Since death is certain and the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?
PEMA CHODRONIn the end, that’s what we all need more than anything else: to be there for each other, in every kind of situation.
More Pema Chodron Quotes
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The best spiritual instruction is when you wake up in the morning and say, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen today.’ And then carry that kind of curiosity through your life.
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The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
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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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Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic-this is the spiritual path.
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Feeling irritated, restless, afraid, and hopeless is a reminder to listen more carefully.
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We have a choice. We can spend our whole life suffering because we can’t relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased.
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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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You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.
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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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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 we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
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Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear.
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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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Don’t worry about achieving. Don’t worry about perfection. Just be there each moment as best you can.
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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.
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