to get ground under our feet. For instance, if what we're feeling is rage, we usually assume that there are only two ways to relate to it. One is to blame others. Lay it all on somebody else; drive all blames into everyone else. The other alternative is to feel guilty about our rage and blame ourselves.”

— Pema Chodron

“Discomfort of any kind becomes the basis for practice. We breathe in knowing our pain is shared.”

— Pema Chodron

“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

“All ego really is, is our opinions, which we take to be solid, real, and the absolute truth about how things are.”

— Pema Chodron

“We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be.”

— Pema Chodron

“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

“Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.”

— Pema Chodron