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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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Pema Chodron
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: July 14
Clergyman
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Deirdre Blomfield-Brow
Practice
Wells
Seductive
Well
Comforting
Enough
Karma
Established
Wanting
Patterns
Struggle
More quotes by Pema Chodron
Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
Pema Chodron
So war and peace start in the human heart. Whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.
Pema Chodron
Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what is going on, but that there is something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.
Pema Chodron
When we feel left out, inadequate, or lonely, can we take a warrior’s perspective and contact bodhichitta?
Pema Chodron
If you see a homeless person on the street, and they need food, housing, medical attention - if you can give that, do it. But at the same time, work with tonglen, because that is how you start dissolving the barrier between you and them.
Pema Chodron
It's not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share.
Pema Chodron
Until we stop clinging to the concept of good and evil, the world will continue to manifest as friendly goddesses and harmful demons.
Pema Chodron
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
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
It is possible to move through the drama of our lives without believing so earnestly in the character that we play.
Pema Chodron
Lean into the sharp points and fully experience them. The essence of bravery is being without self-deception. Wisdom is inherent in (understanding) emotions.
Pema Chodron
One way to practice staying present is to simply sit still for a while and listen. For one minute, listen to the sounds close to you. For one minute, listen to the sounds at a distance. Just listen attentively.
Pema Chodron
When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.
Pema Chodron
Treat yourself as your own beloved child.
Pema Chodron
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
Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live.
Pema Chodron
Trying to change ourselves doesn't work in the long run because we're resisting our own energy. Self-improvemen t can have temporary results, but lasting transformation occurs only when we honor ourselves as the source of wisdom and compassion.
Pema Chodron
Nothing in its essence is one way or the other.
Pema Chodron
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
When we are willing to stay even a moment with uncomfortable energy, we gradually learn not to fear it.
Pema Chodron