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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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Pema Chodron
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: July 14
Clergyman
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Deirdre Blomfield-Brow
Right
Think
Thinking
Overestimate
Exactly
Importance
Accepting
Ought
Wish

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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Rather than becoming more relaxed, you start pulling down the shades and locking the door. When you do go out, you find the experience more and more unsettling and disagreeable. You become touchier, more fearful, more irritable than ever. The more you try to get it your way, the less you feel at home.
Pema Chodron
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Tonglen practice begins to dissolve the illusion that each of us is alone with this personal suffering that no one else can understand.
Pema Chodron
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None of us is ever OK, but we all get through everything just fine.
Pema Chodron
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As each breath goes out, let it be the end of that moment and the birth of something new. . .
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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Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.
Pema Chodron
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People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all.
Pema Chodron
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Whatever you are doing, take the attitude of wanting it directly or indirectly to benefit others. Take the attitude of wanting it to increase your experience of kinship with your fellow beings.
Pema Chodron
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The Process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality.
Pema Chodron
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All you need to know is that the future is wide open and you are about to create it by what you do.
Pema Chodron
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It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately fill up the space. By waiting, we begin to connect with fundamental restlessness as well as fundamental spaciousness. -Pema Chodron, from When Things Fall Apart
Pema Chodron
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Patience is the training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed.
Pema Chodron
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Appreciate everything, even the ordinary... Especially the ordinary.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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According to the Buddhist belief, you can go on and on indefinitely, so you see your life as just a brief moment in time.
Pema Chodron
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Treat yourself as your own beloved child.
Pema Chodron
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When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into it’s dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment
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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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.
Pema Chodron
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To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
Pema Chodron