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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

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Pema Chodron
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: July 14
Clergyman
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Deirdre Blomfield-Brow
Alive
Implies
Rather
Pattern
Everything
Smooth
Trying
Willingness
Patience
Patterns
Harmony
Seek
Cultivation

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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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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Mindfulness is loving all the details of our lives, and awareness is the natural thing that happens: life begins to open up, and you realize that you're always standing at the center of the world.
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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.
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Allow situations in your life to become your teacher.
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Ego is like a room of your own, a room with a view with the temperature and the smells and the music that you like. You want it your own way. You'd just like to have a little peace, you'd like to have a little happiness, you know, just gimme a break.
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Unconditional good heart toward others is not even a possibility unless we attend to our own demons.
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When we feel left out, inadequate, or lonely, can we take a warrior’s perspective and contact bodhichitta?
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Treat yourself as your own beloved child.
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In truth, there is enormous space in which to live our everyday lives.
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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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Don't worry about achieving. Don't worry about perfection. Just be there each moment as best you can. When you realize you've wandered off again, simply very lightly acknowledge that. This light touch is the golden key to reuniting with our openness.
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So war and peace start in the human heart. Whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.
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It's helpful to remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing with whatever arises, without picking and choosing.
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One way to practice staying present is to simply sit still for a while and listen. For one minute, listen to the sounds close to you. For one minute, listen to the sounds at a distance. Just listen attentively.
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To live is to be willing to die over and over again.
Pema Chodron
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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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When we are willing to stay even a moment with uncomfortable energy, we gradually learn not to fear it.
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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.
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The more neurosis the more wisdom.
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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.
Pema Chodron