99 Best Pema Chodron Quotes About Love, Life & Compassion

pemo chodron quotes great big minds

Lives after covid’19 have been different. Most of us will understand why we may call life a turbulent ride. The good thing about living is that solutions are locked within us and we just have to search the right places to unlock the chest. For instance, Pema Chodron quotes find you at your weakest, most people say that it meets you halfway in your search for clarity.

Have you ever heard about Pema Chodron or her quotes before now?

Whether yes or no, this is what you should know about her.  Pema Chodron is a Buddhist teacher, an author of one of the best-selling books of our contemporary time, “When Things Fall Apart.” She is a nun as well as a mother. About Pema Chodron’s quotes, this is what you should know; it is the light at the end of your dark tunnel.

Let’s dive into Pema Chodron’s quotes.

99 Best Pema Chodron Quotes About Love, Life & Compassion Click To Tweet

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Action plan on how to use your favorite quotes effectively

  1. Print it – Print your favorite quote onto paper and stick them up at obvious places around your house, like your bed frame, desk, dressing mirror, refrigerator or microwave.
  2. Desktop or mobile wallpaper – Type or work out a simple design (use Canva.com to make designing effortless) for your desktop or mobile wallpaper. Change it from time to time for empowering variations.
  3. Workplace / worktop – Frame your favorite quote up and place them so by your desk. Not only do you get inspired after each read, your colleagues might too.
  4. Pocket-size cut outs – Compile a list of your favorite quotes in wallet-size fittings. Keep them in your wallet or at the back of your pocket wherever you go. That way, you get to read through them conveniently wherever you go.
  5. Accelerate further – To this day, I am still constantly learning through paid educational platforms to improve my personal development and professional growth. Even though nowadays, multiple resources can be freely found online, but it’ll take a tremendous amount of effort and time to find what works. I know so and have been joining a premium, life-changing learning program called Mindvalley. It connects me to the world’s best teachers and community and I’ve been on their program since 2019. So yes, I know the programs taught inside work.

99 Best Pema Chodron Quotes About Love, Life & Compassion

  1. “The only reason we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else’s eyes.” – Pema Chodron
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  1. “You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart…”- Pema Chodron
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Read more: 99 Best Mercy Quotes On Justice, Love And Forgiveness

Best Pema Chodron quotes when things fall apart

  1. “Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not be squeamish about taking a good look.”- Pema Chodron
  1. “To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don’t deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “We don’t set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people’s hearts.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. When there’s a big disappointment, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that. We don’t know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “I used to have a sign pinned up on my wall that read: Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us…It was all about letting go of everything.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “A further sign of health is that we don’t become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it’s time to stop struggling and look directly at what’s threatening us.”- Pema Chodron
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Read more: 99 Best Freddie Mercury Quotes About Music, Love, And Death

More Pema Chodron quotes about fear

  1. “When things are shaky and nothing is working, we might realize that we are on the verge of something. We might realize that this is a very vulnerable and tender place, and that tenderness can go either way. We can shut down and feel resentful or we can touch in on that throbbing quality.” – Pema Chodron
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  1. “Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear?”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what’s out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. . . Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there’s some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. . . Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “We can spend our whole lives escaping from the monsters of our minds.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn’t sit for even one, that’s the journey of the warrior.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “When we protect ourselves so we won’t feel pain, that protection becomes like armor, like armor that imprisons the softness of of the heart.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “No one ever tells us to stop running away from fear…the advice we usually get is to sweeten it up, smooth it over, take a pill, or distract ourselves, but by all means make it go away.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior’s world.”- Pema Chodron
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Read more: 135 Best Osho Quotes On Life, Happiness, Fear, And Love

Pema Chodron quotes about love

  1. “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 Chodron
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  1. “We are all capable of becoming fundamentalists because we get addicted to other people’s wrongness.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings.”- Pema Chodron
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  1. “As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find compassion.” – Pema Chodron
  2. “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” – Pema Chodron
  3. “When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into it’s dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment”- Pema Chodron
  4. “When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless, that it doesn’t have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.”- Pema Chodron
  5. “What happens with you when you begin to feel uneasy, unsettled, queasy? Notice the panic, notice when you instantly grab for something.” – Pema Chodron
  6. “Abandon hope.” – Pema Chodron

