Pema Chodron Quotes About Suffering

We have collected for you the TOP of Pema Chodron's best quotes about Suffering! Here are collected all the quotes about Suffering 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 39 sayings of Pema Chodron about Suffering. We will be happy if you share our collection of quotes with your friends on social networks!
  • Pain is not a punishment; pleasure is not a reward.

    Pema Chodron (2003). “Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion”, p.94, Shambhala Publications
  • Resisting what is happening is a major cause of suffering.

  • Come back to square one, just the minimum bare bones. 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.

  • The third noble truth says that the cessation of suffering is letting go of holding on to ourselves.

    Pema Chodron (2001). “The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving Kindness”, p.53, Shambhala Publications
  • Underneath our ordinary lives, underneath all the talking we do, all the moving we do, all the thoughts in our minds, there's a fundamental groundlessness. It's there bubbling along all the time. We experience it as restlessness and edginess. We experience it as fear. It motivates passion, aggression, ignorance, jealousy, and pride, but we never get down to the essence of it.

    Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.44, Shambhala Publications
  • We have a choice. We can spend our whole life suffering because we can't relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased.

    Pema Chodron (2012). “Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change”, p.14, 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.

  • As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don't deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.

    "When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times". Book by Pema Chodron, December 24, 1996.
  • 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.

  • Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.

    Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.78, Shambhala Publications
  • We insist on being Someone, with a capital S. We get security from defining ourselves as worthless or worthy, superior or inferior. We waste precious time exaggerating or romanticizing or belittling ourselves with a complacent surety that yes, that’s who we are. We mistake the openness of our being—the inherent wonder and surprise of each moment—for a solid, irrefutable self. Because of this misunderstanding, we suffer.

  • Instead of asking ourselves, 'How can I find security and happiness?' we could ask ourselves, 'Can I touch the center of my pain? Can I sit with suffering, both yours and mine, without trying to make it go away? Can I stay present to the ache of loss or disgrace-disapp ointment in all its many forms-and let it open me?' This is the trick.

    Pema Chodron (2008). “The Pocket Pema Chodron”, p.30, Shambhala Publications
  • It isn't the things that happen to us in our lives that cause us to suffer, it's how we relate to the things that happen to us that causes us to suffer.

    "On Faith & Reason" with Bill Moyers, www.pbs.org. August 4, 2006.
  • The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personally made the wrong move. In reality, however, when we feel suffering, we think that something is wrong. As long as we’re addicted to hope, we feel that we can tone our experience down or liven it up or change it somehow, and we continue to suffer a lot.

    Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.52, Shambhala Publications
  • The second noble truth says that this resistance is the...mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering.

  • The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last—that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.

  • The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief.

    Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.52, Shambhala Publications
  • If you have rage and righteously act it out and blame it all on others, it's really you who suffers. The other people and the environment suffer also, but you suffer more because you're being eaten up inside with rage, causing you to hate yourself more and more

    Pema Chodron (2001). “Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living”, p.45, 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.

  • It isn't the things that are happening to us that cause us to suffer, it's what we say to ourselves about the things that are happening. The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.

  • It isn't what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it's what we say to ourselves about what happens.

  • If you work with your mind, that will alleviate all the suffering that seems to come from the outside.

  • 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.

    Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.16, Shambhala Publications
  • One very powerful and effective way to work with this tendency to push away pain and hold on to pleasure is the practice of tonglen.  In tonglen practice, when we see or feel suffering, we  breathe in with the notion of completely feeling it, accepting it, and owning it.

  • Most spiritual experiences begin with suffering. They begin with groundlessness. They begin when the rug has been pulled out from under us.

  • We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be.

    Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.76, Shambhala Publications
  • To put it concisely, we suffer when we resist the noble and irrefutable truth of impermanence and death.

    Pema Chodron (2003). “Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion”, p.53, Shambhala Publications
  • Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there's anywhere to hide.

    Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.50, Shambhala Publications
  • We spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to re-create these zones of safety, which are always falling apart. That's the essence of samsara - the cycle of suffering that comes from continuing to seek happiness in all the wrong places.

    Pema Chodron (2003). “Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion”, p.24, Shambhala Publications
  • Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing.

    Pema Chodron (2000). “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”, p.11, Shambhala Publications
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