Pema Chodron

Sometimes I have trouble with the Buddhist teachings, especially when they get into the Eight Worldly Dharmas, the Six Kinds of Loneliness, the Six Paramitas and all that stuff. But, after some resistance, I became totally absorbed in Pema Chodron's book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. Here are a few quotes that lit me up.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh.

The process of becoming unstuck quires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality, like changing our DNA.

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.

We can’t attain enlightenment, let alone feel contentment and joy, without seeing who we are and what we do, without seeing our patterns and our habits . . . it’s a process by which self-deception becomes so skillfully and compassionately exposed that there’s no mask that can hide us anymore.

The middle way is wide open, but it's tough going, because it goes against the grain of an ancient neurotic pattern that we all share. When we feel lonely, when we feel hopeless, what we want to do is move to the right or left. We don't want to sit and feel what we feel. We don't want to go through the detox. Yet the middle way encourages us to do just that. It encourages us to awaken the bravery that exists in everyone without exception, including you and me.