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Use your life to wake you up.

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
Life
Wake
Positive
Use

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is called maitri, or unconditional friendliness, a simple, direct relationship with the way we are.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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So many of us start along the spiritual path because we are suffering. But you must realize that for real healing to occur, there must first be deep compassion for yourself, especially the parts of yourself you dislike or consider ugly.
Pema Chodron
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We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs - or we don't. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality- or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha's opinion, to train in staying open and curious - to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs - is the best use of our human lives.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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The future is the result of what we do right now.
Pema Chodron
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Whatever is happening is the path to enlightenment.
Pema Chodron
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The truth is that good and bad coexist sour and sweet coexist. They aren't really opposed to each other.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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In a nutshell, when life is pleasant, think of others. When life is a burden, think of others.
Pema Chodron
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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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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.
Pema Chodron
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The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.
Pema Chodron
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Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear.
Pema Chodron
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It's not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is a part of being alive, something we all share. We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.
Pema Chodron
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Meditation isn't really about getting rid of thoughts, it's about changing the pattern of grasping on to things, which in our everyday experience is our thoughts.
Pema Chodron
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None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine.
Pema Chodron
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If you follow your heart, you're going to find that it is often extremely inconvenient.
Pema Chodron
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When people are hurting, what they really need is someone who is fully there for them - not someone who is condescending or officious. The only way for you to be there for them is by facing your fear or anger, whatever feelings cause you to shut down.
Pema Chodron
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The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are.
Pema Chodron