Two years ago I didn’t know much about Pema Chodron. It wasn’t until I started to write for elephant journal that I started falling in love with so many snippets of Shambhala wisdom.

I’m not a person who gathers gurus lightly. Although I adore quite a few and quote them liberally, the only thing I do religiously is to not do anything religiously.

Whenever I’ve tried to digest Buddhism, I’ve felt that it was inaccessible, and some tenets just did not fit my groove. But they say that the teacher appears when the student is ready, and one day I was browsing a bookstore and there was The Pocket Pema Chodron.

Pema Chodron is an American Buddhist nun, born Deidre Bloomfield-Brown in New York, who studied intensively under the Tibetan meditation master, Chogyam Trungpa. Looking beyond religion, Pema’s interpretation of Buddhism can enrich any walk of faith.

I love small things, like coffee cups and little books and tiny bowls. Pema’s tiny book came home with me right then and there. I read it in a garden I love, amidst sunshine and vegetable beds and the sound of summer humming.

I admire her forthrightness, her ability to distill Buddhist thought into bite-sized morsels and above all, the sense of humor that is evident from behind her words.

Here are some quotes that literally kicked my ass, as they opened my eyes to the fact that I’d closed my mind. And she’s done it so well, that now I am adding her teachings to my most treasured spiritual cache.

more here…http://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/06/7-pema-chodron-quotes-that-kicked-my-a/