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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.

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
Relate
Begins
Opening
Quickly
Discover
Benefits
Blocked
Others
Simultaneously
World
Benefit

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don't struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality.
Pema Chodron
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Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allowing ourselves to move gently toward what scares us.
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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As our kindness for ourselves grows, so does our kindness for other people.
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Instead of asking ourselves, 'How can I find security and happiness?' we could ask ourselves, 'Can I touch the center of my pain? Can I sit with suffering, both yours and mine, without trying to make it go away? Can I stay present to the ache of loss or disgrace-disapp ointment in all its many forms-and let it open me?' This is the trick.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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The third noble truth says that the cessation of suffering is letting go of holding on to ourselves.
Pema Chodron
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We see how beautiful and wonderful and amazing things are, and we see how caught up we are. It isn’t that one is the bad part and one is the good part, but that it’s a kind of interesting, smelly, rich, fertile mess of stuff. When it’s all mixed up together, it’s us: humanness.
Pema Chodron
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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
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When we are willing to stay even a moment with uncomfortable energy, we gradually learn not to fear it.
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.
Pema Chodron
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At some point, we realize that what we do for ourselves benefits others, and what we do for others benefits us.
Pema Chodron
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Awareness is the key. Do we see the stories that we're telling ourselves and question their validity?
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 truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
Pema Chodron
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The approach is that the best way to use unwanted circumstances on the path of enlightenment is not to resist but to lean into them.
Pema Chodron
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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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Whatever is happening is the path to enlightenment.
Pema Chodron
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The real thing that we renounce is the tenacious hope that we could be saved from being who we are.
Pema Chodron
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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