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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.
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
Letting
Generosity
Dollars
Flower
Training
Loosens
Activity
Dollar
Word
Offering
Whatever
Encouragement
More quotes by Pema Chodron
We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart.
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Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum and don't interrupt our patterns slightly. When we feel betrayed or disappointed, does it occur to us to practice?
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The central question of a warrior's training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort.
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Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.
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Trying to change ourselves doesn't work in the long run because we're resisting our own energy. Self-improvemen t can have temporary results, but lasting transformation occurs only when we honor ourselves as the source of wisdom and compassion.
Pema Chodron
Patience takes courage. It is not an ideal state of calm. In fact, when we practice patience we will see our agitation far more clearly.
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
It's hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at the human predicament. Here we are with so much wisdom and tenderness, and—without even knowing it—we cover it over to protect ourselves from insecurity. Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.
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According to the Buddhist belief, you can go on and on indefinitely, so you see your life as just a brief moment in time.
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Ego is something that you come to know - something that you befriend by not acting out or by repressing all the feelings that you feel.
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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.
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The most important aspect of being on a spiritual path may be to just keep moving.
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Even if you don't feel appreciation, just look. Feel what you feel take an interest and be curious.
Pema Chodron
It is possible to move through the drama of our lives without believing so earnestly in the character that we play.
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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.
Pema Chodron
Welcome the present moment as if you had invited it. It is all we ever have, so we night as well work with it rather than struggling against it. We might as well make it our friend and teacher rather than our enemy.
Pema Chodron
The future is the result of what we do right now.
Pema Chodron
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
Each of us has a soft spot: the place in our experience where we feel vulnerable and tender. This soft spot is inherent in appreciation and love, and it is equally inherent in pain.
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Our patterns are well established, seductive, and comforting. Just wanting for them to be ventilated isn't enough. Those of us who struggle with this know.
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