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Our work may be important, but we don’t take it too seriously. Otherwise, we get attached to one relatively small thing and ignore the rest of life.

Bernie Glassman

You can’t do the same stroke coming down a small stream as you would coming down Niagara Falls.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Falls Small Steam Strokes
When we go… to bear witness to life on the streets, we’re offering ourselves. Not blankets, not food, not clothes, just ourselves.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Bears Clothes Offering
Each of is an arm of Kannon, enabling Kannon to do her work. Like her, we’re also overwhelmed, but when we reallize that the millions of pieces are all operating as one, then there’s no problem.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Compassion Goal Pieces
Our work may be important, but we don’t take it too seriously. Otherwise, we get attached to one relatively small thing and ignore the rest of life.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Important Life May Rest
I always have this red nose in my pocket, and if it looks like I’m taking things too seriously, or the person I’m talking to is taking them too seriously, I put the nose on. It doesn’t matter what we’re doing or talking about, it doesn’t matter if we agree or disagree, the nose changes everything.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Looks Pockets Talking
Most important, once we study NVC we can’t ignore the potential for transformation that lies in any difficult relationship – if we only bother to communicate with skill and empathy.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Empathy Most Relationship Skill Transformation
In that state you’ve immediately raised the mind of compassion, because if nothing is in, everything is in, and you are now free to experience yourself as the world.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Compassion Experience Immediately Mind World
Even if you’re only rowing down a stream, different things happen: maybe the wind changes, maybe the current, and suddenly everything’s different. So gently is really important.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Change Everything Maybe Wide
In every area, working with what you habitually reject is one of the best ways to facilitate growth and transformation.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Growth Transformation Way
I always tell people that if you get upset over what someone says, imagine him or her with a clown’s nose on and you won’t get so angry.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Nose People Upset
When we bear witness, when we become the situation – homelessness, poverty, illness, violence, death – the right action arises by itself. We don’t have to worry about what to do.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Buddhist Death Inspirational
Don’t power yourself or blast through; rock with the way things are.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Blast Power Things Way Yourself
When I spend time with students, they tell me that they’ve read something in a book or heard something from a teacher that they don’t think they’re living up to. And I tell them, “Take care of yourself right now.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Book Care Living Something Spend Take Teacher Tell
When you care about perfection, you care about an expectation. But there is also caring for where I am right now, for what’s happening right now.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Book Caring Teacher
People get stuck a lot because they’re afraid to act; in the worst case,…we get so attached to some end result that we can’t function. We need help just to move on, only life doesn’t wait.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Moving People Waiting
When we don’t ask, we don’t let others give. When we fear rejection, we don’t let generosity arise.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Generosity Giving Rejection

Our work may be important, but we don’t take it too seriously. Otherwise, we get attached to one relatively small thing and ignore the rest of life.

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Our work may be important, but we don’t take it too seriously. Otherwise, we get attached to one relatively small thing and ignore the rest of life.

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