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Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.

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
Prefer
Potential
Mysteriously
Although
Cocoon
Small
Cocoons
Freedom
Predicaments
Experience
Butterfly
Fearful
Ego

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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The biggest obstacle to taking a bigger perspective on life is that our emotions capture and blind us.
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This moving away from comfort and security, this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted and shaky - that's called liberation.
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Don’t get caught up in hopes of what you’ll achieve and how good your situation will be some day in the future. What you do right now is what matters.
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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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By becoming intimate with how we close down and how we open up, we awaken our unlimited potential.
Pema Chodron
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It isn't the things that happen to us in our lives that cause us to suffer, it's how we relate to the things that happen to us that causes us to suffer.
Pema Chodron
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My moods are continuously shifting like the weather.
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By not knowing, not hoping to know and not acting like we know what's happening, we begin to access our inner strength.
Pema Chodron
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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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We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs - or we don't. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality- or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha's opinion, to train in staying open and curious - to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs - is the best use of our human lives.
Pema Chodron
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Nothing in its essence is one way or the other.
Pema Chodron
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Since death is certain and the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?
Pema Chodron
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Finding the courage to go to the places that scare us cannot happen without compassionate inquiry into the workings of ego... Openness doesn't come from resisting our fears but from getting to know them well.
Pema Chodron
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The truth is that good and bad coexist sour and sweet coexist. They aren't really opposed to each other.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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It's helpful to remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing with whatever arises, without picking and choosing.
Pema Chodron
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The Buddha taught that we're not actually in control, which is a pretty scary idea. But when you let things be as they are, you will be a much happier, more balanced, compassionate person.
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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Let your curiosity be greater than your fear.
Pema Chodron
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The second noble truth says that this resistance is the...mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering.
Pema Chodron