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To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.

Pema Chodron

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Pema Chodron
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: July 14
Clergyman
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Deirdre Blomfield-Brow
Humans
Continually
Thrown
Awake
Fully
Completely
Alive
Experience
Nest
Human
Nests

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Tonglen is a way for you to be with people who need you - beginning with yourself.
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If your everyday practice is open to all your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that - then that will take you are far as you can go. And then you'll understand all the teachings that anyone has ever taught.
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it is only to the extent that we are willing to expose ourselves again and again to annihilation that we are able to find that part of ourselves that is indestructible.
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Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. Even if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other side of the continent, we find the very same problem awaiting us when we arrive.
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Just where you are-that's the place to start!
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To live is to be willing to die over and over again.
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Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important. The reason it's important is that, fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn't just ourselves that we're discovering. We're discovering the universe.
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I have all the support I need to simply relax and be with the transitional, in-process quality of my life. I have all I need to engage in the process of awakening.
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When we protect ourselves so we won't feel pain, that protection becomes like armor, like armor that imprisons the softness of of the heart.
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That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. Everything is in process.
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Whatever happens in your life, joyful or painful, do not be swept away by reactivity. Be patient with yourself and don't lose your sense of perspective.
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Most spiritual experiences begin with suffering. They begin with groundlessness. They begin when the rug has been pulled out from under us.
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Discomfort of any kind becomes the basis for practice. We breathe in knowing our pain is shared.
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Tonglen practice begins to dissolve the illusion that each of us is alone with this personal suffering that no one else can understand.
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Clarity and decisiveness come from the willingness to slow down, to listen to and look at what’s happening.
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It is only when we begin to relax with ourselves that meditation becomes a transformative process. Only when we relate with ourselves without moralizing, without harshness, without deception, can we let go of harmful patterns. Without maitri (metta), renunciation of old habits becomes abusive. This is an important point.
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The most important aspect of being on a spiritual path may be to just keep moving.
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What you do for yourself, you're doing for others, and what you do for others, you're doing for yourself.
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The truth is that good and bad coexist sour and sweet coexist. They aren't really opposed to each other.
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If you're invested in security and certainty, you are on the wrong planet.
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