Pema Chodron Quotes

The pain is always bringing me a lesson. If I listen to the lesson when the pain is manageable, the pain won't get gargantuan and flatten me entirely, because I will have received the message at the center. I receive it as gently as I can, because the cruelest thing that I do to myself is try to push myself through an experience.

In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.

I suppose there is a lot of toughness in me.

I've got that resilient thing inside me. But I wasn't a happy bunny.

These days cry out, as never before, for us to pay attention, so we can move through them and get our joy and pride back.

You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

People who know me know I'm strong, but I'm vulnerable.

I don't think of myself as unbreakable. Perhaps I'm just rather flexible and adaptable.

Dealing with depression effectively is a mark not of weakness, but of strength.

I want to show everyone in this world that the soul is the source of our happiness, strength and health. Love actually comes from the soul, from the light.

It's OK to feel pain and experience it. I'm not trying to fix myself. My suffering has given me so much.

It takes courage and intelligence, you know, to do the stages of Yoga right, and to start with this Hatha Yoga… It’s just you and nothing but you, standing in one spot frozen like a statue with no place to go for help or excuse or scapegoat except inward.

It was unbearable, and he thought again, 'How unhappy I am!' and became happier.

The next time you lose heart and you can’t bear to experience what you’re feeling, you might recall this instruction: change the way you see it and lean in. Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not rejecting it, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves. This is priceless advice that addresses the true cause of suffering—yours, mine, and that of all living beings.

Happiness and unhappiness are in the heart and spirit of each one of us: If you feel unhappy, then place yourself above that and act so that your happiness does not get to be dependent on anything.

A warrior is not about perfection or victory or invulnerability. He's about absolute vulnerability.

Snatching happiness takes a lot more courage than enduring unhappiness

It is not hard to live through a day, if you can live through a moment.

No matter how healthy, intelligent or affluent we may be, if our minds are weak, then our happiness will also be frail and brittle. Our minds of faith, moreover, enable us to bring out the full potential in all things and situations, so it is crucial that we strive to forge our minds of faith.

To be happy, one only must be able to confront, which is to say, experience, those things that are. Unhappiness is only this the inability to confront that which is.

When we really connect to that place of wisdom and strength and understanding, everything becomes easier.

When you understand yourself, that very day you have understood the whole of humanity. Then nobody can make you miserable.

The woman who survives intact and happy must be at once tender and tough.

I build myself back up and come back stronger. That's what I do.

Live with a peaceful heart; cultivate a warrior's spirit.