Read more: 99 Best JRR Tolkien Quotes About Life, Love And Death

Pema Chodron quotes on life

  1. “The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.” – Pema Chodron
  2. “Trying to run away is never the answer to being a fully human. Running away from the immediacy of our experience is like preferring death to life.” – Pema Chodron
  3. “The more we witness our emotional reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain.”- Pema Chodron
  4. “When we touch the center of sorrow, when we sit with discomfort without trying to fix it, when we stay present to the pain of disapproval or betrayal and let it soften us, these are times that we connect with bodhichitta.”- Pema Chodron
  5. “Honesty without kindness, humor, and goodheartedness can be just mean.”- Pema Chodron
  6. “Everybody loves something, even if it’s only tortillas.”- Pema Chodron
  7. “At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.”- Pema Chodron
  8. “None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine.”- Pema Chodron
  9. “We have a choice. We can spend our whole life suffering because we can’t relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased.”- Pema Chodron

Read more: 120 Best Kevin Gates Quotes About Love, Life, And Trust

Pema Chodron quotes about gratitude

  1. “Be grateful to everyone” is about making peace with the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected… If we were to make a list of people we don’t like – people we find obnoxious, threatening, or worthy of contempt – we would discover much about those aspects of ourselves that we can’t face… other people trigger the karma that we haven’t worked out.”- Pema Chodron
  2. The essence of bravery is being without self-deception.”- Pema Chodron
  3. “It isn’t the things that happen to us in our lives that cause us to suffer, it’s how we relate to the things that happen to us that causes us to suffer.”- Pema Chodron
  4. “Once you create a self-justifying storyline, your emotional entrapment within it quadruples.”- Pema Chodron
  5. “My experience with forgiveness is that it sort of comes spontaneously at a certain point and to try to force it it’s not really forgiveness. It’s Buddhist philosophy or something spiritual jargon that you’re trying to live up to but you’re just using it against yourself as a reason why you’re not okay.”- Pema Chodron
  6. “The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last—that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.”- Pema Chodron
  7. “Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already.”- Pema Chodron
  8. “Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time—that is the basic message.”- Pema Chodron
  9. “Don’t let life harden your heart.”- Pema Chodron

Rad more: 117 Best Hero Quotes To Bring Forth The Greatness In You

Pema Chodron quotes on change

  1. “Things are as bad and as good as they seem. There’s no need to add anything extra.”- Pema Chodron
  2. “One can appreciate & celebrate each moment — there’s nothing more sacred. There’s nothing more vast or absolute. In fact, there’s nothing more!”- Pema Chodron
  3. “Everything is fresh, the essence of realization.”- Pema Chodron
  4. “Patience is the training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed.”- Pema Chodron
  5. “Pain is not a punishment, pleasure is not a reward.”- Pema Chodron
  6. “In truth, there is enormous space in which to live our everyday lives.”- Pema Chodron
  7. “We can use our personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.”- Pema Chodron
  8. “The truth you believe in and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.”- Pema Chodron
  9. “we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.”- Pema Chodron

Read more: 99 The Alchemist Quotes On Destiny, Personal Legend, And Finding Truth

Pema Chodron quotes on listening

  1. “Affirmations are like screaming that you’re okay in order to overcome this whisper that you’re not… maybe you’re not okay. Well, no big deal. None of us is okay and all of us are fine.”- Pema Chodron
  2. “Nothing in its essence is one way or the other.”- Pema Chodron
  3. “In a nutshell, when life is pleasant, think of others. When life is a burden, think of others.”- Pema Chodron
  4. “The more we make friends with ourselves, the more we can see that our ways of shutting down and closing off are rooted in the mistaken thinking that the way to get happy is to blame somebody else.”- Pema Chodron
  5. “LIFE’S work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into your life wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will.”- Pema Chodron
  6. “Interrupting our destructive habits and awakening our heart is the work of a lifetime.”- Pema Chodron
  7. “If your mind is expansive and unfettered, you will find yourself in a more accommodating world, a place that’s endlessly interesting and alive. That quality isn’t inherent in the place but in your state of mind.”- Pema Chodron
  8. “When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless, that it doesn’t have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast and limitless.”- Pema Chodron
  9. “Words themselves are neutral. It’s the charge we add to them that matters”- Pema Chodron

