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If you work with your mind, instead of trying to change everything on the outside, that's how your temper will cool down.
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
Trying
Work
Mind
Temper
Cool
Outside
Instead
Change
Everything
More quotes by Pema Chodron
By not knowing, not hoping to know and not acting like we know what's happening, we begin to access our inner strength.
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Clarity and decisiveness come from the willingness to slow down, to listen to and look at what’s happening.
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Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what is going on, but that there is something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.
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Come back to square one, just the minimum bare bones. Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time-that is the basic message.
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Appreciate everything, even the ordinary... Especially the ordinary.
Pema Chodron
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
As for our inner level of obstacle, perhaps the only enemy we have is that we don't like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. But what we need to acknowledge is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
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Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what's going on.
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Things are as bad and as good as they seem. There's no need to add anything extra.
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Wholeheartedly do what it takes to awaken your clear-seeing intelligence, but one day at a time, one moment at a time. If we live that way, we will benefit this earth.
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But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake.
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Difficult people are the greatest teachers.
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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.
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Patience is not learned in safety.
Pema Chodron
If you work with your mind, that will alleviate all the suffering that seems to come from the outside.
Pema Chodron
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
People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all.
Pema Chodron
As Buddhism moved to the West, one of the big characteristics was the strong place of women. That didn't exist in the countries of origin. It's just a sign of our culture.
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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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Generosity is an activity that loosens us up. By offering whatever we can - a dollar, a flower, a word of encouragement - we are training in letting go.
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