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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

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
If we weren’t attached we wouldn’t be overwhelmed. It’s endless. And we just take one step after the next
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Attached Next Step Take
The basic problem, actually, is how to get rid of the idea that we’re going to get rid of our problems. Only then can we relate directly with the real issues of our life.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Ideas Issues Problem Real Relate
Befriend what’s happening, not just who you’re supposed to be or what the world should be like. This is where you are now. So how do you care for yourself this minute?
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Befriend Care Minute Supposed
We’re creating a little niche for ourselves instead of working the whole canvas.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Creating Littles Niche
The fewer or less diverse voices you invite to the table, the smaller and narrower your solution will be and the fewer people it will serve.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Fewer Less Narrower People Serve The Solution
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
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
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
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
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
The reason we get overwhelmed is that we’re attached to a certain result or taht we want to achieve a certain result or that we to achieve a certain goal.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Achieve Attached Certain Overwhelmed Result
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
Look in the mirror, and laugh at yourself.
BERNIE GLASSMAN

Laughing Looks Mirror
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 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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bernie Glassman Quotes