Pema Chödrön quotes are always so powerful and motivational. One of my favourites is “Unconditional love is not based on conditions; it’s not ‘I love you if you love me.’ It’s much more radical than that: I love you whether you love me or not.” This resonates with me because it’s such a pure form of love.
It’s also something we can all strive for in our own lives. Another great Pema Chödrön quote is, “Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only thing that matters.” This is such an important reminder for all of us, myself included. Sometimes we get so caught up in our own lives and problems that we forget to let go and just enjoy the moment. By letting go, we open ourselves up to new possibilities and new experiences. And finally, one of my favourite Pema Chödrön quotes is, “There is no substitute for peace.” This is something that I think we all need to remind ourselves of, especially in these troubled times. We must find peace within ourselves before we can hope for peace.
Pema Chödrön Quotes Unconditional Love
- “Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.”
- “Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there’s anywhere to hide.”
- “Everything is fresh, the essence of realization.”
- “Feel the feelings and drop the story.”
- “We can use our difficulties and problems to awaken our hearts.”
- “Things are as bad and as good as they seem. There’s no need to add anything extra.”
- “One of the happiest moments ever is when you find the courage to let go of what you can’t change.”
- “We can make ourselves miserable or we can make ourselves strong. The amount of effort is the same.”
- “Trying to run away is never the answer to being fully human.”
- “The way to dissolve our resistance to life is to meet it face-to-face.”
- “The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.”
- “If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.”
- “Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.”
- “Running from the immediacy of our experience is like preferring death to life.”
- “You must face annihilation over and over again to find what is indestructible in yourself.”
- “We sow the seeds of our future hell or happiness by the way we open or close our minds right now.”
- “Blaming is a way to protect our hearts, to try to protect what is soft and open and tender in ourselves.”
- “We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.”
- “To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”
- “Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not squeamish about taking a good look.”
- “Suffering usually relates to wanting things to be different from the way they are.”
- “All you need to know is that the future is wide open and you are about to create it by what you do.”
- “Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior’s world.”
- “In other words, no matter how well documented or noble our cause is, it won’t be helped by our felling aggression toward the oppressors or those who are promoting the danger. Nothing will ever change through aggression.”
Pema Chödrön Quotes On Letting Go
- “Without giving up hope-that there’s somewhere better to be, that there’s someone better to be-we will never relax with where we are or who we are.”
- “Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what’s out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it.”
- “Just where you are – that’s the place to start.”
- “Clarity and decisiveness come from the willingness to slow down, to listen and look at what’s happening.”
- “Everything that ends is also the beginning of something else. Pain is not a punishment; pleasure is not a reward.”
- “It’s a nice feeling to just be.”
- “Patience is not learned in safety.”
- ”All addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can’t stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.”
- “The most complete and true happiness comes in moments when you feel right there, completely present, with no ideas about good and bad, right and wrong – just a sense of open heart and an open mind.”
- “Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away.”
- “Every moment is unique, unknown, completely fresh.”
- “When things are shaky and nothing is working, we might realize that we are on the verge of something.”
- “Honesty without kindness, humor, and good-heartedness can be just mean.”
- “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.”
- “So many times we’ve indulged the short-term pleasure of addiction. We’ve done it so many times that we know that grasping at this hope is a source of misery that makes a short-term pleasure a long-term hell.”
- “We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what’s going on, but that there’s something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.”
- “if we totally experience hopelessness, giving up all hope of alternatives to the present moment, we can have a joyful relationship with our lives, an honest, direct relationship, one that no longer ignores the reality of impermanence and death.”
Pema Chödrön Quotes On Gratitude
- “Sometimes when things fall apart, well, that’s the big opportunity to change.”
- “The more you try to get it your way, the less you feel at home.”
- “Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear?”
- “The way to dissolve our resistance to life is to meet it face to face.”
- “Resisting what is happening is a major cause of suffering.”
- “Without giving up hope, we will never relax with where we are or who we are.”
- “At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.”
- “Life is like that. We don’t know anything.”
- “Approach what you find repulsive, help the ones you think you cannot help, and go to places that scare you.”
- “The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
- “What may appear to be an arrow or a sword we can actually experience as a flower.”
- “Don’t let people pull you into their storm. Pull them into your peace.”
