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The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last—that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.

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
Things
Last
Points
Truth
Inevitable
Firsts
Hunger
Human
Noble
Humans
Beings
Disintegrate
First
Security
Counted
Long
Suffering
Buddha
Believe
Lasts
Satisfy

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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Every small problem most likely stems from the same root as large problems, and so there is no need to always go deep. One can use anything for the therapeutic process and/if this link is made.
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Few of us are satisfied with retreating from the world and just working on ourselves. We want our training to manifest and to be of benefit. The bodhisattva-warrior, therefore, makes a vow to wake up not just for himself but for the welfare of all beings.
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How will we experience the world a month, a year, or five years from now? Will we be even angrier, more grasping and fearful, or will some shift have occurred? This depends entirely on the tendencies we reinforce today.
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We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.
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As each breath goes out, let it be the end of that moment and the birth of something new. . .
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we come to realize that other people's welfare is just as important as our own. In helping them, we help ourselves. In helping ourselves, we help the world.
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A heartfelt sense of aspiring cuts through negativity about yourself it cuts through the heavy trips you lay on yourself.
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Peace isn’t an experience free of challenges, free of rough and smooth, it’s an experience that’s expansive enough to include all that arises without feeling threatened.
Pema Chodron
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By becoming intimate with how we close down and how we open up, we awaken our unlimited potential.
Pema Chodron
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Mindfulness is loving all the details of our lives, and awareness is the natural thing that happens: life begins to open up, and you realize that you're always standing at the center of the world.
Pema Chodron
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All the wars, all the hatred, all the ignorance in the world come out of being so invested in our opinions.
Pema Chodron
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Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s the ground, that’s what we study, that’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.
Pema Chodron
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Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.
Pema Chodron
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Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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Rather than becoming more relaxed, you start pulling down the shades and locking the door. When you do go out, you find the experience more and more unsettling and disagreeable. You become touchier, more fearful, more irritable than ever. The more you try to get it your way, the less you feel at home.
Pema Chodron
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Our patterns are well established, seductive, and comforting. Just wanting for them to be ventilated isn't enough. Those of us who struggle with this know.
Pema Chodron
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Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.
Pema Chodron
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All you need to know is that the future is wide open and you are about to create it by what you do.
Pema Chodron
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We're afraid that this anger or sorrow or loneliness is going to last forever... Instead, acting it out is what makes it last.
Pema Chodron