Pema Chodron Quotes

Meditation is a surrender, it is not a demand. It is not forcing existence your way, it is relaxing into the way existence wants you to be. It is a let-go.

Meditation is a tool for helping us accept the profound fact that everything changes all the time.

Vipassana taught me how to maintain equanimity in all situations of life.

Set aside all involvements and let the myriad things rest. Zazen is not thinking of good, not thinking of bad. It is not conscious endeavour. It is not introspection. Do not desire to become a buddha; let sitting or lying down drop away. Be moderate in eating and drinking. Be mindful of the passing of time, and engage yourself in zazen as though you are saving your head from fire.

Meditation helps you do less and accomplish more.

If you meditate, meditation is so beautiful, who bothers about the result? And if you bother about the result, meditation is not possible. This result oriented mind is the only barrier, the only block. There are not many blocks, the only block is that of the result oriented mind: never here-now, always somewhere else thinking of the result; while making love, thinking about the result.

Meditation is not something you do in the morning and you are finished with it, meditation is something that you have to go on living every moment of your life. Walking, sleeping, sitting, talking, listening - it has to become a kind of climate. A relaxed person remains in it. A person who goes on dropping the past remains meditative.

Meditation is a cyclical process that defies analysis, but demands acceptance.

In the zazen posture, your mind and body have, great power to accept things as they are, whether agreeable or disagreeable.

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.

Meditation is helping me learn to sit still. Twenty minutes of meditation in the morning is a nice way to start my day. If you can actually sit still and really get to that place of silence, you realize what's important and what's not important. Little things don't usually get to me anymore.

There's No Such Thing as a Bad Meditation. Any Time you Spend in Silence is Valuable

Meditation is how to drop knowledge. Meditation means how to become ignorant again. Meditation means how to become a child again, a rose bush, a rock. Meditation means how just to be and not to think.

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.

Meditation is acceptance. It is the acceptance of life within us, without us and all around us. Acceptance of life is the beginning of human satisfaction.

Learn to become still, and take your attention away from what you don't want

Meditation is the key to open the door, the door of absolute contentment. Mind is always discontented., hence meditation means creating a state of no-mind. That space is always contented.

I just can't sit still and meditate; that doesn't kind of work for me. I don't even know exactly what it means.

The key is to be Zen-like and be happy with what one has.

Meditation is to get out of your psychosis and to get out of your neurosis; it is simply to slip out of them.

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.

The simplicity of meditation means just experiencing the ape instinct of ego.

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

The true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes. Zen practice is to open up our small mind.