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We sow the seeds of our future hells or happiness by the way we open or close our minds right now.

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
Future
Right
Hells
Mind
Seeds
Way
Minds
Close
Hell
Open
Happiness

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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When we feel left out, inadequate, or lonely, can we take a warrior’s perspective and contact bodhichitta?
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It's hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at the human predicament. Here we are with so much wisdom and tenderness, and—without even knowing it—we cover it over to protect ourselves from insecurity. 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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We see how beautiful and wonderful and amazing things are, and we see how caught up we are. It isn’t that one is the bad part and one is the good part, but that it’s a kind of interesting, smelly, rich, fertile mess of stuff. When it’s all mixed up together, it’s us: humanness.
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The essence of generosity is letting go. Pain is always a sign that we are holding on to something - usually ourselves.
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Use your life to wake you up.
Pema Chodron
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Tonglen practice begins to dissolve the illusion that each of us is alone with this personal suffering that no one else can understand.
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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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We practice to liberate ourselves from a burden.
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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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How will we experience the world a month, a year, or five years from now? Will we be even angrier, more grasping and fearful, or will some shift have occurred? This depends entirely on the tendencies we reinforce today.
Pema Chodron
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The most important aspect of being on a spiritual path may be to just keep moving.
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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Even if you don't feel appreciation, just look. Feel what you feel take an interest and be curious.
Pema Chodron
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In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves.
Pema Chodron
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We don't set out to save the world we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people's hearts.
Pema Chodron
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Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss, or tranquillity, nor is it attempting to become a better person. It is simply the creation of a space in which we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our self-deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes.
Pema Chodron
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It isn't what happens to us that causes us to suffer it's what we say to ourselves about what happens.
Pema Chodron
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Whatever is happening is the path to enlightenment.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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Only in an open, nonjudgmental space can we acknowledge what we are feeling. Only in an open space where we're not all caught up in our own version of reality can we see and hear and feel who others really are, which allows us to be with them and communicate with them properly.
Pema Chodron