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Anyone Who Stands On The Edge Of The Unknown, Fully In The Present Without Reference Point, Experiences Groundlessness. That's When Our Understanding Goes Deeper, When We Find That The Present Moment Is A Pretty Vulnerable Place And That This Can Be Completely Unnerving And Completely Tender At The Same Time.

-Pema Chodron

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Anyone Who Stands On

Pema Chodron

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Anyone Who Stands On The Edge Of The Unknown, Fully In The Present Without Reference Point, Experiences Groundlessness. That's When Our Understanding Goes Deeper, When We Find That The Present Moment Is A Pretty Vulnerable Place And That This Can Be Completely Unnerving And Completely Tender At The Same Time.

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In Meditation And In Our Daily Lives There Are Three Qualities That We Can Nurture, Cultivate, And Bring Out. We Already Possess These, But They Can Be Ripened: Precision, Gentleness, And The Ability To Let Go.

In The End, That's What We All Need More Than Anything Else: To Be There For Each Other, In Every Kind Of Situation.

It's A Transformative Experience To Simply Pause Instead Of Immediately Fill Up The Space. By Waiting, We Begin To Connect With Fundamental Restlessness As Well As Fundamental Spaciousness. -pema Chodron, From "when Things Fall Apart

Things Falling Apart Is A Kind Of Testing And Also A Kind Of Healing.

On The Journey Of The Warrior-bodhisattva, The Path Goes Down, Not Up, As If The Mountain Pointed Toward The Earth Instead Of The Sky. Instead Of Transcending The Suffering Of All Creatures, We Move Toward Turbulence And Doubt However We Can. We Explore The Reality And Unpredictability Of Insecurity And Pain, And We Try Not To Push It Away. If It Takes Years, If It Takes Lifetimes, We Let It Be As It Is. At Our Own Pace, Without Speed Or Aggression, We Move Down And Down And Down. With Us Move Millions Of Others, Companions In Awakening From Fear.

What Happens With You When You Begin To Feel Uneasy, Unsettled, Queasy? Notice The Panic, Notice When You Instantly Grab For Something. (51)

Fear Is A Natural Reaction To Moving Closer To The Truth

We Don't Set Out To Save The World; We Set Out To Wonder How Other People Are Doing And To Reflect On How Our Actions Affect Other People's Hearts.

While We Are Sitting In Meditation, We Are Simply Exploring Humanity And All Of Creation In The Form Of Ourselves. We Can Become The World's Greatest Experts On Anger, Jealousy, And Self-deprecatio N, As Well As On Joyfulness, Clarity, And Insight. Everything That Human Beings Feel, We Feel. We Can Become Extremely Wise And Sensitive To All Of Humanity And The Whole Universe Simply By Knowing Ourselves, Just As We Are.

Each Of Us Has A "soft Spot": The Place In Our Experience Where We Feel Vulnerable And Tender. This Soft Spot Is Inherent In Appreciation And Love, And It Is Equally Inherent In Pain.

Peace Isn’t An Experience Free Of Challenges, Free Of Rough And Smooth, It’s An Experience That’s Expansive Enough To Include All That Arises Without Feeling Threatened.

Do I Prefer To Grow Up And Relate To Life Directly, Or Do I Choose To Live And Die In Fear?

Fear Is A Natural Reaction Of Moving Closer To The Truth. If We Commit Ourselves To Staying Right Where We Are, Then Our Experience Becomes Very Vivid. Things Become Very Clear When There Is Nowhere To Escape.

"be Grateful To Everyone" Is About Making Peace With The Aspects Of Ourselves That We Have Rejected... If We Were To Make A List Of People We Don't Like - People We Find Obnoxious, Threatening, Or Worthy Of Contempt - We Would Discover Much About Those Aspects Of Ourselves That We Can't Face... Other People Trigger The Karma That We Haven't Worked Out.

Just Where You Are-that's The Place To Start!

It's A Transformative Experience To Simply Pause Instead Of Immediately Filling Up Space.

Whatever You Are Doing, Take The Attitude Of Wanting It Directly Or Indirectly To Benefit Others. Take The Attitude Of Wanting It To Increase Your Experience Of Kinship With Your Fellow Beings.

The Third Noble Truth Says That The Cessation Of Suffering Is Letting Go Of Holding On To Ourselves.

As Each Breath Goes Out, Let It Be The End Of That Moment And The Birth Of Something New. . .

