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Holding on to anything blocks wisdom.

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
Holding
Block
Wisdom
Anything
Blocks

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.
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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.
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If there's any possibility for enlightenment, it's right now, not at some future time. Now is the time.
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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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it is only to the extent that we are willing to expose ourselves again and again to annihilation that we are able to find that part of ourselves that is indestructible.
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If you’re aggressive in your dealings, that’s how you’ll be regarded in the world. You might smile and give generously, but if you frequently explode in anger, people never feel comfortable in your presence and you’ll never have peace of mind.
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We don’t sit in meditation to become good meditators. We sit in meditation so that we’ll be more awake in our lives.
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When we are willing to stay even a moment with uncomfortable energy, we gradually learn not to fear it.
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So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn't sit for even one, that's the journey of the warrior. (68)
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The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are.
Pema Chodron
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Our neurosis and our wisdom are made out of the same material. If you throw out your neurosis, you also throw out your wisdom.
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There is no cultivation of patience when your pattern is to just try to seek harmony and smooth everything out. Patience implies willingness to be alive rather than trying to seek harmony.
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All the terrible things we do to ourselves and others from alcoholism to character assignation to abuse to murder come from one cause: the inability to stay present with an uncomfortable feeling in the body and seek short-term relief.
Pema Chodron
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Generosity is an activity that loosens us up. By offering whatever we can - a dollar, a flower, a word of encouragement - we are training in letting go.
Pema Chodron
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The truth is that good and bad coexist sour and sweet coexist. They aren't really opposed to each other.
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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Tonglen is a way for you to be with people who need you - beginning with yourself.
Pema Chodron
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As each breath goes out, let it be the end of that moment and the birth of something new. . .
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.
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The Process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality.
Pema Chodron