Pema Chodron Quotes

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

When I was younger, I used to say, 'I'm not making music. I am getting catharsis for emotion.' For me, vulnerability is an act of uncovering. It's a revealing: the idea of putting aside your armour and allowing pain to enter.

I just know that I’m not willing to let anything happen to you. When Nynia died, I was so lost and cold, and I haven’t been warm since. Not until I felt your hands on me. The only way I’ve been able to cope without you is to bury what I feel, but I can’t seem to do that anymore. When I’m with you all I can do is feel and need. (Talon)

Grief is the doorway to a man's feelings.

Only love can break your heart.

Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love. Yet love me--wilt thou? Open thine heart wide, And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.

I think grief is a step towards strength because it allows you to be porous and take everything in, and have it transform you. What will sit within you is despairing, but at least it's feeling. You're not numb. Grief is sort of the allowance of feeling.

When we come into the present, we begin to feel the life around us again, but we also encounter whatever we have been avoiding. We must have the courage to face whatever is present - our pain, our desires, our grief, our loss, our secret hopes our love - everything that moves us most deeply.

It has a lot to do with developing patience, not with the check-out person so much, but with your own pain that arises, the rawness and the vulnerability, and sending some kind of warmth and love to that rawness and soreness. I think that's how we have to practice.

sorrow...is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it

When he kisses me, I cry. I explain it's not because I wish he were someone else, it's because it's such a shock to the system to be desired after feeling so completely abandoned.

You need to open up your soul and have a weep-a-thon.

When you're grieving that's not the time to be brave or strong, you need to let it show

Women love an honest man. An honest man that isn't afraid to say, 'Men get hurt too.' And a lot of men don't admit that.

There is no love without suffering.

Our ideas about love and attractiveness are so primal, our need for belonging so intense, that most of us are loath to abandon our favorite beliefs on these issues. If you've ever let yourself feel lovable and lovely, only to be deeply hurt, you may see accepting your own body as a setup for severe emotional wounding.

For women's tears are but the sweat of eyes.

I would hate to think I'm promoting sadness as an aesthetic. But I grew up in not just a family but a town and a culture where sadness is something you're taught to feel shame about. You end up chronically desiring what can be a very sentimental idea of love and connection. A lot of my work has been about trying to make a space for sadness.

I don't know what to say to that, but I have to agree with Johnny that, yeah, we do touch upon things that most men would rather not admit: That we feel pain, we cry, get sad and sometimes don't deal well with disappointment.

To act, you must know pain. You must know what it means to be in love, what it means to be rejected.

Realizing that we've surrendered our self-esteem to others and choosing to be accountable for our own self-worth would mean absorbing the terrifying fact that we're always vulnerable to pain and loss.

Everybody has losses - it's unavoidable in life. Sharing our pain is very healing.

It's good to actually cry. Trust me, I've had a lot of practice over the years!

You've got to be strong enough for love. It's very easy to be cool and cynical. It's very difficult to just let yourself go and be in love. You've got to be strong enough for that.

And I'll see your true colors shining through I see your true colors and that's why I love you so don't be afraid to let them show your true colors, true colors are beautiful like a RAINBOW.