“This particular teaching on the Four Limitless Ones, on maitri, compassion, joy and equanimity is really a teaching on how to take the situations of your life and train- actually train- in catching yourself closing down, catching yourself getting hard, and training in opening at that very point, or softening. In some sense reversing a very, very old pattern of the whole species, which is a pattern of armoring ourselves. It’s sort of like the essence of the whole Path is in that place of discomfort and what do you do with it?” — Pema Chödrön
This is taken from the text of a talk titled MAITRI-Cultivating Unconditional Friendliness to Oneself given by Pema Chödrön (Friday, 9.26.97, San Francisco). Here is a link to the post wrote last year with further highlights from this worthwhile talk. Also some references to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 1.33