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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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Pema Chodron
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: July 14
Clergyman
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Deirdre Blomfield-Brow
Happens
Ego
Cannot
Findings
Workings
Wells
Finding
Resisting
Come
Places
Openness
Without
Courage
Inquiry
Well
Happen
Scare
Getting
Compassionate
Doesn
Fears
More quotes by Pema Chodron
It isn't what happens to us that causes us to suffer it's what we say to ourselves about what happens.
Pema Chodron
We are undoing a pattern... It's the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of attaining resolution.
Pema Chodron
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
We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be.
Pema Chodron
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.
Pema Chodron
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
Our neurosis and our wisdom are made out of the same material. If you throw out your neurosis, you also throw out your wisdom.
Pema Chodron
We can put our whole heart into whatever we do but if we freeze our attitude into for or against, we're setting ourselves up for stress. Instead, we could just go forward with curiosity, wondering where this experiment will lead. This kind of open-ended inquisitiveness captures the spirit of enthusiasm, or heroic perseverance.
Pema Chodron
The truth is that good and bad coexist sour and sweet coexist. They aren't really opposed to each other.
Pema Chodron
The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are.
Pema Chodron
Patience is not learned in safety.
Pema Chodron
We're afraid that this anger or sorrow or loneliness is going to last forever... Instead, acting it out is what makes it last.
Pema Chodron
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
Instead of asking ourselves, 'How can I find security and happiness?' we could ask ourselves, 'Can I touch the center of my pain? Can I sit with suffering, both yours and mine, without trying to make it go away? Can I stay present to the ache of loss or disgrace-disapp ointment in all its many forms-and let it open me?' This is the trick.
Pema Chodron
The biggest obstacle to taking a bigger perspective on life is that our emotions capture and blind us.
Pema Chodron
When we are willing to stay even a moment with uncomfortable energy, we gradually learn not to fear it.
Pema Chodron
It's not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is a part of being alive, something we all share. We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.
Pema Chodron
I have all the support I need to simply relax and be with the transitional, in-process quality of my life. I have all I need to engage in the process of awakening.
Pema Chodron
This moving away from comfort and security, this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted and shaky - that's called liberation.
Pema Chodron
The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief.
Pema Chodron