We Give It Up And Just Look Directly With Compassion And Humor At Who We Are. Then Loneliness Is No Threat And Heartache, No Punishment.

Until We Stop Clinging To The Concept Of Good And Evil, The World Will Continue To Manifest As Friendly Goddesses And Harmful Demons.

Usually We Think That Brave People Have No Fear. The Truth Is That They Are Intimate With Fear.

There Isn't Anything Except Your Own Life That Can Be Used As Ground For Your Spiritual Practice. Spiritual Practice Is Your Life, Twenty-four Hours A Day.

In Truth, There Is Enormous Space In Which To Live Our Everyday Lives.

Difficult Things Provoke All Your Irritations And Bring Your Habitual Patterns To The Surface. And That Becomes The Moment Of Truth. You Have The Choice To Launch Into Your Lousy Habitual Patterns, Or To Stay With The Rawness And Discomfort Of The Situation And Let It Transform You.

Sticking With Uncertainty Is How We Learn To Relax In The Midst Of Chaos, How We Learn To Be Cool When The Ground Beneath Us Suddenly Disappears. We Can Bring Ourselves Back To The Spiritual Path Countless Times Every Day Simply By Exercising Our Willingness To Rest In The Uncertainty Of The Present Moment—over And Over Again.

The Peace That We Are Looking For Is Not Peace That Crumbles As Soon As There Is Difficulty Or Chaos. Whether We’re Seeking Inner Peace Or Global Peace Or A Combination Of The Two, The Way To Experience It Is To Build On The Foundation Of Unconditional Openness To All That Arises. Peace Isn’t An Experience Free Of Challenges, Free Of Rough And Smooth, It’s An Experience That’s Expansive Enough To Include All That Arises Without Feeling Threatened.

Fear Itself Is The Vanguard Of Wisdom

Awareness Is The Key. Do We See The Stories That We're Telling Ourselves And Question Their Validity?

If You Aren't Feeding The Fire Of Anger Or The Fire Of Craving By Talking To Yourself, Then The Fire Doesn't Have Anything To Feed On.

If Your Mind Is Expansive And Unfettered, You Will Find Yourself In A More Accommodating World, A Place That's Endlessly Interesting And Alive. That Quality Isn't Inherent In The Place But In Your State Of Mind.

Finding Yourself

Resistance To Unwanted Circumstances Has The Power To Keep Those Circumstances Alive And Well For A Very Long Time.

You're The Only One Who Knows When You're Using Things To Protect Yourself And Keep Your Ego Together And When You're Opening And Letting Things Fall Apart, Letting The World Come As It Is - Working With It Rather Than Struggling Against It. You're The Only One Who Knows.

We Don't Experience The World Fully Unless We Are Willing To Give Everything Away.

Now Is The Only Time. How We Relate To It Creates The Future. In Other Words, If We're Going To Be More Cheerful In The Future, It's Because Of Our Aspiration And Exertion To Be Cheerful In The Present. What We Do Accumulates; The Future Is The Result Of What We Do Right Now.

Patience Is The Training In Abiding With The Restlessness Of Our Energy And Letting Things Evolve At Their Own Speed.

Difficult People Are The Greatest Teachers.

The More Neurosis The More Wisdom.

Unconditional Good Heart Toward Others Is Not Even A Possibility Unless We Attend To Our Own Demons.

We Can Put Our Whole Heart Into Whatever We Do; But If We Freeze Our Attitude Into For Or Against, We're Setting Ourselves Up For Stress. Instead, We Could Just Go Forward With Curiosity, Wondering Where This Experiment Will Lead. This Kind Of Open-ended Inquisitiveness Captures The Spirit Of Enthusiasm, Or Heroic Perseverance.

Determination Means To Use Every Challenge You Meet As An Opportunity To Open Your Heart And Soften, Determined To Not Withdraw.

If You're Invested In Security And Certainty, You Are On The Wrong Planet.

Meditation Is About Seeing Clearly The Body That We Have, The Mind That We Have, The Domestic Situation That We Have, The Job That We Have, And The People Who Are In Our Lives. It's About Seeing How We React To All These Things. It's Seeing Our Emotions And Thoughts Just As They Are Right Now, In This Very Moment, In This Very Room, On This Very Seat. It's About Not Trying To Make Them Go Away, Not Trying To Become Better Than We Are, But Just Seeing Clearly With Precision And Gentleness.

