Pema quotes

The fixed identity is our false security. We maintain it by filtering all our experience through this perspective.

― Pema Chödrön, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change

We could say that the real cause of suffering is not being able to tolerate uncertainty—and thinking that it’s perfectly sane, perfectly normal, to deny the fundamental groundlessness of being human.

― Pema Chödrön, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change

We are fundamentally good,
not fundamentally flawed,
and we can trust this.

― Pema Chödrön, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change

With a fixed identity, we have to busy ourselves with trying to rearrange reality, because reality doesn’t always conform to our view.

― Pema Chödrön, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change

As individuals we, too, have plenty of fundamentalist tendencies. We use them to comfort ourselves. We grab on to a position or belief as a way of neatly explaining reality, unwilling to tolerate the uncertainty and discomfort of staying open to other possibilities.

We cling to that position as our personal platform and become very dogmatic about it.

― Pema Chödrön, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change

Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news.

― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart

Sow positive seeds and make positive imprints in the unconscious.

When someone harms you, you might replace the hateful thought, word, or deed with the thought of:

‘May I and this bastard attain enlightenment together. May this painful encounter bring benefit to both of us.’

― Pema Chödrön, Don’t Bite the Hook

When you get angry, there’s no point in beating yourself up. Just say, ‘Right, this is what happens with me in these particular situations. And that’s because I have this potential – when I’m with this person or in this situation – to be bothered.’

Then you start working with it right then, on the spot, and your potential to be bothered gets lessened. Why? Because you are uncovering your inner strength, your fearlessness, your good heart, your good mind. They are there for us, always. Its never gone away, but we are pretty good at covering it up, masking it, making it less available to us.

― Pema Chödrön, Don’t Bite the Hook

It’s never too late to pause in the whole situation. Even after you’ve already blown it by your own evaluation of yourself.

Sometimes that’s the only way I ever learn anything – is by actually completely making a big mess. And then maybe it gets through, when I reflect back on how it all happened.

― Pema Chödrön, Don’t Bite the Hook

The more afraid you are, the more of a fundamentalist you become. The definition of fundamentalism is you have to have it be a certain way – and you get your security from that. And the definition of ‘having to have things a certain way’ is that there is going to be plenty of people that are going to become your opponents. Because they are going to want things to be a certain way and it’s going to be different than the way you want it. And that’s the description of war, of violence, and all the unhappiness in the world.

― Pema Chödrön, Don’t Bite the Hook