Quote

It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately fill up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness. -Pema Chodron, from When Things Fall Apart

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
Fall
Fundamental
Spaciousness
Experience
Fundamentals
Transformative
Wells
Apart
Restlessness
Well
Begin
Pause
Things
Instead
Pauses
Simply
Connect
Waiting
Immediately
Space
Fill

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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Unconditional good heart toward others is not even a possibility unless we attend to our own demons.
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Ego is like a room of your own, a room with a view with the temperature and the smells and the music that you like. You want it your own way. You'd just like to have a little peace, you'd like to have a little happiness, you know, just gimme a break.
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All situations teach you, and often it's the tough ones that teach you best.
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Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.
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Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allowing ourselves to move gently toward what scares us.
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Ego is something that you come to know - something that you befriend by not acting out or by repressing all the feelings that you feel.
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Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world.
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Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic-this is the spiritual path.
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Resisting what is happening is a major cause of suffering.
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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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There are many changes in the weather of a day.
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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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Feel the feelings and drop the story.
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What you do for yourself, any gesture of kindness, any gesture of gentleness, any gesture of honesty and clear seeing toward yourself, will affect how you experience your world. In fact, it will transform how you experience the world. 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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It's helpful to remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing with whatever arises, without picking and choosing.
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Opening to the world begins to benefit ourselves and others simultaneously. The more we relate with others, the more quickly we discover where we're blocked.
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We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.
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It's not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share.
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It is possible to move through the drama of our lives without believing so earnestly in the character that we play.
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Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don't struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality.
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