We Can Spend Our Whole Lives Escaping From The Monsters Of Our Minds. (36)

To Stay With That Shakiness-to Stay With A Broken Heart, With A Rumbling Stomach, With The Feeling Of Hopelessness And Wanting To Get Revenge-that Is The Path Of True Awakening. Sticking With That Uncertainty, Getting The Knack Of Relaxing In The Midst Of Chaos, Learning Not To Panic-this Is The Spiritual Path.

Come Back To Square One, Just The Minimum Bare Bones. Relaxing With The Present Moment, Relaxing With Hopelessness, Relaxing With Death, Not Resisting The Fact That Things End, That Things Pass, That Things Have No Lasting Substance, That Everything Is Changing All The Time-that Is The Basic Message.

Our Patterns Are Well Established, Seductive, And Comforting. Just Wanting For Them To Be Ventilated Isn't Enough. Those Of Us Who Struggle With This Know.

A Warrior Accepts That We Can Never Know What Will Happen To Us Next.

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. They Teach Us To Perk Up And Lean In When We Feel We’d Rather Collapse And Back Away. They’re Like Messengers That Show Us, With Terrifying Clarity, Exactly Where We’re Stuck. This Very Moment Is The Perfect Teacher, And, Lucky For Us, It’s With Us Wherever We Are.

As For Our Inner Level Of Obstacle, Perhaps The Only Enemy We Have Is That We Don't Like The Way Reality Is Now And Therefore Wish It Would Go Away Fast. But What We Need To Acknowledge Is That Nothing Ever Goes Away Until It Has Taught Us What We Need To Know.

If Seeing That Other Person's Pain Brings Up Your Fear Or Anger Or Confusion (which Often Happens), Just Start Doing Tonglen For Yourself And All The Other People Who Are Stuck In The Very Same Way.

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.

We Have Two Alternatives: Either We Question Our Beliefs - Or We Don't. Either We Accept Our Fixed Versions Of Reality- Or We Begin To Challenge Them. In Buddha's Opinion, To Train In Staying Open And Curious - To Train In Dissolving Our Assumptions And Beliefs - Is The Best Use Of Our Human Lives.

We Come To Realize That Other People's Welfare Is Just As Important As Our Own. In Helping Them, We Help Ourselves. In Helping Ourselves, We Help The World.

When We Struggle Agains Our Energy We Reject The Source Of Wisdom. Anger Without The Fixation Is None Other Than Clear-seeing Wisdom. Pride Without Fixation Is Experienced As Equanimity. The Energy Of Passion When It's Free Of Grasping Is Wisdom That Sees All The Angles.

When Resistance Is Gone, The Demons Are Gone.

Anyone Who Stands On The Edge Of The Unknown, Fully In The Present Without Reference Point, Experiences Groundlessness. That's When Our Understanding Goes Deeper, When We Find That The Present Moment Is A Pretty Vulnerable Place And That This Can Be Completely Unnerving And Completely Tender At The Same Time.

As Our Kindness For Ourselves Grows, So Does Our Kindness For Other People.

We Don’t Experience The World Fully Unless We Are Willing To Give Everything Away. Samaya Means Not Holding Anything Back, Not Preparing Our Escape Route, Not Looking For Alternatives, Not Thinking That There Is Ample Time To Do Things Later

If We Pause And Breathe In And Out, Then We Can Have The Experience Of Timeless Presence, Of The Inexpressible Wisdom And Goodness Of Our Own Minds. We Can Look At The World With Fresh Eyes And Hear Things With Fresh Ears.

There Are Many Changes In The Weather Of A Day.

Lower Your Standards And Relax As It Is.

One Way To Practice Staying Present Is To Simply Sit Still For A While And Listen. For One Minute, Listen To The Sounds Close To You. For One Minute, Listen To The Sounds At A Distance. Just Listen Attentively.

Everything Is Material For The Seed Of Happiness, If You Look Into It With Inquisitiveness And Curiosity. The Future Is Completely Open, And We Are Writing It Moment To Moment. There Always Is The Potential To Create An Environment Of Blame -or One That Is Conducive To Loving-kindness.

Anxiety, Heartbreak, And Tenderness Mark The In-between State. It's The Kind Of Place We Usually Want To Avoid. The Challenge Is To Stay In The Middle Rather Than Buy Into Struggle And Complaint. The Challenge Is To Let It Soften Us Rather Than Make Us More Rigid And Afraid.

