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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
Think
Thinking
People
Gradually
Drop
Buddhism
Ideals
Ought
Suffering

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Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we're stuck.
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None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine.
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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.
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Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.
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Honesty without kindness, humor, and goodheartedness can be just mean.
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Wholeheartedly do what it takes to awaken your clear-seeing intelligence, but one day at a time, one moment at a time. If we live that way, we will benefit this earth.
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Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape - all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.
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Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
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Fear itself is the vanguard of wisdom
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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.
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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.
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The more neurosis the more wisdom.
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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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Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what's going on.
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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.
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Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
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It is possible to move through the drama of our lives without believing so earnestly in the character that we play.
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The most important aspect of being on a spiritual path may be to just keep moving.
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Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear.
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If you work with your mind, that will alleviate all the suffering that seems to come from the outside.
Pema Chodron