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Each of us has a soft spot: the place in our experience where we feel vulnerable and tender. This soft spot is inherent in appreciation and love, and it is equally inherent in pain.

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
Appreciation
Vulnerable
Pain
Tender
Experience
Spot
Place
Inherent
Feel
Soft
Feels
Spots
Love
Equally

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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So war and peace start in the human heart. Whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.
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When we touch the center of sorrow, when we sit with discomfort without trying to fix it, when we stay present to the pain of disapproval or betrayal and let it soften us, these are times that we connect with bohdichitta.
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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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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.
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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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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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Just where you are-that's the place to start!
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When we protect ourselves so we won't feel pain, that protection becomes like armor, like armor that imprisons the softness of of the heart.
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Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world.
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The most important aspect of being on a spiritual path may be to just keep moving.
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Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.
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When there's a disappointment, I don't know if it's the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure.
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Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away.
Pema Chodron
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You must learn to sit with the restless, painful energy and not let the momentum pull you under and cause you to do the same thing over and over that's ruining your life and the lives of those around you.
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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.
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Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.
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When we feel left out, inadequate, or lonely, can we take a warrior’s perspective and contact bodhichitta?
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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Softening what is rigid in our hearts.
Pema Chodron
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You see, there really is no separation between you and everyone else.
Pema Chodron