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Never underestimate the desire to bolt.

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
Bolt
Bolts
Underestimate
Desire
Never

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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Buddhism itself is all about empowering yourself, not about getting what you want.
Pema Chodron
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I equate ego with trying to figure everything out instead of going with the flow. That closes your heart and your mind to the person or situation that's right in front of you, and you miss so much.
Pema Chodron
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Meditation is not about getting out of ourselves or achieving something better. It is about getting in touch with what you already are.
Pema Chodron
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When we are willing to stay even a moment with uncomfortable energy, we gradually learn not to fear it.
Pema Chodron
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Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don't struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine.
Pema Chodron
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The wisdom, the strength, the confidence - the awakened heart and mind are always accessible -- here, now, always.
Pema Chodron
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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
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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.
Pema Chodron
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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
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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
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The approach is that the best way to use unwanted circumstances on the path of enlightenment is not to resist but to lean into them.
Pema Chodron
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Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. Even if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other side of the continent, we find the very same problem awaiting us when we arrive.
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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That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. Everything is in process.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum and don't interrupt our patterns slightly. When we feel betrayed or disappointed, does it occur to us to practice?
Pema Chodron
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In the end, that's what we all need more than anything else: to be there for each other, in every kind of situation.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron