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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.

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
Feeling
Expansive
Free
Arises
Peace
Include
Experience
Threatened
Feelings
Smooth
Without
Rough
Enough
Arise
Challenges
Expansiveness

More quotes by 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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Someone needs to encourage us not to brush aside what we feel. Not to be ashamed of the love and grief that it arouses in us. Not to be afraid of pain. Someone needs to encourage us: that this soft spot in us could be awakened, and that to do this would change our lives.
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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.
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Wholeheartedly do what it takes to awaken your clear-seeing intelligence, but one day at a time, one moment at a time. If we live that way, we will benefit this earth.
Pema Chodron
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Finding the courage to go to the places that scare us cannot happen without compassionate inquiry into the workings of ego... Openness doesn't come from resisting our fears but from getting to know them well.
Pema Chodron
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Feel the feelings and drop the story.
Pema Chodron
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Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live.
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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The best spiritual instruction is when you wake up in the morning and say, 'I wonder what's going to happen today.' And then carry that kind of curiosity through your life.
Pema Chodron
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Patience takes courage. It is not an ideal state of calm. In fact, when we practice patience we will see our agitation far more clearly.
Pema Chodron
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At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.
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 only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn't continue to rule your life.
Pema Chodron
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I can't overestimate the importance of accepting ourselves exactly as we are right now, not as we wish we were or think we ought to be.
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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Allow situations in your life to become your teacher.
Pema Chodron
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It's not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share.
Pema Chodron
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Just where you are-that's the place to start!
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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Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allowing ourselves to move gently toward what scares us.
Pema Chodron