Awareness Is The Key. Do We See The Stories That We're Telling Ourselves And Question Their Validity? When We Are Distracted By Strong Emotion, Do We Remember That It Is Our Path? Can We Feel The Emotion And Breathe It Into Our Hearts For Ourselves And Everyone Else? If We Can Remember To Experiment Like This Even Occasionally, We Are Training As A Warrior. And When We Can't Practice When Distracted But Know We Can't, We Are Still Training Well. Never Underestimate The Power Of Compassionately Recognizing What's Going On.

The Only Reason We Don't Open Our Hearts And Minds To Other People Is That They Trigger Confusion In Us That We Don't Feel Brave Enough Or Sane Enough To Deal With. To The Degree That We Look Clearly And Compassionately At Ourselves, We Feel Confident And Fearless About Looking Into Someone Else's Eyes.

Rejoicing In Ordinary Things Is Not Sentimental Or Trite. It Actually Takes Guts. Each Time We Drop Our Complaints And Allow Everyday Good Fortune To Inspire Us, We Enter The Warrior's World.

Not Causing Harm Requires Staying Awake. Part Of Being Awake Is Slowing Down Enough To Notice What We Say And Do. The More We Witness Our Emotional Chain Reactions And Understand How They Work, The Easier It Is To Refrain. It Becomes A Way Of Life To Stay Awake, Slow Down, And Notice.

There Comes A Time When The Bubble Of Ego Is Popped And You Can’t Get The Ground Back For An Extended Period Of Time. Those Times, When You Absolutely Cannot Get It Back Together, Are The Most Rich And Powerful Times In Our Lives.

Never Give Up On Yourself. Then You Will Never Give Up On Others.

Every Moment Is Incredibly Unique And Fresh, And When We Drop Into The Moment, As Meditation Allows Us To Do, We Learn How To Truly Taste This Tender And Mysterious Life That We Share Together.

For Arousing Compassion, The Nineteenth-century Yogi Patrul Rinpoche Suggested Imagining Beings In Torment - An Animal About To Be Slaughtered, A Person Awaiting Execution. To Make It More Immediate, He Recommended Imagining Ourselves In Their Place. Particularly Painful Is His Image Of A Mother With No Arms Watching As A Raging River Sweeps Her Child Away. To Contact The Suffering Of Another Being Fully And Directly Is As Painful As Being In The Woman's Shoes.

We're Not Trying To Be Something We Aren't; Rather, We're Reconnecting With Who We Are.

If Someone Comes Along And Shoots An Arrow Into Your Heart, It's Fruitless To Stand There And Yell At The Person. It Would Be Much Better To Turn Your Attention To The Fact That There's An Arrow In Your Heart.

Let Difficulty Transform You. And It Will. In My Experience, We Just Need Help In Learning How Not To Run Away.

Meditation Takes Us Just As We Are, With Our Confusion And Our Sanity. This Complete Acceptance Of Ourselves As We Are Is Called Maitri, Or Unconditional Friendliness, A Simple, Direct Relationship With The Way We Are.

If You’re Aggressive In Your Dealings, That’s How You’ll Be Regarded In The World. You Might Smile And Give Generously, But If You Frequently Explode In Anger, People Never Feel Comfortable In Your Presence And You’ll Never Have Peace Of Mind.

Appreciate Everything, Even The Ordinary... Especially The Ordinary.

If We Begin To Get In Touch With Whatever We Feel With Some Kind Of Kindness, Our Protective Shells Will Melt, And We'll Find That More Areas Of Our Lives Are Workable. As We Learn To Have Compassion For Ourselves, The Circle Of Compassion For Others-what And Whom We Can Work With, And How-becomes Wider.

When You Have Made Good Friends With Yourself, Your Situation Will Be More Friendly Too.

There Is No Cultivation Of Patience When Your Pattern Is To Just Try To Seek Harmony And Smooth Everything Out. Patience Implies Willingness To Be Alive Rather Than Trying To Seek Harmony.

Meditation Accepts Us Just As We Are-in Both Our Tantrums And Our Bad Habits, In Our Love And Commitments And Happiness. It Allows Us To Have A More Flexible Identity Because We Learn To Accept Ourselves And All Of Our Human Experience With More Tenderness And Openness. We Learn To Accept The Present Moment With An Open Heart. Every Moment Is Incredibly Unique And Fresh, And When We Drop Into The Moment, As Meditation Allows Us To Do, We Learn How To Truly Taste This Tender And Mysterious Life That We Share Together.

