Pema Chodron
Pema Chodron
Pema Chödrönis an American, Tibetan Buddhist. She is an ordained nun, acharya and disciple of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Chodron has written several books and is the director of the Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, Canada...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth14 July 1936
CountryUnited States of America
compassion self imperfection
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.
compassion roots oneself
The root of compassion, is compassion for oneself.
patterns enough feels
One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is to feel that now is not enough.
inspirational heart eye
When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You're able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die. And, you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently.
fall healing buddhism
Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.
struggle anxiety challenges
Anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. It's the kind of place we usually want to avoid. The challenge is to stay in the middle rather than buy into struggle and complaint. The challenge is to let it soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid.
buddhism empowering getting-what-you-want
Buddhism itself is all about empowering yourself, not about getting what you want.
pain heart people
The next step is to learn to communicate with the people that you feel are causing your pain and misery- not to learn how to prove them wrong and yourself right but how to communicate from the heart.
essence path discomfort
The essence of our whole path is in that place of discomfort, and what do we do with it?
sleep our-lives allowing
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.
dream hope teacher
When Things Fall Apart” and I quote “Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don't get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It's a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs.
cheerful moments results
Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we're going to be more cheerful in the future, it's because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.
emotional down-and way
Not causing harm requires staying awake. Part of being awake is slowing down enough to notice what we say and do. The more we witness our emotional chain reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain. It becomes a way of life to stay awake, slow down, and notice.
live-in-the-moment enlightenment moments
If there's any possibility for enlightenment, it's right now, not at some future time. Now is the time.