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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
Enough
Karma
Established
Wanting
Patterns
Struggle
Practice
Wells
Seductive
Well
Comforting

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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We are undoing a pattern... It's the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of attaining resolution.
Pema Chodron
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If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it's fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there's an arrow in your heart.
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By the way that we think and by the way that we believe in things, in that way our world is created.
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Searching for happiness prevents us from ever finding it.
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The most important aspect of being on a spiritual path may be to just keep moving.
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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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Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us.
Pema Chodron
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The most complete and true happiness comes in moments when you feel right there, completely present, with no ideas about good and bad, right and wrong - just a sense of open heart and open mind.
Pema Chodron
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Just where you are-that's the place to start!
Pema Chodron
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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
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We can put our whole heart into whatever we do but if we freeze our attitude into for or against, we're setting ourselves up for stress. Instead, we could just go forward with curiosity, wondering where this experiment will lead. This kind of open-ended inquisitiveness captures the spirit of enthusiasm, or heroic perseverance.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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Fear itself is the vanguard of wisdom
Pema Chodron
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If you're invested in security and certainty, you are on the wrong planet.
Pema Chodron
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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
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If we knew that tonight we were going to go blind, we would take a long, last real look at every blade of grass, every cloud formation, every speck of dust, every rainbow, raindrop-everything.
Pema Chodron
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Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.
Pema Chodron
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Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic-this is the spiritual path.
Pema Chodron
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Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.
Pema Chodron
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Mindfulness is loving all the details of our lives, and awareness is the natural thing that happens: life begins to open up, and you realize that you're always standing at the center of the world.
Pema Chodron