- “Without loving-kindness for ourselves, it is difficult to genuinely feel it for others.”
- “The ego seeks to divide and separate. Spirit seeks to unify and heal.”
- “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too was a gift.”
- “The only reason we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with.”
- “We don’t set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people’s hearts.”
- “Everybody loves something, even if it’s only tortillas.”
- “War and peace start in the human heart.”
- “Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves.”
- “Be kinder to yourself.”
- “Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves, all those imperfections that we don’t even want to look at.”
- “Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.”
- “True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves.”
- “When we become more insightful and compassionate about how we ourselves get hooked, we spontaneously feel more tenderness for the human race.”
- “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals.”
- “Let your kindness flood the world.”
Pema Chödrön Quotes On Uncertainty
- “As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find compassion.”
- “Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”
- “The more we witness our emotional reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain.”
- “None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine.”
- “Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don’t struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality.”
- “Meditation practice is not about later when you get it all together.”
- “If you ask why we meditate, I would say it’s so we can become more flexible and tolerant to the present moment.”
- “Deep down in the human spirit, there is a reservoir of courage. It is always available, always waiting to be discovered.”
- “How sad it is that we become so expert at causing harm to ourselves and others. The trick then is to practice gentleness and letting go.”
- “Meditation is a totally nonviolent, nonaggressive occupation.”
- “What we’re doing as we progress along the path is leaving home and becoming homeless.”
- “Pain is not a punishment; Pleasure is not a reward.”
- “You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”
- “We already have everything we need.”
- “Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better.”
- “This very moment is the perfect teacher.”
- “The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment.”
- “Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves.”
- “Renunciation is a teaching to inspire us to investigate what’s happening every time we grab something because we can’t stand to face what’s coming.”
- “What happens with you when you begin to feel uneasy, unsettled, queasy? Notice the panic, notice when you instantly grab for something. That grabbing is based on hope.”
- “If we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation.”
- “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.”
- “Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear.”
- “A further sign of health is that we don’t become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it’s time to stop struggling and look directly at what’s threatening us.”
Pema Chodron Quotes On Peaceful Life
- “This moving away from comfort and security, this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted, and shaky – that’s called liberation.”
- “The idea of karma is that you continually get the teaching that you need to open your heart.”
- “Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back.”
- “when we feel embarrassed or awkward, when pain presents itself to us in any form whatsoever, we run like crazy to try to become comfortable.”
- “Live your life as an experiment.”
- “Let your curiosity be greater than your fear.”
- “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 cover. Lean into it.”
- “Life is like that. We don’t know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know.”
- “Look ahead to the rest of your life and ask yourself what you want it to add up to.”
- “If you are invested in security and certainty, you are on the wrong planet.”
- “Once you create a self-justifying storyline, your emotional entrapment within it quadruples.”
- “Difficult people are the greatest teachers.”
- “We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved.”
- “The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.”
- “Basically, disappointment, embarrassment, and all these places where we just cannot feel good are a sort of death.”
- “So the next time you encounter fear, consider yourself lucky. This is where the courage comes in.”
- “All anxiety, all dissatisfaction, all the reasons for hoping that our experience could be different are rooted in our fear of death. … As the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi said, life is like getting into a boat that’s just about to sail out to sea and sink.”
- “Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time—that is the basic message.”
- “In practicing meditation, we’re not trying to live up to some kind of ideal.”
- “Learning not to panic – this is the spiritual path.”
- “There’s no way to benefit anybody unless we start with ourselves.”
- “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”
- “We deserve our birthright, which is an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.”
- “So the next time you encounter fear, consider yourself lucky. This is where courage comes in.”
- “The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.”
- “There’s no certainty about anything. This basic truth hurts, and we want to run away from it.”
- “To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh.”
- “Dharma isn’t a belief; it isn’t dogma. It is total appreciation of impermanence and change.”
- “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”
- “For those who want something to hold on to, life is even more inconvenient.”
- “Every time we give, every time we practice discipline, patience, or exertion, it’s like putting down a heavy burden.”
Pema Chödrön is a renowned Tibetan Buddhist teacher and author who has written many books on the subject.
She is primarily known for her down-to-earth and accessible style of teaching. Over the years, she has given numerous talks and retreats, and her words of wisdom have touched many people’s lives.
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