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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.
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
Protection
Protect
Becomes
Pain
Feel
Feels
Imprisons
Heart
Softness
Like
Armor
More quotes by Pema Chodron
A heartfelt sense of aspiring cuts through negativity about yourself it cuts through the heavy trips you lay on yourself.
Pema Chodron
It isn't the things that happen to us in our lives that cause us to suffer, it's how we relate to the things that happen to us that causes us to suffer.
Pema Chodron
It has a lot to do with developing patience, not with the check-out person so much, but with your own pain that arises, the rawness and the vulnerability, and sending some kind of warmth and love to that rawness and soreness. I think that's how we have to practice.
Pema Chodron
Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what is going on, but that there is something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.
Pema Chodron
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.
Pema Chodron
People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all.
Pema Chodron
Even if you don't feel appreciation, just look. Feel what you feel take an interest and be curious.
Pema Chodron
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.
Pema Chodron
The biggest obstacle to taking a bigger perspective on life is that our emotions capture and blind us.
Pema Chodron
Instead of asking ourselves, 'How can I find security and happiness?' we could ask ourselves, 'Can I touch the center of my pain? Can I sit with suffering, both yours and mine, without trying to make it go away? Can I stay present to the ache of loss or disgrace-disapp ointment in all its many forms-and let it open me?' This is the trick.
Pema Chodron
Come back to square one, just the minimum bare bones. Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time-that is the basic message.
Pema Chodron
By not knowing, not hoping to know and not acting like we know what's happening, we begin to access our inner strength.
Pema Chodron
Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.
Pema Chodron
We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be.
Pema Chodron
Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us.
Pema Chodron
Patience takes courage. It is not an ideal state of calm. In fact, when we practice patience we will see our agitation far more clearly.
Pema Chodron
If you're invested in security and certainty, you are on the wrong planet.
Pema Chodron
Don't worry about achieving. Don't worry about perfection. Just be there each moment as best you can. When you realize you've wandered off again, simply very lightly acknowledge that. This light touch is the golden key to reuniting with our openness.
Pema Chodron
We sow the seeds of our future hells or happiness by the way we open or close our minds right now.
Pema Chodron
It isn't what happens to us that causes us to suffer it's what we say to ourselves about what happens.
Pema Chodron
