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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.

Pema Chodron

We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.
PEMA CHODRON

Help Order Ourselves Work
Let your curiosity be greater than your fear.
PEMA CHODRON

Curiosity Fear Greatness Yourself
Meditation isn’t really about getting rid of thoughts, it’s about changing the pattern of grasping on to things, which in our everyday experience is our thoughts.
PEMA CHODRON

Change Experience Grasp Meditation Ourselves Pattern Thinking
When we are willing to stay even a moment with uncomfortable energy, we gradually learn not to fear it.
PEMA CHODRON

Comfortable Fear Learning Moments Stay Willing
Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.
PEMA CHODRON

Compassionate Medicine Personal Poison Suffering Yourself
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.
PEMA CHODRON

Change Dynamic Enlightenment Ourselves Resistance Situation Struggle Suffering
So war and peace start in the human heart. Whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.
PEMA CHODRON

Global Heart Human Implication Peace Start War
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.
PEMA CHODRON

Choice Embrace Human Life Ourselves Situation Suffering
It isn’t what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it’s what we say to ourselves about what happens.
PEMA CHODRON

Hard Time Ourselves Reaction Suffering
So many of us start along the spiritual path because we are suffering. But you must realize that for real healing to occur, there must first be deep compassion for yourself, especially the parts of yourself you dislike or consider ugly.
PEMA CHODRON

Compassionate Path Reality Spiritual Start Suffering Ugly Yourself
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.
PEMA CHODRON

Alive Awake Death Experience Human Live Man Moments Willing
You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts.
PEMA CHODRON

Build Delight Difficult Experience Strength Yourself
Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world.
PEMA CHODRON

Compassionate Kind World Yourself
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.
PEMA CHODRON

Believe Suffering Truth Yourself
Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. Even if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other side of the continent, we find the very same problem awaiting us when we arrive.
PEMA CHODRON

Arrive Need Problem Run Teaching
Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.
PEMA CHODRON

Destruction Expose Ourselves

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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