It isn’t what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it’s what we say to ourselves about what happens.
PEMA CHODRONWe 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.
More Pema Chodron Quotes
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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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You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts.
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Feel the feelings and drop the story.
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Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.
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Openness doesn’t come from resisting our fears but rather from getting to know them well.
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The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
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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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The central question of a warrior’s training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort.
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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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As our kindness for ourselves grows, so does our kindness for other people.
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All you need to know is that the future is wide open and you are about to create it by what you do.
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Anything we experience, no matter how challenging, can become an open pathway to awakening.
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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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By the way that we think and by the way that we believe in things, in that way our world is created.
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Appreciate everything, even the ordinary. Especially the ordinary.
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The second noble truth says that this resistance is the mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering.
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Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world.
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Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we’re stuck.
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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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Never give up on yourself. Then you will never give up on others.
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Let difficulty transform you. And it will. In my experience, we just need help in learning how not to run away.
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Use what seems like poison as medicine. Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings.
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Our true nature is like a precious jewel: although it may be temporarily buried in mud, it remains completely brilliant and unaffected. We simply have to uncover it.
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You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.
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One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is to feel that now is not enough.
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Treat yourself as your own beloved child.
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