Trying Quotes by Pema Chödrön

Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.

— Pema Chodron

Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself.

— Pema Chodron

In practicing meditation, we're not trying to live up to some kind of ideal -- quite the opposite. We're just being with…

— Pema Chodron

We're not trying to be something we aren't; rather, we're reconnecting with who we are.

— Pema Chodron

If you work with your mind, instead of trying to change everything on the outside... that's how your temper will cool down.

— Pema Chodron

Trying to run away is never the answer to being a fully human. Running away from the immediacy of our experience is…

— Pema Chodron

“IN practicing meditation, we’re not trying to live up to some kind of ideal—quite the opposite.”

— Pema Chödrön

Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground…

— Pema Chodron

Trying to change ourselves doesn't work in the long run because we're resisting our own energy. Self-improvemen t can have temporary results,…

— Pema Chodron

Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss, or tranquillity, nor is it attempting to become a better…

— Pema Chodron

Rather than becoming more relaxed, you start pulling down the shades and locking the door. When you do go out, you find…

— Pema Chodron

When we touch the center of sorrow, when we sit with discomfort without trying to fix it, when we stay present to…

— Pema Chodron

Instead of asking ourselves, 'How can I find security and happiness?' we could ask ourselves, 'Can I touch the center of my…

— Pema Chodron

It is a commitment to respect whatever life brings that we develop wholehearted determination to use discomfort as an opportunity for awakening,…

— Pema Chodron

Compassion isn't some kind of self-improvement project or ideal that we're trying to live up to. Having compassion starts and ends with…

— Pema Chodron

The happiness we seek cannot be found through grasping, trying to hold on to things. It cannot be found through getting serious…

— Pema Chodron

Loving kindness towards ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. It means we can still be crazy after all these years. We…

— Pema Chodron

At least once a year, I imagine that I am about to die. Looking back as truthfully as I can at my…

— Pema Chodron

On the journey of the warrior-bodhisattva, the path goes down, not up, as if the mountain pointed toward the earth instead of…

— Pema Chodron

Meditation is about seeing clearly the body that we have, the mind that we have, the domestic situation that we have, the…

— Pema Chodron

Our wisdom is all mixed up with what we call our neurosis. Our brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is all mixed up…

— Pema Chodron

We think that by protecting ourselves from suffering, we are being kind to ourselves. The truth is we only become more fearful,…

— Pema Chodron

Buddhist words such as compassion and emptiness don't mean much until we start cultivating our innate ability simply to be there with…

— Pema Chodron

Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life.…

— Pema Chodron

I equate ego with trying to figure everything out instead of going with the flow. That closes your heart and your mind…

— Pema Chodron

My experience with forgiveness is that it sort of comes spontaneously at a certain point and to try to force it it's…

— Pema Chodron

There is no cultivation of patience when your pattern is to just try to seek harmony and smooth everything out. Patience implies…

— Pema Chodron

We spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to re-create these zones of safety, which are always falling apart. That's…

— Pema Chodron

The sad part is that all we're trying to do is not feel that underlying uneasiness. The sadder part is that we…

— Pema Chodron

When you refrain from habitual thoughts and behavior, the uncomfortable feelings will still be there. They don’t magically disappear. Over the years,…

— Pema Chodron