Quotes from Pema Chodron

True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings.

It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately fill up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness.

To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is.

Let the hard things in life break you. Let them effect you. Let them change you. Let these hard moments inform you. Let this pain be your teacher. The experiences of your life are trying to tell you something about yourself. Don't cop out on that. Don't run away and hide under your covers. Lean into it.

Sometimes people's spiritual ideas become fixed and they use them against those who don't share their beliefs - in effect, becoming fundamentalist. It's very dangerous - the finger of righteous indignation pointing at someone who is identified as bad or wrong.

Maybe the only enemy is that we don't like the way reality is *now* and therefore wish it would go away fast. but what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

We think that by protecting ourselves from suffering we are being kind to ourselves. the truth is, we only become more fearful, more hardened, and more alienated.

We can regard ourselves as already awake; we can regard our world as already sacred.

Everything that occurs in our confused mind we can regard as the path.

If right now our emotional reaction to seeing a certain person or hearing certain news is to fly into a rage or to get despondent or something equally extreme, it's because we have been cultivating that particular habit for a very long time.

Never underestimate the desire to bolt.

Lean into the sharp points and fully experience them. The essence of bravery is being without self-deception. Wisdom is inherent in (understanding) emotions.