Pema Chödrön

Article

1. “If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.”

We must stay alive and willing to accept all people without judgment.

2. “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”

The yin and yang of dark and light—it’s a constant and needs to be revered in order for us to be whole.

3. “You are the sky. Everything else—it’s just the weather.”

Your life, much like a clear blue sky, a seemingly infinite space of freedom and possibility; stressors or our emotional reactions, the variable weather of your day. As with all life-events (big or small), it can be all too easy to identify with what’s happening in the moment, good or bad. Only when we are able to look beyond these emotions and expectations we can see the true nature of our entire life.

4. “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.”

5. “The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.”

We have the choice to either be responsible for our actions or walk away from them. It’s not always pretty, but it is necessary.

6. “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”

7. “If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart.”

Focusing on who wronged us is a moot point. It’s so much more of an enriching and growing experience to set our sights on what is actually causing us so much pain.

8. “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.”

9. “To be fully alive, fully human and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.”

10. “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.”