Pema Chodron Quotes About Heart

We have collected for you the TOP of Pema Chodron's best quotes about Heart! Here are collected all the quotes about Heart starting from the birthday of the Nun – July 14, 1936! We hope you will be inspired to new achievements with our constantly updated collection of quotes. At the moment, this page contains 45 sayings of Pema Chodron about Heart. We will be happy if you share our collection of quotes with your friends on social networks!
  • People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further.

  • When we protect ourselves so we won't feel pain, that protection becomes like armor, like armor that imprisons the softness of of the heart.

    Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.115, Shambhala Publications
  • Honesty without kindness, humor, and goodheartedness can be just mean. From the very beginning to the very end, pointing to our own hearts to discover what is true isn’t just a matter of honesty but also of compassion and respect for what we see.

    Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.98, Shambhala Publications
  • Softening what is rigid in our hearts.

    Pema Chodron (2006). “Practicing Peace in Times of War”, p.17, Shambhala Publications
  • We can put our whole heart into whatever we do; but if we freeze our attitude into for or against, we're setting ourselves up for stress. Instead, we could just go forward with curiosity, wondering where this experiment will lead. This kind of open-ended inquisitiveness captures the spirit of enthusiasm, or heroic perseverance.

    Pema Chodron (2007). “No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva”, p.226, Shambhala Publications
  • This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great compassion. It can humble us when we're arrogant and soften us when we are unkind.

    Pema Chodron (2002). “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times”, p.5, Shambhala Publications
  • 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.

  • I equate ego with trying to figure everything out instead of going with the flow. That closes your heart and your mind to the person or situation that's right in front of you, and you miss so much.

  • So war and peace start in the human heart. Whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.

    Pema Chodron (2006). “Practicing Peace in Times of War”, p.26, Shambhala Publications
  • When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You're able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die. And, you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently.

    Pema Chodron (2008). “The Pocket Pema Chodron”, p.24, Shambhala Publications
  • 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 open mind.

    Ideas  
  • When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.

    Pema Chodron (2001). “Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living”, p.128, Shambhala Publications
  • In tonglen practice, when we see or feel suffering, we  breathe in with the notion of completely feeling it, accepting it, and owning it. Then we breathe out, radiating compassion, lovingkindness, freshness - anything that encourages relaxation and openness.  So you're training in softening, rather than tightening, your heart. In this practice, it's not uncommon to find yourself blocked, because you come face to face with your own fear, resistance, or whatever your personal "stuckness" happens to be at that moment.

  • 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. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.

    Pema Chodron (2008). “The Pocket Pema Chodron”, p.118, Shambhala Publications
  • 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.

    Pema Chodron (2001). “Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living”, p.42, Shambhala Publications
  • Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself.

  • Buddhist words such as compassion and emptiness don't mean much until we start cultivating our innate ability simply to be there with pain with an open heart and the willingness not to instantly try to get ground under our feet. For instance, if what we're feeling is rage, we usually assume that there are only two ways to relate to it. One is to blame others. Lay it all on somebody else; drive all blames into everyone else. The other alternative is to feel guilty about our rage and blame ourselves.

  • Remember that this is not something we do just once or twice. Interrupting our destructive habits and awakening our heart is the work of a lifetime.

    Pema Chodron (2002). “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times”, p.46, Shambhala Publications
  • If we want there to be peace in the world, we have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid in our hearts, to find the soft spot and stay with it. We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility. That’s the true practice of peace.

  • If you look back at history or you look at any place in the world where religious groups or ethnic groups or racial groups or political groups are killing each other, or families have been feuding for years and years, you can see - because you're not particularly invested in that particular argument - that there will never be peace until somebody softens what is rigid in their heart.

  • We can stop thinking that good practice is when it’s smooth and calm, and bad practice is when it’s rough and dark. If we can hold it all in our hearts, then we can make a proper cup of tea.

    Pema Chodron (2001). “The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving Kindness”, p.109, Shambhala Publications
  • Unconditional good heart toward others is not even a possibility unless we attend to our own demons.

    Pema Chodron (2002). “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times”, p.64, Shambhala Publications
  • When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless.

    Pema Chodron (2001). “Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living”, p.128, Shambhala Publications
  • We could learn to stop when the sun goes down and when the sun comes up. We could learn to listen to the wind; we could learn to notice that it's raining or snowing or hailing or calm. We could reconnect with the weather that is ourselves, and we could realize that it's sad. The sadder it is, and the vaster it is, the more our heart opens. We can stop thinking that good practice is when it's smooth and calm, and bad practice is when it's rough and dark. If we can hold it all in our hearts, then we can make a proper cup of tea.

    "The Wisdom of No Escape". Book by Pema Chodron, www.huffingtonpost.com. 1991.
  • If you follow your heart, you're going to find that it is often extremely inconvenient.

    Pema Chodron (2001). “The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving Kindness”, p.123, Shambhala Publications
  • Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum. We don't interrupt our patterns even slightly. With practice, however, we learn to stay with a broken heart, with a nameless fear, with the desire for revenge. Sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears.

    Pema Chodron (2003). “Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion”, p.8, Shambhala Publications
  • 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 experience ourselves as being separate from the whole. This separateness becomes like a prison for us - a prison that restricts us to our personal hopes and fears, and to caring only for the people nearest to us. Curiously enough, if we primarily try to shield ourselves from discomfort, we suffer. Yet, when we don't close off, when we let our hearts break, we discover our kinship with all beings.

  • Awareness is the key. Do we see the stories that we're telling ourselves and question their validity? When we are distracted by strong emotion, do we remember that it is our path? Can we feel the emotion and breathe it into our hearts for ourselves and everyone else? If we can remember to experiment like this even occasionally, we are training as a warrior. And when we can't practice when distracted but KNOW we can't, we are still training well. Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what's going on.

    Pema Chodron (2002). “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times”, p.47, Shambhala Publications
  • Determination means to use every challenge you meet as an opportunity to open your heart and soften, determined to not withdraw.

    Pema Chodron (2001). “Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living”, p.118, Shambhala Publications
  • When Things Fall Apart” and I quote “Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don't get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It's a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs.

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  • Did you find Pema Chodron's interesting saying about Heart? We will be glad if you share the quote with your friends on social networks! This page contains Nun quotes from Nun Pema Chodron about Heart collected since July 14, 1936! Come back to us again – we are constantly replenishing our collection of quotes so that you can always find inspiration by reading a quote from one or another author!