Quote

Whatever you are doing, take the attitude of wanting it directly or indirectly to benefit others. Take the attitude of wanting it to increase your experience of kinship with your fellow beings.

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
Whatever
Benefit
Experience
Wanting
Others
Fellow
Take
Fellows
Increase
Benefits
Indirectly
Beings
Kinship
Attitude
Directly

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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If we begin to get in touch with whatever we feel with some kind of kindness, our protective shells will melt, and we'll find that more areas of our lives are workable. AS we learn to have compassion for ourselves, the circle of compassion for others-what and whom we can work with, and how-becomes wider.
Pema Chodron
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As for our inner level of obstacle, perhaps the only enemy we have is that we don't like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. But what we need to acknowledge is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
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As our kindness for ourselves grows, so does our kindness for other people.
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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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Trying to change ourselves doesn't work in the long run because we're resisting our own energy. Self-improvemen t can have temporary results, but lasting transformation occurs only when we honor ourselves as the source of wisdom and compassion.
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Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.
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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When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into it’s dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment
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In truth, there is enormous space in which to live our everyday lives.
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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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So war and peace start in the human heart. Whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.
Pema Chodron
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At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.
Pema Chodron
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If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
Pema Chodron
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Ego is like a room of your own, a room with a view with the temperature and the smells and the music that you like. You want it your own way. You'd just like to have a little peace, you'd like to have a little happiness, you know, just gimme a break.
Pema Chodron
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The future is the result of what we do right now.
Pema Chodron
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If your everyday practice is open to all your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that - then that will take you are far as you can go. And then you'll understand all the teachings that anyone has ever taught.
Pema Chodron
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Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what's going on.
Pema Chodron
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We feel that we have to be right so that we can feel good... The whole right and wrong business closes us down and makes our world smaller.
Pema Chodron
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I'm here to tell you that the path to peace is right there, when you want to get away.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron