Nathan Zorndorf

“The very first teaching I ever got that I can remember was at a dharmadhatu, one of the centers Rinpoche established. One of the older students was giving a talk, and he started by saying, 'if you're interested in these teaching then you're going to have to accept the fact that you're never going to get it all together.' It was a shocking statement to me. He said with a lot of clarity, 'you are never going to get it all together, you're never going to get your act together fully, completely. You're never going to get all the loose ends tied up.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World

“The opposite of samsara is when the walls fall down, the cocoon completely disappears, and we are totally open to whatever may happen, with no withdrawing, no centralizing into ourselves. That is what we aspire to, the warrior's journey. That's what stirs us and inspires us: leaping, being thrown out of the nest, going through initiation rites, growing up, stepping into something that's uncertain and unknown.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World

“... for four or five years practically the only teaching Rinpoche gave, in many different forms, under many different titles, was, 'stop shopping around and settle down and go deeply into one body of truth.' He taught that this continual dabbling around in spiritual things was just another form of materialism, trying to get comfortable, trying to get secure, whereas if you stuck to one boat and really started working with it, it would definitely put you through all your changes. You would meet all your dragons; you would be continually pushed out of the nest. It would be one big initiation rite, and tremendous wisdom would come from that, tremendous heartfelt, genuine spiritual growth and development. One's life would be well spent. He stressed that his students should stop just dabbling in spirituality to try to feel good or get high or be spiritual.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World

“My middle and way your middle way are not the same middle way. For instance, my style is to be casual and soft-edged and laid back. For me to do what usually would be called strict practice is still pretty relaxed, because I do it in a relaxed way. So strict practice is good for me. It helps me find middle my way. Very relaxed practice doesn't show me as much because it doesn't show me where I'm out of balance. But perhaps you are much more militant and precise and on the dot. Maybe you tend toward being tight. It might be easy for you to do tight practice, but that might be too harsh and too authoritarian, so you might need to find out what it means to practice in a relaxed, loose way. Everybody is different. Everybody's middle way is a different middle way. Everyone practices in order to find out for him or herself personally how to be balanced, how to be not too tight and not too loose. No one else can tell you. You just have to find out for yourself.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World