Quote

Being preoccupied with our self-image is like being deaf and blind. It's like standing in the middle of a vast field of wildflowers with a black hood over our heads. It's like coming upon a tree of singing birds while wearing earplugs.

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
Like
Standing
Birds
Singing
Wearing
Coming
Vast
Tree
Field
Earplugs
Middle
Image
Preoccupied
Upon
Bird
Hood
Black
Blind
Deaf
Self
Fields
Heads

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You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts.
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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.
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Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world.
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Our patterns are well established, seductive, and comforting. Just wanting for them to be ventilated isn't enough. Those of us who struggle with this know.
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This moving away from comfort and security, this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted and shaky - that's called liberation.
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To live is to be willing to die over and over again.
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It isn't the things that are happening to us that cause us to suffer, it's what we say to ourselves about the things that are happening. The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
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Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we're stuck.
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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.
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Allow situations in your life to become your teacher.
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Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.
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When you have made good friends with yourself, your situation will be more friendly too.
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The truth is that good and bad coexist sour and sweet coexist. They aren't really opposed to each other.
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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.
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Honesty without kindness, humor, and goodheartedness can be just mean.
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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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Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us.
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The Process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality.
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