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This is the tendency of all living things: to avoid pain and to cling to pleasure.

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
Things
Cling
Tendency
Tendencies
Avoid
Pleasure
Pain
Living

More quotes by Pema Chodron

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This moving away from comfort and security, this stepping out into what is unknown, uncharted and shaky - that's called liberation.
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All situations teach you, and often it's the tough ones that teach you best.
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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.
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Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allowing ourselves to move gently toward what scares us.
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Every small problem most likely stems from the same root as large problems, and so there is no need to always go deep. One can use anything for the therapeutic process and/if this link is made.
Pema Chodron
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Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.
Pema Chodron
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Few of us are satisfied with retreating from the world and just working on ourselves. We want our training to manifest and to be of benefit. The bodhisattva-warrior, therefore, makes a vow to wake up not just for himself but for the welfare of all beings.
Pema Chodron
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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.
Pema Chodron
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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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The next step is to learn to communicate with the people that you feel are causing your pain and misery- not to learn how to prove them wrong and yourself right but how to communicate from the heart.
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.
Pema Chodron
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There are many changes in the weather of a day.
Pema Chodron
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The greatest obstacle to connecting with our joy is resentment.
Pema Chodron
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Holding on to anything blocks wisdom.
Pema Chodron
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we come to realize that other people's welfare is just as important as our own. In helping them, we help ourselves. In helping ourselves, we help the world.
Pema Chodron
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The only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn't continue to rule your life.
Pema Chodron
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Trying to change ourselves doesn't work in the long run because we're resisting our own energy. Self-improvemen t can have temporary results, but lasting transformation occurs only when we honor ourselves as the source of wisdom and compassion.
Pema Chodron
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At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.
Pema Chodron
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We practice to liberate ourselves from a burden.
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