Quote

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.

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
Training
Loosens
Activity
Dollar
Word
Offering
Whatever
Encouragement
Letting
Generosity
Dollars
Flower

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The essence of practice is always the same: instead of falling prey to a chain reaction of revenge or self-hatred, we gradually learn to catch the emotional reaction and drop the story lines.
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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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If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
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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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So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn't sit for even one, that's the journey of the warrior. (68)
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If you aren't feeding the fire of anger or the fire of craving by talking to yourself, then the fire doesn't have anything to feed on.
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The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
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By becoming intimate with how we close down and how we open up, we awaken our unlimited potential.
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Appreciate everything, even the ordinary... Especially the ordinary.
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I equate ego with trying to figure everything out instead of going with the flow. That closes your heart and your mind to the person or situation that's right in front of you, and you miss so much.
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If you follow your heart, you're going to find that it is often extremely inconvenient.
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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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Use your life to wake you up.
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We practice to liberate ourselves from a burden.
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Surrendering, letting go of possessiveness, and complete nonattachment-all are synonyms for accumulating merit.
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Rather than becoming more relaxed, you start pulling down the shades and locking the door. When you do go out, you find the experience more and more unsettling and disagreeable. You become touchier, more fearful, more irritable than ever. The more you try to get it your way, the less you feel at home.
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Discomfort of any kind becomes the basis for practice. We breathe in knowing our pain is shared.
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Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape - all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.
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When we are willing to stay even a moment with uncomfortable energy, we gradually learn not to fear it.
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