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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

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Pema Chodron
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: July 14
Clergyman
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Deirdre Blomfield-Brow
Drop
Buddhism
Ideals
Ought
Suffering
Think
Thinking
People
Gradually

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allowing ourselves to move gently toward what scares us.
Pema Chodron
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When you have made good friends with yourself, your situation will be more friendly too.
Pema Chodron
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None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine.
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My experience with forgiveness is that it sort of comes spontaneously at a certain point and to try to force it it's not really forgiveness. It's Buddhist philosophy or something spiritual jargon that you're trying to live up to but you're just using it against yourself as a reason why you're not okay.
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Being preoccupied with our self-image is like being deaf and blind. It's like standing in the middle of a vast field of wildflowers with a black hood over our heads. It's like coming upon a tree of singing birds while wearing earplugs.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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Patience is not learned in safety.
Pema Chodron
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Welcome the present moment as if you had invited it. It is all we ever have, so we night as well work with it rather than struggling against it. We might as well make it our friend and teacher rather than our enemy.
Pema Chodron
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We don’t sit in meditation to become good meditators. We sit in meditation so that we’ll be more awake in our lives.
Pema Chodron
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To put it concisely, we suffer when we resist the noble and irrefutable truth of impermanence and death.
Pema Chodron
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We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.
Pema Chodron
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All the terrible things we do to ourselves and others from alcoholism to character assignation to abuse to murder come from one cause: the inability to stay present with an uncomfortable feeling in the body and seek short-term relief.
Pema Chodron
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Difficult people are the greatest teachers.
Pema Chodron
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When we touch the center of sorrow, when we sit with discomfort without trying to fix it, when we stay present to the pain of disapproval or betrayal and let it soften us, these are times that we connect with bohdichitta.
Pema Chodron
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Tonglen is a way for you to be with people who need you - beginning with yourself.
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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What you do for yourself, you're doing for others, and what you do for others, you're doing for yourself.
Pema Chodron
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The next step is to learn to communicate with the people that you feel are causing your pain and misery- not to learn how to prove them wrong and yourself right but how to communicate from the heart.
Pema Chodron
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While we are sitting in meditation, we are simply exploring humanity and all of creation in the form of ourselves.
Pema Chodron
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Just where you are-that's the place to start!
Pema Chodron