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Resisting what is happening is a major cause of suffering.

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
Major
Happening
Cause
Causes
Suffering
Resisting
Happenings
Majors

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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The wisdom, the strength, the confidence - the awakened heart and mind are always accessible -- here, now, always.
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What you do for yourself, any gesture of kindness, any gesture of gentleness, any gesture of honesty and clear seeing toward yourself, will affect how you experience your world. In fact, it will transform how you experience the world. 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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If you follow your heart, you're going to find that it is often extremely inconvenient.
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Patience takes courage. It is not an ideal state of calm. In fact, when we practice patience we will see our agitation far more clearly.
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Peace isn’t an experience free of challenges, free of rough and smooth, it’s an experience that’s expansive enough to include all that arises without feeling threatened.
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If it's painful, you become willing not just to endure it but also to let it awaken your heart and soften you. You learn to embrace it.
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Appreciate everything, even the ordinary... Especially the ordinary.
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Never give up on yourself. Then you will never give up on others.
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Awareness is the key. Do we see the stories that we're telling ourselves and question their validity?
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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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The idea is to develop sympathy for your own confusion.
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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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Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.
Pema Chodron
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Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what's going on.
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When things are shaky and nothing is working, we might realize that we are on the verge of something. We might realize that this is a very vulnerable and tender place, and that tenderness can go either way. We can shut down and feel resentful or we can touch in on that throbbing quality. (9)
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It has a lot to do with developing patience, not with the check-out person so much, but with your own pain that arises, the rawness and the vulnerability, and sending some kind of warmth and love to that rawness and soreness. I think that's how we have to practice.
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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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We sow the seeds of our future hells or happiness by the way we open or close our minds right now.
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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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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.
Pema Chodron