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 CHODRONNothing 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.
More Pema Chodron Quotes
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The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.
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If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
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We have a choice. We can spend our whole life suffering because we can’t relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased.
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The best spiritual instruction is when you wake up in the morning and say, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen today.’ And then carry that kind of curiosity through your life.
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Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way.
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Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions.
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As our kindness for ourselves grows, so does our kindness for other people.
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Openness doesn’t come from resisting our fears but rather from getting to know them well.
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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.
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Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear.
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Resisting what is happening is a major cause of suffering.
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One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is to feel that now is not enough.
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Our true nature is like a precious jewel: although it may be temporarily buried in mud, it remains completely brilliant and unaffected. We simply have to uncover it.
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In the end, that’s what we all need more than anything else: to be there for each other, in every kind of situation.
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When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into it’s dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment.
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