Pema Chodron Maitri Quotes & Sayings

Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is called maitri, or unconditional friendliness, a simple, direct relationship with the way we are. — Pema Chodron

Pema calls these activities "the six ways of compassionate living": generosity, patience, discipline, exertion, meditation, and prajna, or wisdom. The basis for all these practices is the cultivation of maitri, an unconditional loving-kindness with ourselves that says, "Start where you are." In Buddhist terms, this path is known as bodhisattva activity. Simply put, a bodhisattva is one who aspires to act from an awakened heart. In terms of the Shambhala teachings, it is the path of warriorship. To join these two streams, Pema likes to use the term warrior-bodhisattva, which implies a fresh and forward-moving energy that is willing to enter into suffering for others' benefit. Such action relates to overcoming the self-deception, self-protection, and other habitual reactions that we use to keep ourselves secure - in a prison of concepts. By gently and precisely cutting through these barriers of ego, we develop a direct experience of bodhichitta. — Pema Chodron

You'd think someone who'd been to medical school would be able to hear through a stethoscope that somebody was empty inside. — Jodi Picoult

Good God. What a noble lot. You're all Spartacus, arnt you — Richelle Mead

It is only when we begin to relax with ourselves that meditation becomes a transformative process. Only when we relate with ourselves without moralizing, without harshness, without deception, can we let go of harmful patterns. Without maitri (metta), renunciation of old habits becomes abusive. This is an important point. — Pema Chodron

The secret of happiness is the determination to be happy always, rather than wait for outer circumstances to make one happy. — J. Donald Walters

A close contact with nature has been a focus of my life since childhood and has been my inspiration both professionally and personally. I believe that for most of us, most of the time, it is in the everyday experience of beauty, certainly in nature and in music, that we sense a heaven half-revealed and come closest to the true meaning of reality. — Densey Clyne

For an aspiring bodhisattva, the essential practice is to cultivate maitri, or loving-kindness. — Pema Chodron

Loving-kindness - maitri - toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. 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. Sometimes — Pema Chodron

When you feel a weak moment coming on, the key is self-control. — Auliq Ice

The formal practice of loving-kindness or maitri has seven stages. We begin by engendering loving-kindness for ourselves and then expand it at out own pace to include loved ones, friends, "neutral" persons, those who irritate us, all of the above as a group, and finally, all beings throughout time and space. We gradually widen the circle of loving-kindness. — Pema Chodron

And Bobby was working on a new theory of personal deportment; he didn't quite have the whole thing yet, but part of it involved the idea that people who were genuinely dangerous might not need to exhibit the fact at all, and that the ability to conceal a threat made them even more dangerous. — William Gibson

...your heart spoke for you. You gave up everything for me. — Camilla Isley

Grace headed in desperation for the coffeemaker. Apparently it was going to be one of those mornings. Funny how often those happened after a short night's sleep. — Thea Harrison

He laughed and tugged me down in a kiss. Then, lips still close enough to feel them tickle mine, he said, "You know this is it for me, right?You're it. First and last."
I looked up and met his gaze. "Same for me. First and last. — Kelley Armstrong

The music of lovers is not generally appreciated by lovers of music. — Mardy Grothe

He began to talk about the fact that race was not only a construct but a scientific error along the magnitude of the error that the world was flat ... 'And when they discover their mistake, I mean, truly discover it, it'll be as big as when they learned the world was, in fact, round. It'll open up a whole new world. And nothing will ever be the same. — Danzy Senna

A common misconception held that midi-chlorians were Force-carrying particles, when in fact they functioned more as translators, interlocutors of the will of the Force. — James Luceno

Community, a place of healing and growth ...
There are more and more groups today oriented towards issues and causes ... They can become very aggressive and divide the world between oppressors and the oppressed, the good and the bad. There seems to be a need in human beings to see evil and combat it outside oneself, in order not to see it inside oneself.
The difference between a community and a group that is only issue-oriented, is that the latter see the enemy outside the group. The struggle is an external one; and there will be a winner and a loser. The group knows it is right and has the truth, and wants to impose it. The members of a community know that the struggle is inside of each person and inside the community; it is against all the powers of pride, elitism, hate and depression that are there and which hurt and crush others, and which cause division and war of all sorts. The enemy is inside, not outside. — Jean Vanier