Pema Chodron Quotes

Grant that I have enough suffering that my heart really opens to the great compassion of this world, that I be given enough so that I don't wall myself off from the world, that it breaks down the heart and the separation and the ego and the fear, and it lets me touch the nectar, the milk of kindness itself, of something greater.

I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.

To deaden yourself against any hurt is to deaden yourself also against the hurt of others.

I don't want people mistreating me. I found out when you're vulnerable and your heart's open, then people step on you. You're really stupid for letting that happen. And the only way to counteract that is to be like Wolfman Jack. Because if you do nice, kind things for people, then how are they going to mess you over?

The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.

I have a thick skin, but I have a heart.

If we show people that fear isn't actually the place that we have to surrender to, fear isn't actually the thing that we have to answer to, but instead, it's going in and loving people.

You can't always trust people with your heart, but you should still love anyway. That's what I would say.

There is no true joy in a life lived closed up in the little shell of the self. When you take one step to reach out to people, when you meet with others and share their thoughts and sufferings, infinite compassion and wisdom well up within your heart. Your life is transformed.

Unto a broken heart No other one may go Without the high prerogative Itself hath suffered too.

I think your heart needs to be broken, and broken open, at least once to have a heart at all or to have a heart for others.

Your heart opens and of course you're completely panicked because you're used to guarding this organ with your life.

Keep your heart open for as long as you can, as wide as you can, for others and especially for yourself.

Watch how your mind judges. Judgment comes, in part, out of your own fear. You judge other people because you're not comfortable in your own being. By judging, you find out where you stand in relation to other people. The judging mind is very divisive. It separates. Separation closes your heart. If you close your heart to someone, you are perpetuating your suffering and theirs. Shifting out of judgment means learning to appreciate your predicament and their predicament with an open heart instead of judging. Then you can allow yourself and others to just be, without separation.

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.

There's something universal about illness... Whether you like it, at some level all patients are saying, 'Daddy, Mommy, help me, tell me it's going to be alright.'

In life, when stuff happens the instinct is to close off your heart. By leaving your heart open, it leaves room for someone else to come in.

I fancied I had some constancy of mind because I could bear my own sufferings, but found through the sufferings of others I could be weakened like a child.

One day I was sitting in my own pain, and suddenly all the pain and troubles of the world came to me. I received all the pain of the world, all through my body.

If fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend.

Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion.

When we have nothing to cling to as our own and cease thinking of ourselves as people who must defend privileges, we can open ourselves freely to others with the faithful expectation that our strength will manifest itself in our shared weakness.

I'm a little bit afraid to give my heart away right now. It's very scary. I'm open to it, but I just want to make sure that I'm taking my time.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

I have too much respect for people to try to control them. But they are estranged from love, afraid to reach out and touch one another. We're afraid to appear sentimental or speak in platitudes because people will say, 'What a jerk!' It takes courage in our culture to be a lover.