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Searching for happiness prevents us from ever finding it.

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
Happiness
Ever
Prevents
Searching
Findings
Finding

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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If you see a homeless person on the street, and they need food, housing, medical attention - if you can give that, do it. But at the same time, work with tonglen, because that is how you start dissolving the barrier between you and them.
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, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.
Pema Chodron
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Whatever happens in your life, joyful or painful, do not be swept away by reactivity. Be patient with yourself and don't lose your sense of perspective.
Pema Chodron
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You see, there really is no separation between you and everyone else.
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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As Buddhism moved to the West, one of the big characteristics was the strong place of women. That didn't exist in the countries of origin. It's just a sign of our culture.
Pema Chodron
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Ordinarily we are swept away by habitual momentum and don't interrupt our patterns slightly. When we feel betrayed or disappointed, does it occur to us to practice?
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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Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.
Pema Chodron
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Appreciate everything, even the ordinary... Especially the ordinary.
Pema Chodron
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The idea is to develop sympathy for your own confusion.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. Even if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other side of the continent, we find the very same problem awaiting us when we arrive.
Pema Chodron
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We are undoing a pattern... It's the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of attaining resolution.
Pema Chodron
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As for our inner level of obstacle, perhaps the only enemy we have is that we don't like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. But what we need to acknowledge is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
Pema Chodron
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To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.
Pema Chodron
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Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.
Pema Chodron
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In a nutshell, when life is pleasant, think of others. When life is a burden, think of others.
Pema Chodron
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Meditation isn't really about getting rid of thoughts, it's about changing the pattern of grasping on to things, which in our everyday experience is our thoughts.
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