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
patterns world resolution
We are undoing a pattern... It's the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of attaining resolution.
ideas confusion understanding
The idea is to develop sympathy for your own confusion.
real who-we-are renounce
The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are.
pain moving warrior
On the journey of the warrior-bodhisattva, the path goes down, not up, as if the mountain pointed toward the earth instead of the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward turbulence and doubt however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, companions in awakening from fear.
emotional meditation reactions
The more we witness our emotional reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain.
essence way one-way
Nothing in its essence is one way or the other.
spiritual buddhist philosophy
My experience with forgiveness is that it sort of comes spontaneously at a certain point and to try to force it it's not really forgiveness. It's Buddhist philosophy or something spiritual jargon that you're trying to live up to but you're just using it against yourself as a reason why you're not okay.
feelings ego acting
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.
letting-go old-habits meditation
It is only when we begin to relax with ourselves that meditation becomes a transformative process. Only when we relate with ourselves without moralizing, without harshness, without deception, can we let go of harmful patterns. Without maitri (metta), renunciation of old habits becomes abusive. This is an important point.
believe long suffering
The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last—that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.
escaping mind monsters
We can spend our whole lives escaping from the monsters of our minds. (36)
neurosis
The more neurosis the more wisdom.
want path get-away
I'm here to tell you that the path to peace is right there, when you want to get away.
pain years trying
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.