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How will we experience the world a month, a year, or five years from now? Will we be even angrier, more grasping and fearful, or will some shift have occurred? This depends entirely on the tendencies we reinforce today.

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
Motivational
Occurred
Year
Shift
Five
Fearful
Experience
Month
Today
Tendencies
Even
Entirely
Angrier
Years
Depends
Reinforce
World
Months
Grasping

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Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
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When there's a disappointment, I don't know if it's the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure.
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We can drop the fundamental hope that there is a better me who one day will emerge. We can't just jump over ourselves as if we were not there.
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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.
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Our true nature is like a precious jewel: although it may be temporarily buried in mud, it remains completely brilliant and unaffected. We simply have to uncover it.
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Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us.
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All the wars, all the hatred, all the ignorance in the world come out of being so invested in our opinions.
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Difficult people are the greatest teachers.
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We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.
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Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what's going on.
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Openness doesn’t come from resisting our fears but rather from getting to know them well.
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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.
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The only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn't continue to rule your life.
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The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
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Each time you stay present with fear and uncertainty, you're letting go of a habitual way of finding security and comfort.
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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.
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Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what is going on, but that there is something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.
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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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Opening to the world begins to benefit ourselves and others simultaneously. The more we relate with others, the more quickly we discover where we're blocked.
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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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