Pema Chodron Quotes

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought.

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

When we sit down to meditate, we connect with something unconditional - a state of mind, a basic environment that does not grasp or reject anything. Meditation is probably the only activity that doesn't add anything to the picture. Everything is allowed to come and go without further embellishment. Meditation is a totally nonviolent, non aggressive occupation. Not filling the space, allowing for the possibility of connecting with unconditional openness - this provides the basis for real change.

Listen to the silence. Listen to your life. Be present, not just think about what's going on next week, next month.

If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.

Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.

Reductionism and elimination make one feel clever, but what happens when the meditator drops her fixation on feeling clever?

So meditation is not really mind-effort. Real meditation is not effort at all. Real meditation is just allowing the mind to have its own way, and not interfering in any way whatsoever - just remaining watchful, witnessing. It silences, by and by, it becomes still. One day it is gone. You are left alone.

When you stay present with your children, that’s where abundance is. And when you stay out of their business, that’s where everything you deserve in life is. When you’re in presence, there’s no story, and you are abundance. And you come to trust that space so often that you just eventually hang out as that, because there is nothing that can move you out of it, not even a perceived child or a perceived anything.

That is, when the mind ceases to create, then there is creation.

Enlightenment is the mind that is open to anything, but attached to nothing. That is freedom. No values, no resentment, no grudges. Not carrying the past along with you. Not carrying memories from the past that are hurtful and shameful and embarrassing. Just let all that go and you are living in enlightenment, and you are free for everything.

The witness is always in the here and now and it lives in each instant of living. To be in the witness is to listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without clinging, without opinions.

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

Let go of your mind and then be mindful. Close your ears and listen!

We don't have to know,only to be:let go the jumble of worn words,reason and vanity.

The command is "Do no work." Just make space. Attend to what is around you. Learn that you don't have to DO to BE. accept the grace of doing nothing. Stay with it until you stop jerking and squirming.

See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.

Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything.

The answers come when you are quietly willing to be without them.

Silence is helpful, but you don't need it in order to find stillness. Even when there is noise, you can be aware of the stillness underneath the noise, of the space in which the noise arises. That is the inner space of pure awareness, consciousness itself.

Only when the mind is still, tranquil, not expecting or grasping or resisting a single thing, is it possible to see what is true. It is the truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.

Observe the silence between your thoughts, actions, reactions, and you will feel the presence of spirit in the stillness of those spaces.

Being deeply contented with God in my everyday life is a focused attitude. It is always available. It means practicing letting go of my obsession with how I'm doing. It means training myself to learn to actually be present with people, and seeking to love them.

Unending joy is actually closer to us than our own skin, and there is nothing we have to do or get or be to experience it. All we have to do is stop driving it away.

Buddhist practices offer a way of saying, 'Hey, come back over here, reconnect.' The only way that you'll actually wake up and have some freedom is if you have the capacity and courage to stay with the vulnerability and the discomfort.