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You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.

Pema Chodron

When things fall apart in your life, you feel as if your whole world is crumbling. But actually it’s your fixed identity that’s crumbling. And as Chögyam Trungpa used to tell us, that’s cause for celebration.
PEMA CHODRON

Celebration Fall Identity Life World Yourself
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.
PEMA CHODRON

Choice Circumstance Hard Kind Life Open Scare
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
Treat yourself as your own beloved child.
PEMA CHODRON

Children Love Self Treat Yourself
Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back.
PEMA CHODRON

Angry Disappoint Embarrassment Feeling Hold Irritation Jealous Moments Ourselves Teaching
Since death is certain and the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?
PEMA CHODRON

Certain Death Important Philosophy Time
Appreciate everything, even the ordinary. Especially the ordinary.
PEMA CHODRON

Gratitude Ordinary Praise
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
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
Be kinder to yourself. And then let your kindness flood the world.
PEMA CHODRON

Compassionate Kind World Yourself
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.
PEMA CHODRON

Brilliant Bury Jewel Nature Simplicity Temporary True
All you need to know is that the future is wide open and you are about to create it by what you do.
PEMA CHODRON

Creation Future Inspirational Motivational Need Open Yourself
If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
PEMA CHODRON

Crazy Drive Heart Learning Open Ourselves People Teacher
Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we’re stuck.
PEMA CHODRON

Friendship Obstacle Ourselves Stuck Teaching
By the way that we think and by the way that we believe in things, in that way our world is created.
PEMA CHODRON

Believe Creation Ourselves Thinking Way World
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

You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.

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You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.

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