Read more: 108 Classy Short Sassy Quotes On Attitude, Life, And Love

Pema Chodron quotes on anger

  1. “An emotion like anger that’s an automatic response lasts just ninety seconds from the moment it’s triggered until it runs its course. One and a half minutes, that’s all. When it lasts any longer, which it usually does, it’s because we’ve chosen to rekindle it.”- Pema Chodron
  2. “Patience is not learned in safety.”- Pema Chodron
  3. “Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”- Pema Chodron
  4. “Awakeness is found in our pleasure and our pain, our confusion and our wisdom, available in each moment of our weird, unfathomable, ordinary everyday lives.”- Pema Chodron
  5. “Finally, never give up on yourself. Then you will never give up on others.”- Pema Chodron
  6. “Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all.”- Pema Chodron
  7. “Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”- Pema Chodron
  8. “Scrambling for security has never brought anything but momentary joy.”- Pema Chodron
  9. “Maybe the most important teaching is to lighten up and relax. It’s such a huge help in working with our crazy mixed-up minds to remember that what we’re doing is unlocking a softness that is in us and letting it spread. We’re letting it blur the sharp corners of self-criticism and complaint.”- Pema Chodron

Read more: 99 Best Ravi Zacharias Quotes On Love, Life, And Truth

Best Pema Chodron quotes about changes

  1. “There are many changes in the weather of a day.”- Pema Chodron
  2. “It helps to remember that our spiritual practice is not about accomplishing anything—not about winning or losing—but about ceasing to struggle and relaxing as it is.”- Pema Chodron
  3. “Each moment is an opportunity to make a fresh start.”- Pema Chodron
  4. “What causes misery is always trying to get away from the facts of life, always trying to avoid pain and seek happiness—this sense of ours that there could be lasting security and happiness available to us if we could only do the right thing.”- Pema Chodron
  5. “A much more interesting, kind, adventurous, and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiviness is bitter or sweet.”- Pema Chodron
  6. “Life’s work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will. It’s going to stick around until you learn your lesson, at any rate.”- Pema Chodron
  7. “Birth is painful and delightful. Death is painful and delightful. Everything that ends is also the beginning of something else. Pain is not a punishment; pleasure is not a reward.”- Pema Chodron
  8. “It’s a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness.”- Pema Chodron
  9. “One of the main discoveries of meditation is seeing how we continually run away from the present moment, how we avoid being here just as we are.”- Pema Chodron
  10. “WE can learn to rejoice in even the smallest blessings our life holds. It is easy to miss our own good fortune; often happiness comes in ways we don’t even notice.”
  11. “The root of suffering is resisting the certainty that no matter what the circumstances, uncertainty is all we truly have.”- Pema Chodron
  12. “Meditation practice is not about later, when you get it all together and you’re this person you really respect.”- Pema Chodron
  13. “LIFE is a good teacher and a good friend.”- Pema Chodron
  14. “you’re never going to get your act together, fully, completely.”- Pema Chodron
  15. “As the twelfth-century Tibetian yogi Milarepa said when he heard of his student Gampopa’s peak experiences, ‘They are neither good nor bad. Keep meditating.”- Pema Chodron
  16. “Live your life as an experiment.”- Pema Chodron
  17. “If we are willing to stand fully in our own shoes and never give up on ourselves, then we will be able to put ourselves in the shoes of others and never give up on them.”- Pema Chodron
  18. “Transformation occurs only when we remember, breath by breath, year after year, to move toward our emotional distress without condemning or justifying our experience.”- Pema Chodron

Which of these Pema Chodron quotes inspired you the most?

We have so many quotes and existing authors but none of them search your soul the way Pema Chodron quotes does. Every Pema Chodron quotes is like a solution to the missing piece of your puzzled soul fitting perfectly. Pema Chodron is not too imaginative with her message but a realist in most of it. We know that love is not all rosy and perfect like in Disneyland or maybe wonderland and Pema Chodron is as clear as morning about this. She gives you the message naked when most will rather clothe them.

We all need Pema Chodron quotes in our lives and if you are wondering why, it means that you must go back to reading her quotes above, to comprehend it this time.

We are at the end of the tunnel and we hope you all had a good read.

Don’t forget to live a comment below telling us your favorite Pema Chodron quotes.