Pema Chödrön

. We are looking for answers that will satisfy a hunger we’ve felt for a very long time

Every day, at the moment when things get edgy, we can just ask ourselves, “Am I going to practice peace, or am I going to war?”

Like clouds in a big sky or waves in a vast sea, all our thoughts are given the space to appear. If one hangs on and sweeps us away, whether we call it pleasant or unpleasant, the instruction is to label it all “thinking” with as much openness and kindness as we can muster and let it dissolve back into the big sky. When the clouds and waves immediately return, it’s no problem. We just acknowledge them again and again with unconditional friendliness, labeling them as just “thinking” and letting them go again and again and again

This starts with realizing that whatever occurs is neither the beginning nor the end. It is just the same kind of normal human experience that’s been happening to everyday people from the beginning of time. Thoughts, emotions, moods, and memories come and they go, and basic nowness is always here.

Discursive thoughts are rather like wild dogs that need taming. Rather than beating them or throwing stones, we tame them with compassion. Over and over we regard them with the precision and kindness that allow them to gradually calm down.

. Cutting our expectations for a cure is a gift we can give ourselves. There is no cure for hot and cold. They will go on forever.

At every turn we realize once again that it’s completely hopeless—we can’t get any ground under our feet.

You could even put “Abandon hope” on your refrigerator door instead of more conventional aspirations like “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better.”

We’re always trying to deny that it’s a natural occurrence that things change, that the sand is slipping through our fingers

But getting old, getting sick, losing what we love—we don’t see those events as natural occurrences. We want to ward off that sense of death, no matter what.