You are the sky. Everything else — it's just the weather.
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Pema Chödrön
American Tibetan Buddhist nun and teacher in the Shambhala lineage. Author of When Things Fall Apart (1996) and abbot of Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia.
13 quotes
Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
The most fundamental aggression to ourselves is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.
To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we're holding back.
The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals.
This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it's with us wherever we are.
Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.
Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.
We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart.
Start where you are.
When we protect ourselves so we won't feel pain, that protection becomes like armor that imprisons the softness of the heart.