Sarah

“It helps to remember that our practice is not about accomplishing anything—not about winning or losing—but about ceasing to struggle and relaxing as it is. That is what we are doing when we sit down to meditate. That attitude spreads into the rest of our lives.”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

“To what do we really commit ourselves? Is it to playing it safe and manipulating our life and our whole world, so that it will give us security and confirmation? Or is our commitment to deeper and deeper levels of maitri? The question always remains: In what do we take refuge? Do we take refuge in small, self-satisfied actions, speech, and mind? Or do we take refuge in warriorship, in taking a leap, in going beyond our usual safety zones?”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

“Sometimes we meet someone who seems to have a great sense of well-being, and we wonder how that person got that way. We would like to be that way. That well-being is often a result of having been brave enough to be fully alive and awake to every moment of life, including all the lack of cheer, all the dark times, all the times when the clouds cover the sun. Through our own good spirit, we can be willing to relate directly with what’s happening, with precision and gentleness. That’s what creates fundamental cheerfulness, fundamental relaxation.”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

“That’s what the dharma is about; turning all our habits around, reversing the process of how we make everything so solid, reversing the wheel of samsara. It starts with catching ourselves when we spin off in the same old ways. Usually we feel that there’s a large problem and we have to fix it. The instruction is to stop. Do something unfamiliar. Do anything besides rushing off in the same old direction, up to the same old tricks.”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times