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
Sometimes people's spiritual ideas become fixed and they use them against those who don't share their beliefs - in effect, becoming fundamentalist. It's very dangerous - the finger of righteous indignation pointing at someone who is identified as bad or wrong.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Spiritual beliefs can become rigid, leading to judgment and exclusion of those with different views.
This quote by Pema Chodron highlights the danger of inflexible spiritual beliefs that can lead individuals to adopt a fundamentalist mindset. Such rigidity not only alienates others but can also foster hostility and division through a self-righteousness that labels differing beliefs as wrong or bad, rather than promoting understanding and compassion.
Themes
SpiritualityBeliefsFundamentalismDangerIndignation
In practice
Example use cases
During a community discussion on tolerance, this quote can emphasize the risks of rigid beliefs.
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
We have a new generation of very rich people who want to do more with their money than buy a lot of expensive toys. They want to live meaningful lives.
Peter SingerRead
Youth loves honor and victory more than money.
AristotleRead
...because in a way it happened to someone else. I don't really speak that person's language anymore, and when I think about her, she embarrasses me sometimes, but I don't want to forget her, I don't want to pretend she never existed. So before I start forgetting, I have to get down exactly who she was, and exactly how she felt about everything. She was me a lot longer than I've been me so far.
Peter S. BeagleRead
In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 1948) in most solemn form, the dignity of a person is acknowledged to all human beings; and as a consequence there is proclaimed, as a fundamental right, the right of free movement in search for truth and in the attainment of moral good and of justice, and also the right to a dignified life.
Pope John XxiiiRead
There is a world inside the world.
Don DelilloRead
The Convention thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men.
James MadisonRead