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Since death is certain and the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?

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
Time
Uncertain
Since
Death
Certain
Important
Thing

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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It isn't the things that happen to us in our lives that cause us to suffer, it's how we relate to the things that happen to us that causes us to suffer.
Pema Chodron
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To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
Pema Chodron
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Enlightenment is a direct experience with reality.
Pema Chodron
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Peace isn’t an experience free of challenges, free of rough and smooth, it’s an experience that’s expansive enough to include all that arises without feeling threatened.
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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.
Pema Chodron
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Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.
Pema Chodron
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Never give up on yourself. Then you will never give up on others.
Pema Chodron
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Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we're stuck.
Pema Chodron
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The central question of a warrior's training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort.
Pema Chodron
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Opening to the world begins to benefit ourselves and others simultaneously. The more we relate with others, the more quickly we discover where we're blocked.
Pema Chodron
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Nothing in its essence is one way or the other.
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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When people are hurting, what they really need is someone who is fully there for them - not someone who is condescending or officious. The only way for you to be there for them is by facing your fear or anger, whatever feelings cause you to shut down.
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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We don’t sit in meditation to become good meditators. We sit in meditation so that we’ll be more awake in our lives.
Pema Chodron
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Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.
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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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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The second noble truth says that this resistance is the...mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering.
Pema Chodron
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No one ever tells us to stop running away from fear...the advice we usually get is to sweeten it up, smooth it over, take a pill, or distract ourselves, but by all means make it go away. (5)
Pema Chodron