60 Inspirational Pema Chodron Quotes

  Pema Chodron is an 83 year old American Tibetan Buddhist nun and teacher . She offers a completely different approach to successful living. She teaches meditation, compassion, peace, gratitude, love and kindness. Her approach is not a go getter approach per se but rather one that make us awaken to the power within us by harmoniously working with universal laws.  Chodron has published several books, one of the popular ones is When Things Fall Apart, a book that gives advice on how to ride the wave of unsettling times. Other publications include Living Beautifully With Uncertainty and Change, Taking The Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears and many more.  Please indulge yourselves in these Pema Chodron quotes, she is a wonderful discovery and a much needed soothing voice. If you want to learn more about Pema Chodron’s work, you can visit her website. 

Inspirational Pema Chodron Quotes 1-20

Let your curiosity be greater than your fear. -Pema Chodron

Without loving-kindness for ourselves, it is difficult, if not impossible, to genuinely feel it for others. Pema Chodron

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. -Pema Chodron

You are the sky. Everything else-it’s just the weather. -Pema Chodron

Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic-this is the spiritual path. -Pema Chodron

Feel the feelings and drop the story. -Pema Chodron

Don’t worry about achieving. Don’t worry about perfection. Just be there each moment as best as you can. –Pema Chodron 

Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world. -Pema Chodron 

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. -Pema Chodron 

Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away. –Pema Chodron 

Deep down in the human spirit there is a reservoir of courage. It is always available,  always waiting to be discovered. –Pema Chodron

Our true nature is like a precious jewel, although it may be temporarily buried in mud, it remains completely brilliant and unaffected.  We simply have to uncover it. –Pema Chodron quote

Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow every day good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior’s world. –Pema Chodron

The central question of a warrior’s training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort.  Pema Chodron quote

Obstacles are our friends; they teach us where we are stuck. Pema Chodron quotes

If you are not feeding the fire of anger or the fire of craving by talking to yourself, then the fire doesnt have anything to feed on. -Pema Chodron quotes

All you need to know is that the future is wide open and you are about to create it by what you do. –Pema Chodron

All situations teach you and often it’s the tough ones that teach you the best. Pema Chodron

When we are willing to stay even a moment with uncomfortable energy, we gradually learn not to fear it. Pema Chodron quotes

Whatever happens in your life, joyful or painful, do not be swept away by reactivity. Be patient with yourself, don’t lose your sense of perspective.  -Pema Chodron quotes

I really love this Pema Chodron quote, “All you need to know is that the future is wide open and you are about to create it by what you do. ” How reassuring and how empowering. Life is a series of moments and no matter what has happened before, we always have new moments to look forward to and to start again. So no need to beat yourself up about what happened before, now is your time to start again and rewrite your new story!

I also found so much inspiration in this one, “Each time we drop our complaints and allow every day good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior’s world. ” It is difficult not to complain because it is a habit we are so accustomed to. Complaining makes great small talk with colleagues at work or neighbours but imagine turning the tables and appreciating a lof o the things we have in life.

It was the teachings of Abraham Hicks that woke me up to this principle. In the book, Ask and It Is Given, they share a practice called The Rampage of Appreciation. Here is a link to one of Abraham Hicks’s Rampage of Appreciation. This is whereby you get into the habit of appreciating the things in your life. It could be the clouds in the sky, the majestic tree or the cute cat and so forth. This practice just alters your mindset from being someone who is constantly mourning to a happier person who is awake to the beauty of this world. 

 

Openness doesn’t come from resisting our fears but rather from getting to know them well. -Pema Chodron

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

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 quotes

I can’t overestimate the importance of accepting ourselves exactly as we are right now, not as we wish we were or think we ought to be.  -Pema Chodron

As our kindness for ourselves grows, so does our kindness for other people.  -Pema Chodron

We can let the circumstance of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.  -Pema Chodron quotes

Never give up on yourself. Then you will nver give up on others.  -Pema Chodron

The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.  -Pema Chodron quotes

Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.  -Pema Chodron

If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.  -Pema Chodron

So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn’t sit for even one, that’s the journey of the warrior. 

If you follow your heart, you are going to find that it is often extremely inconvenient.  -Pema Chodron quotes

Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in full, unrestricted, and inspired way.  -Pema Chodron

If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it is fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there is an arrow in your heart.  -Pema Chodron

In the end, that’s what we all need more than anything else: to be there for each other, in every kind of situation.  -Pema Chodron

The best spiritual instruction is when you wake up in the moring and say, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen today. ‘And then carry that kind of curiosity through life.  -Pema Chodron

Usually we think that breave people have no fear The truth is that they are intimate with fear.  -Pema Chodron

When things fall apart in your life, you feel as if your whole world is crumbling. But actually it’s your fixed identity that is crumbling. And as Chogyam Trungpa used to tell us, that’s cause for celebration.  -Pema Chodron

Every moment is unique, unknown, completely fresh.  -Pema Chodron

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructable in us be found.  -Pema Chodron

Do you not just find this Pema Chodron quote empowering, “The best spiritual instruction is when you wake up in the moring and say, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen today. ‘And then carry that kind of curiosity through life.“

Let’s open our hearts and minds to the new things that life has to offer. As humans we like to be in control and to know the next step with absolute certainty but how magical it is to be open and to have that touch of wonder in our thinking. Wanting to control things makes us uptight, anxious and worriers. All of this is unncessary and dentrimental to our mental well being. 

Pema Chodron is telling us to let go, live freely and be excited by the opportunities that life can present to us. 

One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is to feel that now is not enough.  -Pema Chodron

All the wars, all the hatred, all the ignorance in the world comes out of being so invested in our opinions.  -Pema Chodron

There’s nothing more important on our spiritual path than developing gentleness to oneself.  -Pema Chodron

The future is completely open and we are writing it moment to moment.  -Pema Chodron

The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.  -Pema Chodron

We can begin to open our hearts to others when we have no hope of getting anything back. We just do it for its own sake.  -Pema Chodron

You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts.  -Pema Chodron

Generosity is an activity that loosens us up. By offering whatever we can- a dollar, a flower, a word of encouragement-we are training in letting go.  -Pema Chodron

Treat yourself as your own beloved child.  -Pema Chodron

Welcome the present moment as if you had invited it. It is all we ever have, so we might as well work with it rather than struggling against it. We might as well make it our friend and teacher rather than our enemy.  -Pema Chodron

When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it is bottomless.  -Pema Chodron

When we protect ourselves so we won’t feel pain, that protection becomes like armor, like armor that imprisons the softness of the heart.  -Pema Chodron

Pain is not punishment; pleasure is not a reward.  -Pema Chodron

Use your life to wake you up.  -Pema Chodron

Feel the wounded heart thats underneath the addiction, self loathing or anger.  -Pema Chodron

I equate ego with trying to figure everything out insead of going with the flow. That closes your heart and yor mind to the person or situation that’s right in front of you, and you miss so much.  -Pema Chodron

Are you experiencing restlessness? Stay! Are fear and loathin out of control? Stay! What’s for lunch? Stay! I can’t stand this another minute! Stay! -Pema Chodron

As each breath goes out, let it be the end of that moment and the birth of something new.. -Pema Chodron

Resistance to unwanted circumstances has the power to keep those circumstances alive and well for a very long time.  -Pema Chodron

Rejoicing in the good fortune of others is a practice that can help us when we feel emotionally shut down and unable to connect with others. Rejoicing generates good will.  -Pema Chodron

In my opinion Pema Chodron is the voice we need to hear in these unsettling times. If we follow her words of wisdom, they have the power to ground us and calm us down. They help us to be in touch with reality, to stand firm knowing that regardless of all the seeming craziness the storm will pass and we will remain standing.

Just as Louise Hay‘s teachings, Pema puts the focus on us. We can draw strength from difficult times and know for sure that we have got our own back!