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we come to realize that other people's welfare is just as important as our own. In helping them, we help ourselves. In helping ourselves, we help the world.

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
Helping
Come
Important
World
Welfare
People
Compassion
Realize
Realizing
Help

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Every small problem most likely stems from the same root as large problems, and so there is no need to always go deep. One can use anything for the therapeutic process and/if this link is made.
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In the most ordinary terms, egolessness is a flexible identity. It manifests as inquisitiveness , as adaptability, as humor, as playfulness. It is our capacity to relax with not knowing, not figuring everything out, with not being at all sure who we are, or who anyone else is, either.
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What you do for yourself, you're doing for others, and what you do for others, you're doing for yourself.
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Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.
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The future is the result of what we do right now.
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The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.
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The essence of generosity is letting go. Pain is always a sign that we are holding on to something - usually ourselves.
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We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.
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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.
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It's hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at the human predicament. Here we are with so much wisdom and tenderness, and—without even knowing it—we cover it over to protect ourselves from insecurity. Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.
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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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The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last—that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.
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Generosity is an activity that loosens us up. By offering whatever we can - a dollar, a flower, a word of encouragement - we are training in letting go.
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Discomfort of any kind becomes the basis for practice. We breathe in knowing our pain is shared.
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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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The essence of bravery is being without self-deception.
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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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It is possible to move through the drama of our lives without believing so earnestly in the character that we play.
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Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away.
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To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
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