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
Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don't struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Embracing impermanence leads to inner peace and acceptance.
This quote by Pema Chodron highlights the importance of recognizing and accepting the transient nature of life. When we stop resisting the changes and uncertainties that come our way, we can find a state of harmony with the reality around us, leading to a more peaceful and fulfilling existence.
Themes
ImpermanenceHarmonyAcceptanceRealityPeace
In practice
Example use cases
During a meditation session, one might reflect on this quote to gain peace.
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
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.
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
Similar quotes
I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.
Marcus AureliusRead
We turn skeletons into goddesses and look to them as if they might teach us how not to need.
Marya HornbacherRead
On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.
Thomas JeffersonRead
The Constitution is worth saving, the rule of law is worth saving, democracy is worth saving, but these things can and will be lost if everyone waits around for someone else.
Timothy D. SnyderRead
The task for sociology is to come to the help of the individual. We have to be in service of freedom. It is something we have lost sight of.
Zygmunt BaumanRead
...no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away... The span of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence.
Terry PratchettRead