Pema Chodron Quotes About Adversity
-
The next time you lose heart and you can’t bear to experience what you’re feeling, you might recall this instruction: change the way you see it and lean in. Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not rejecting it, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves. This is priceless advice that addresses the true cause of suffering—yours, mine, and that of all living beings.
→ -
Anxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state. It's the kind of place we usually want to avoid. The challenge is to stay in the middle rather than buy into struggle and complaint. The challenge is to let it soften us rather than make us more rigid and afraid.
→ -
As long as we're caught up in always looking for certainty and happiness, rather than honoring the taste and smell and quality of exactly what is happening, as long as we're always running from discomfort, we're going to be caught in a cycle of unhappiness and discomfort, and we will feel weaker and weaker. This way of seeing helps us develop inner strength. And what's especially encouraging is the view that inner strength is available to us at just the moment when we think that we've hit the bottom, when things are at their worst.
→
Related Authors
-
-
Pico Iyer Essayist -
Eckhart Tolle Author -
Tara Brach Psychologist -
Jack Kornfield Author -
-
-
-
K. D. Lang Singer-songwriter -
Chogyam Trungpa Teacher -
Sharon Salzberg Author -
Tenzin Palmo Author -
-
Gautama Buddha Founding Figure -
Jon Kabat-Zinn Professor -
Sogyal Rinpoche Lama -
-
-
Nhat Hanh Monk -
