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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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Pema Chodron
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: July 14
Clergyman
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Deirdre Blomfield-Brow
Else
Dissolve
Begins
Illusion
Personal
Alone
Practice
Suffering
Understand

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Don’t get caught up in hopes of what you’ll achieve and how good your situation will be some day in the future. What you do right now is what matters.
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There are many changes in the weather of a day.
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Things are as bad and as good as they seem. There's no need to add anything extra.
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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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Patience is not learned in safety.
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The Process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality.
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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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No one ever tells us to stop running away from fear...the advice we usually get is to sweeten it up, smooth it over, take a pill, or distract ourselves, but by all means make it go away. (5)
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To put it concisely, we suffer when we resist the noble and irrefutable truth of impermanence and death.
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At the root of all the harm we cause is ignorance.
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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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If you see a homeless person on the street, and they need food, housing, medical attention - if you can give that, do it. But at the same time, work with tonglen, because that is how you start dissolving the barrier between you and them.
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Surrendering, letting go of possessiveness, and complete nonattachment-all are synonyms for accumulating merit.
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Everything in our lives has the potential to wake us up or put us to sleep. Allowing it to awaken us is up to us.
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While we are sitting in meditation, we are simply exploring humanity and all of creation in the form of ourselves.
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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.
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The most important aspect of being on a spiritual path may be to just keep moving.
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Ego is something that you come to know - something that you befriend by not acting out or by repressing all the feelings that you feel.
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The wisdom, the strength, the confidence - the awakened heart and mind are always accessible -- here, now, always.
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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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