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If we knew that tonight we were going to go blind, we would take a long, last real look at every blade of grass, every cloud formation, every speck of dust, every rainbow, raindrop-everything.

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
Going
Knew
Formation
Every
Lasts
Cloud
Long
Last
Rainbow
Raindrop
Would
Look
Tonight
Speck
Everything
Grass
Raindrops
Looks
Dust
Specks
Take
Clouds
Blade
Real
Blind
Blades

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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If we begin to get in touch with whatever we feel with some kind of kindness, our protective shells will melt, and we'll find that more areas of our lives are workable. AS we learn to have compassion for ourselves, the circle of compassion for others-what and whom we can work with, and how-becomes wider.
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Patience is not learned in safety.
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Use your life to wake you up.
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Finding the courage to go to the places that scare us cannot happen without compassionate inquiry into the workings of ego... Openness doesn't come from resisting our fears but from getting to know them well.
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Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s the ground, that’s what we study, that’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.
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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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Buddhism itself is all about empowering yourself, not about getting what you want.
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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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Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.
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When we are willing to stay even a moment with uncomfortable energy, we gradually learn not to fear it.
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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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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.
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Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.
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So many of us start along the spiritual path because we are suffering. But you must realize that for real healing to occur, there must first be deep compassion for yourself, especially the parts of yourself you dislike or consider ugly.
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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.
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All situations teach you, and often it's the tough ones that teach you best.
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Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important. The reason it's important is that, fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn't just ourselves that we're discovering. We're discovering the universe.
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Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we're stuck.
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If you aren't feeding the fire of anger or the fire of craving by talking to yourself, then the fire doesn't have anything to feed on.
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The biggest obstacle to taking a bigger perspective on life is that our emotions capture and blind us.
Pema Chodron