Quote

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

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Pema Chodron
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: July 14
Clergyman
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Deirdre Blomfield-Brow
Time
Death
Basic
Square
Facts
Changing
Squares
Moments
Messages
Minimum
Ends
Pass
Lasting
Back
Present
Substance
Relaxing
Everything
Suffering
Bones
Hopelessness
Come
Fact
Message
Resisting
Things
Moment
Buddhism
Bare

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we're stuck.
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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.
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When you have made good friends with yourself, your situation will be more friendly too.
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If it's painful, you become willing not just to endure it but also to let it awaken your heart and soften you. You learn to embrace it.
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To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
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Nothing in its essence is one way or the other.
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Honesty without kindness, humor, and goodheartedness can be just mean.
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If there's any possibility for enlightenment, it's right now, not at some future time. Now is the time.
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The essence of practice is always the same: instead of falling prey to a chain reaction of revenge or self-hatred, we gradually learn to catch the emotional reaction and drop the story lines.
Pema Chodron
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According to the Buddhist belief, you can go on and on indefinitely, so you see your life as just a brief moment in time.
Pema Chodron
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We sow the seeds of our future hells or happiness by the way we open or close our minds right now.
Pema Chodron
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Whatever is happening is the path to enlightenment.
Pema Chodron
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I'm here to tell you that the path to peace is right there, when you want to get away.
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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As each breath goes out, let it be the end of that moment and the birth of something new. . .
Pema Chodron
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The more neurosis the more wisdom.
Pema Chodron
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Only in an open, nonjudgmental space can we acknowledge what we are feeling. Only in an open space where we're not all caught up in our own version of reality can we see and hear and feel who others really are, which allows us to be with them and communicate with them properly.
Pema Chodron
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Honesty without kindness, humor, and goodheartedness can be just mean. From the very beginning to the very end, pointing to our own hearts to discover what is true isn’t just a matter of honesty but also of compassion and respect for what we see.
Pema Chodron