A quote by Pema Chödrön

“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.”

Do you find this frightening? Or is it a relief to know this? All of these things you will have to relinquish sooner or later. Perhaps you find it as yet hard to believe, and I am certainly not asking you to believe that your identity cannot be found in any of those things. You will know the truth of it for yourself. You will know it at the latest

Over and over, we are broken on the shore of life. Our stubborn egos are knocked around, and our frightened hearts are broken open—not once, and not in predictable patterns, but in surprising ways and for as long as we live.

“People living deeply have no fear of dying,” wrote Anaïs Nin. Norman Cousins observed that “the great tragedy of life is not death but what we allow to die inside of us while we live.”

Abhiniveśa cuts to the heart of our attempts at permanence. At the moment of death, we can no longer hold on to our conceptions of self.

The certainty that nothing can happen to us that does not in our innermost being belong to us is the foundation of fearlessness.