Pema Chodron Quotes

The basic premise of 'A Course in Miracles' is that it teaches us to relinquish thoughts based on fear and to accept instead thoughts based on love.

Radical Acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as it is.

Don't turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That's where the light enters you.

To give and receive love, you have to be in touch with pain, you have to be capable of provoking it and feeling it.

If you wish to be loved, show more of your faults than your virtues.

Love is the total absence of fear. Love asks no questions. Its natural state is one of extension and expansion, not comparison and measurement.

I understand now that the vulnerability I've always felt is the greatest strength a person can have. You can't experience life without feeling life. What I've learned is that being vulnerable to somebody you love is not a weakness, it's a strength.

I've spent quite a bit of my life as a meditation teacher and writer commending the strengths of love and compassion.

I was 29 and I really fell in love, I think, for the first time. I was vulnerable in a way I didn't think I could be.

Yoga is about compassion and generosity towards others. It means being mindful of the world around us.

You can only love and be loved to the extent that you know and are known by somebody.

Ultimately spiritual awareness unfolds when you're flexible, when you're spontaneous, when you're detached, when you're easy on yourself and easy on others.

Vulnerability is the essence of romance. It's the art of being uncalculated, the willingness to look foolish, the courage to say, 'This is me, and I'm interested in you enough to show you my flaws with the hope that you may embrace me for all that I am but, more important, all that I am not.'

I'm in a space of surrendering and being open and seeing. It's a good place to be - the only place to be.

I believe now that love is letting people in. Love is bigger than all of us.

Control is not real, and I'm really understanding that every day. It's about the acceptance of relinquishing control that makes it powerful for you.

My whole teaching consists of two words, meditation and love.

The Soul should always stand ajar.

The true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes. Zen practice is to open up our small mind.

Whatever is your present experience, you can recognize the spaciousness that allows it to be. You are this spaciousness, this awareness, this love. Deeper love and more spacious awareness is the best lesson you can get from any experience.

Focus attention on the feeling inside you. Know that it is the pain-body. Accept that it is there. Don't think about it - don't let the feeling turn into thinking. Don't judge or analyze. Don't make an identity for yourself out of it. Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you. Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of "the one who observes," the silent watcher. This is the power of the Now, the power of your own conscious presence. Then see what happens.

You need not even listen, just wait...the world will offer itself freely to you, unmasking itself.

When I've been open and accepting of where I am, things start opening up.

Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out.