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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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Pema Chodron
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: July 14
Clergyman
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Deirdre Blomfield-Brow
Best
Unwanted
Way
Lean
Resist
Enlightenment
Approach
Circumstances
Path
Use

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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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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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.
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Patience is the training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed.
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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.
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If you work with your mind, that will alleviate all the suffering that seems to come from the outside.
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Tonglen is a way for you to be with people who need you - beginning with yourself.
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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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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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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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Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.
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I have all the support I need to simply relax and be with the transitional, in-process quality of my life. I have all I need to engage in the process of awakening.
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Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don't struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality.
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The essence of practice is always the same: instead of falling prey to a chain reaction of revenge or self-hatred, we gradually learn to catch the emotional reaction and drop the story lines.
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The most complete and true happiness comes in moments when you feel right there, completely present, with no ideas about good and bad, right and wrong - just a sense of open heart and open mind.
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Most spiritual experiences begin with suffering. They begin with groundlessness. They begin when the rug has been pulled out from under us.
Pema Chodron
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Openness doesn’t come from resisting our fears but rather from getting to know them well.
Pema Chodron
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If you work with your mind, instead of trying to change everything on the outside, that's how your temper will cool down.
Pema Chodron
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It isn't the things that happen to us in our lives that cause us to suffer, it's how we relate to the things that happen to us that causes us to suffer.
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?
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We feel that we have to be right so that we can feel good... The whole right and wrong business closes us down and makes our world smaller.
Pema Chodron