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Mindfulness is loving all the details of our lives, and awareness is the natural thing that happens: life begins to open up, and you realize that you're always standing at the center of the world.

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
Always
Standing
Life
Realize
World
Realizing
Mindfulness
Open
Center
Natural
Begins
Lives
Details
Happens
Loving
Thing
Awareness

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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Until we stop clinging to the concept of good and evil, the world will continue to manifest as friendly goddesses and harmful demons.
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Feel the feelings and drop the story.
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Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us.
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Are you experiencing restlessness? Stay! Are fear and loathing out of control? Stay! Aching knees and throbbing back? Stay! What's for lunch? Stay! I can't stand this another minute! Stay!
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We can drop the fundamental hope that there is a better me who one day will emerge. We can't just jump over ourselves as if we were not there.
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When we protect ourselves so we won't feel pain, that protection becomes like armor, like armor that imprisons the softness of of the heart.
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Compassion starts with making friends with ourselves.
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As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find compassion.
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The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.
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The approach is that the best way to use unwanted circumstances on the path of enlightenment is not to resist but to lean into them.
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At some point, we realize that what we do for ourselves benefits others, and what we do for others benefits us.
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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 is only to the extent that we are willing to expose ourselves again and again to annihilation that we are able to find that part of ourselves that is indestructible.
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Tonglen practice begins to dissolve the illusion that each of us is alone with this personal suffering that no one else can understand.
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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.
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When we touch the center of sorrow, when we sit with discomfort without trying to fix it, when we stay present to the pain of disapproval or betrayal and let it soften us, these are times that we connect with bohdichitta.
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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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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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If you’re aggressive in your dealings, that’s how you’ll be regarded in the world. You might smile and give generously, but if you frequently explode in anger, people never feel comfortable in your presence and you’ll never have peace of mind.
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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