Pema Chodron Quotes

Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.

If you just sit and spend time with yourself - you were born as you, just you, and that's how you're gonna die. Why do we spend the time in between trying to not be ourselves? That's what meditation is. You just sit with yourself. Through all of it. It's like John Patrick Shanley said: "Where the terror is, you must go." Where the terror is, is where you must go.

That is the basic pattern of this kind of meditation, which is based on three fundamental factors: first, not centralizing inward; second, not having any longing to become higher; and third, becoming completely identified with here and now.

Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.

The mantra that you're given in Transcendental Meditation you keep to yourself. The reason being, true happiness is not out there, true happiness lies within.

I've realized that no problem is as hopeless as it first may seem, I've learned how to live day to day and show others how to do the same, and most of all, I've learned how to just be.

Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.

There isn't anything except your own life that can be used as ground for your spiritual practice. Spiritual practice is your life, twenty-four hours a day.

Zen taught me how to pay attention, how to delve, how to question and enter, how to stay with -- or at least want to try to stay with -- whatever is going on.

I try not to be judgmental. I meditate twice a day. I get some sort of physical exercise. I infuse my life with love. I love what I do, the job.

It's helpful to remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing with whatever arises, without picking and choosing.

With the practice of meditation we can develop this ability to more fully love ourselves and to more consistently love others.

It's like that perfection thing, trying to be that thing you're not. You have to feel that discomfort and not try to get rid of it. Accept that aspect and get into it. Acknowledge those feelings and let them be. You are who you are.

Acceptance is the key to be truly free.

Meditation will drop all the masks. It is a search for the original face.

Your life is a journey of learning to love yourself first and then extending that love to others in every encounter.

Meditation practice is a way of making friends with ourselves. Whether we are worthy or unworthy, that's not the point. It's developing a friendly attitude to ourselves, accepting the hidden neurosis coming through.

Meditation is not about getting out of ourselves or achieving something better. It is about getting in touch with what you already are.

Our wisdom is all mixed up with what we call our neurosis. Our brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is all mixed up with our craziness and our confusion, and therefore it doesn’t do any good to try to get rid of our so-called negative aspects, because in that process we also get rid of our basic wonderfulness. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we’re doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we’re doing. The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves.

If you want to study Zen, you should forget all your previous ideas and just practice zazen and see what kind of experience you have in your practice. That is naturalness.

I'm not trying to find answers anymore. I'm trying to live what I know.

Today, I will let go. I will stop trying to control everything. I will stop trying to make myself be and do better, and I will let myself be.

Meditation is not concentration. It is simple awareness. You simply relax and watch the breathing. In that watching, nothing is excluded. The car is humming - perfectly okay, accept it. The traffic is passing - that's okay, part of life. The fellow passenger snoring by your side, accept it. Nothing is rejected. You are not to narrow down your consciousness.

Wherever you are is the perfect place to awaken. This moment is the exact place to practice compassion and loving awareness. You have all the ingredients to breathe and find freedom just where you are.

In practicing meditation, we're not trying to live up to some kind of ideal -- quite the opposite. We're just being with our experience, whatever it is.