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Life's work is to wake up, to let the things that enter your life wake you up rather than put you to sleep.

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
Rather
Work
Things
Life
Enter
Wake
Sleep

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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Whatever is happening is the path to enlightenment.
Pema Chodron
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When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless.
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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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Honesty without kindness, humor, and goodheartedness can be just mean.
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When things are shaky and nothing is working, we might realize that we are on the verge of something. We might realize that this is a very vulnerable and tender place, and that tenderness can go either way. We can shut down and feel resentful or we can touch in on that throbbing quality. (9)
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While we are sitting in meditation, we are simply exploring humanity and all of creation in the form of ourselves.
Pema Chodron
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The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief.
Pema Chodron
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You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts.
Pema Chodron
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The next step is to learn to communicate with the people that you feel are causing your pain and misery- not to learn how to prove them wrong and yourself right but how to communicate from the heart.
Pema Chodron
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Buddhism itself is all about empowering yourself, not about getting what you want.
Pema Chodron
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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.
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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Whatever you are doing, take the attitude of wanting it directly or indirectly to benefit others. Take the attitude of wanting it to increase your experience of kinship with your fellow beings.
Pema Chodron
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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?
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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We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.
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.
Pema Chodron
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True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings.
Pema Chodron
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The future is the result of what we do right now.
Pema Chodron
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Sitting meditation gives us a way to move closer to our thoughts and emotions and to get in touch with our bodies.
Pema Chodron