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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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When things are shaky and nothing is working, we might realize that we are on the verge of something. We might realize that this is a very vulnerable and tender place, and that tenderness can go either way. We can shut down and feel resentful or we can touch in on that throbbing quality. (9)
Pema Chodron
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The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief.
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We're afraid that this anger or sorrow or loneliness is going to last forever... Instead, acting it out is what makes it last.
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To put it concisely, we suffer when we resist the noble and irrefutable truth of impermanence and death.
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Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s the ground, that’s what we study, that’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.
Pema Chodron
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Welcome the present moment as if you had invited it. It is all we ever have, so we night as well work with it rather than struggling against it. We might as well make it our friend and teacher rather than our enemy.
Pema Chodron
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By not knowing, not hoping to know and not acting like we know what's happening, we begin to access our inner strength.
Pema Chodron
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We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.
Pema Chodron
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The next step is to learn to communicate with the people that you feel are causing your pain and misery- not to learn how to prove them wrong and yourself right but how to communicate from the heart.
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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By becoming intimate with how we close down and how we open up, we awaken our unlimited potential.
Pema Chodron
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Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
Pema Chodron
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Searching for happiness prevents us from ever finding it.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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If you aren't feeding the fire of anger or the fire of craving by talking to yourself, then the fire doesn't have anything to feed on.
Pema Chodron
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Don't worry about achieving. Don't worry about perfection. Just be there each moment as best you can. When you realize you've wandered off again, simply very lightly acknowledge that. This light touch is the golden key to reuniting with our openness.
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.
Pema Chodron
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Lean into the sharp points and fully experience them. The essence of bravery is being without self-deception. Wisdom is inherent in (understanding) emotions.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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Discomfort of any kind becomes the basis for practice. We breathe in knowing our pain is shared.
Pema Chodron