Pema Chodron Quotes

I don't regret anything. Everything happens for a reason-it's part of the healing process. Life is a healing process.

I think of the trees and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of a season, how without grief (it seems) they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep.... Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.

Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

That which is denied cannot be healed.

But Laila has decided that she will not be crippled by resentment. Mariam wouldn’t want it that way. ‘What’s the sense?’ she would say with a smile both innocent and wise. ‘What good is it, Laila jo?’ And so Laila has resigned herself to moving on. For her own sake, for Tariq’s, for her children’s. And for Mariam, who still visits Laila in her dreams, who is never more than a breath or two below her consciousness. Laila has moved on. Because in the end she knows that’s all she can do. That and hope.

Do not wait for the healing to arrive. It will never come. The holes will never leave or be filled with anything at all. But holes are interesting things.

And no. I must not go on thinking. For the pain will never go away. You just go on and live. In the dust of desertion. Still falling where last I loved.

The art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.

Forgiveness has its comforts, but it can never give you back what you've lost.

After you have wept and grieved for your physical losses, cherish the functions and the life you have left.

I have learned that grief is a vital part of my heart and accept it as a gift that exists alongside joy.

One of my biggest lessons in life is, we heal at the speed of our forgiveness.

I think that maybe forgiveness is like change - it comes in small steps. (256)

Grief melts away Like snow in May, As if there were no such cold thing.

Everything we love goes. So to be able to grieve that loss, to let go, to have that grief be absolutely full, is the only way to have our heart be full and open.

What was the point of being able to forgive, when deep down, you both had to admit you'd never forget?

If there is suffering, then it's best to accept it, because it won't go away just because you pretend it's not there. If there is joy, then it's best to accept that too, even though you're afraid it might end one day.

The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don't wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.

When I rise up, let me rise up joyful like a bird. When I fall, let me fall without regret like a leaf.

Healing is a coming to terms with things as they are, rather than struggling to force them to be as they once were, or as we would like them to be, to feel secure or to have what we sometimes think of as our own way.

It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.

While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave, the most so far, because she found the saddest thing of all to be the simple truth of her capacity to move on.

The reason 'closure' is a cliche is that it is used too often, too imprecisely, and doesn't in any case reflect reality. In reality, such closure in broken friendships and much else in life is rarely achieved; only death brings closure and then not always for those still living.

How could you cleanse yourself if you couldn’t forget?

In the photograph by my bed my mother is perpetually smiling on me. I guess I have forgiven us both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and forgive us again.