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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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Pema Chodron
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: July 14
Clergyman
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Deirdre Blomfield-Brow
Going
Carry
Kind
Happen
Life
Wonder
Morning
Spiritual
Happens
Instruction
Today
Curiosity
Best
Wake

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear.
Pema Chodron
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None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine.
Pema Chodron
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Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.
Pema Chodron
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The wisdom, the strength, the confidence - the awakened heart and mind are always accessible -- here, now, always.
Pema Chodron
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All the wars, all the hatred, all the ignorance in the world come out of being so invested in our opinions.
Pema Chodron
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In the end, that's what we all need more than anything else: to be there for each other, in every kind of situation.
Pema Chodron
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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
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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.
Pema Chodron
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To cultivate equanimity we practice catching ourselves when we feel attraction or aversion, before it hardens into grasping or negativity.
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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Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is called maitri, or unconditional friendliness, a simple, direct relationship with the way we are.
Pema Chodron
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If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
Pema Chodron
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We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.
Pema Chodron
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Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important. The reason it's important is that, fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn't just ourselves that we're discovering. We're discovering the universe.
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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Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. Even if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other side of the continent, we find the very same problem awaiting us when we arrive.
Pema Chodron
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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.
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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The biggest obstacle to taking a bigger perspective on life is that our emotions capture and blind us.
Pema Chodron
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What you do for yourself, any gesture of kindness, any gesture of gentleness, any gesture of honesty and clear seeing toward yourself, will affect how you experience your world. In fact, it will transform how you experience the world. What you do for yourself, you’re doing for others, and what you do for others, you’re doing for yourself.
Pema Chodron