The spiritual journey involves going beyond hope and fear, stepping into unknown territory, continually moving forward. The most important aspect of being on the spiritual path may be just to keep moving.
Pema ChodronRead
Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s the ground, that’s what we study, that’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Meditation is about accepting ourselves as we are rather than striving to become someone different.
Pema Chodron emphasizes that the essence of meditation is not about discarding our current selves or achieving an ideal version of ourselves. Instead, it is about developing a friendly relationship with who we truly are in the present moment, acknowledging our thoughts and feelings with curiosity and acceptance, which leads to a deeper understanding of ourselves.
Themes
MeditationSelf-AcceptanceCuriosityPresent-MomentMindfulness
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote to inspire individuals in a meditation workshop.
More from Pema Chodron
All quotes →Without giving up hope—that there’s somewhere better to be, that there’s someone better to be—we will never relax with where we are or who we are.
Pema ChodronRead
When we scratch the wound and give into our addictions we do not allow the wound to heal.
Pema ChodronRead
It's said that when we die, the four elements - earth, air, fire and water - dissolve one by one, each into the other, and finally just dissolve into space. But while we're living, we share the energy that makes everything, from a blade of grass to an elephant, grow and live and then inevitably wear out and die. This energy, this life force, creates the whole world.
Pema ChodronRead
We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs - or we don't. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality- or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha's opinion, to train in staying open and curious - to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs - is the best use of our human lives.
Pema ChodronRead
To stay with that shakiness-to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge-that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic-this is the spiritual path.
Pema ChodronRead
Similar quotes
I know black women in Tennessee who have worked all their lives, from the time they were twelve years old to the day they died. These women don't listen to the women's liberation rhetoric because they know that it's nothing but a bunch of white women who had certain life-styles and who want to change those life-styles.
Wilma RudolphRead
Adversity is wont to reveal genius, prosperity to hide it.
HoraceRead
Advice is unfriendly to learning, especially when it is sought. Most of the time when people seek advice, they just want to be heard. Advice at best stops the conversation, definitely inhibits learning, and at worst claims dominance.
Peter BlockRead
There are some nights when sleep plays coy, aloof and disdainful. And all the wiles that I employ to win its service to my side are useless as wounded pride, and much more painful.
Maya AngelouRead
. . . the enemy of righteousness also works in little steps, so small that they are hard to notice if you are thinking only about yourself and how great you are. Just as truth is given to us line upon line and the light brightens slowly as we obey, even so, as we disobey our testimony of truth lessens almost imperceptibly, little by little, and darkness descends so slowly that the proud may easily deny that anything is changing.
Henry B. EyringRead
Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.
Audre LordeRead