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It isn't the things that are happening to us that cause us to suffer, it's what we say to ourselves about the things that are happening. The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
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
Things
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Hear
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Suffering
Unavailable
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Cling
Truth
Suffer
Anything
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More quotes by Pema Chodron
Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.
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True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings.
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We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.
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All situations teach you, and often it's the tough ones that teach you best.
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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.
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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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Ego is something that you come to know - something that you befriend by not acting out or by repressing all the feelings that you feel.
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Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life it might be the only strawberry we'll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.
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Patience is the training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed.
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The second noble truth says that this resistance is the...mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering.
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Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.
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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.
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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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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.
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Buddhism itself is all about empowering yourself, not about getting what you want.
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Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
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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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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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We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart.
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The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief.
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