The Central Question Of A Warrior's Training Is Not How We Avoid Uncertainty And Fear But How We Relate To Discomfort.

Sometimes We Find That We Like Our Thoughts So Much That We Don't Want To Let Them Go.

The Most Difficult Times For Many Of Us Are The Ones We Give Ourselves.

We're Afraid That This Anger Or Sorrow Or Loneliness Is Going To Last Forever... Instead, Acting It Out Is What Makes It Last.

Gloriousness And Wretchedness Need Each Other. One Inspires Us, The Other Softens Us.

How Do We Cultivate The Conditions For Joy To Expand? We Train In Staying Present.

If We Want There To Be Peace In The World, We Have To Be Brave Enough To Soften What Is Rigid In Our Hearts, To Find The Soft Spot And Stay With It. We Have To Have That Kind Of Courage And Take That Kind Of Responsibility. That’s The True Practice Of Peace.

The Ego Seeks To Divide And Separate. Spirit Seeks To Unify And Heal.

It Isn't What Happens To Us That Causes Us To Suffer; It's What We Say To Ourselves About What Happens.

It Is Possible To Move Through The Drama Of Our Lives Without Believing So Earnestly In The Character That We Play.

Things Become Clear When There Is No Escape.

The Spiritual Journey Involves Going Beyond Hope And Fear, Stepping Into Unknown Territory, Continually Moving Forward. The Most Important Aspect Of Being On The Spiritual Path May Be Just To Keep Moving.

Treat Yourself As Your Own Beloved Child.

Searching For Happiness Prevents Us From Ever Finding It.

Searching For Happiness

There's Something Delicious About Finding Fault With Something. And That Can Be Including Finding Fault With One's Self, You Know?

While We Are Sitting In Meditation, We Are Simply Exploring Humanity And All Of Creation In The Form Of Ourselves.

Tonglen Dissolves Your Solid Sense Of "i'm The Wise Person, I'm Going To Help This Poor, Unfortunate Loser."

Someone Needs To Encourage Us Not To Brush Aside What We Feel. Not To Be Ashamed Of The Love And Grief That It Arouses In Us. Not To Be Afraid Of Pain. Someone Needs To Encourage Us: That This Soft Spot In Us Could Be Awakened, And That To Do This Would Change Our Lives.

You See, There Really Is No Separation Between You And Everyone Else.

Inner #‎ Peace Begins The Moment You Choose Not To Allow Another Person Or Event To Control Your #‎ Emotions

By Not Knowing, Not Hoping To Know And Not Acting Like We Know What's Happening, We Begin To Access Our Inner Strength.

We Are Not Given Any Promises That, Because Of Our Noble Intentions, Everything Will Be Okay. We Learn That What Truly Heals Is Gratitude And Tenderness. We [need] To Transform Our Minds And Actions For The Sake Of Other People And For The Future Of The World.

Now Is The Only Time. How We Relate To It Creates The Future.

Each Moment Is Just What It Is. It Might Be The Only Moment Of Our Life; It Might Be The Only Strawberry We'll Ever Eat. We Could Get Depressed About It, Or We Could Finally Appreciate It And Delight In The Preciousness Of Every Single Moment Of Our Life.

To Cultivate Equanimity We Practice Catching Ourselves When We Feel Attraction Or Aversion, Before It Hardens Into Grasping Or Negativity.

My Experience With Forgiveness Is That It Sort Of Comes Spontaneously At A Certain Point And To Try To Force It It's Not Really Forgiveness. It's Buddhist Philosophy Or Something Spiritual Jargon That You're Trying To Live Up To But You're Just Using It Against Yourself As A Reason Why You're Not Okay.

By The Way That We Think And By The Way That We Believe In Things, In That Way Our World Is Created.

Just Pausing For Two To Three Breaths Is A Perfect Way To Stay Present. This Is A Good Use Of Our Life. Indeed, It Is An Excellent, Joyful Use Of Our Life. Instead Of Getting Better And Better At Avoiding, We Can Learn To Accept The Present Moment As If We Had Invited It, And Work With It Instead Of Against It, Making It Our Ally Rather Than Our Enemy.

Affirmations Are Like Screaming That You're Okay In Order To Overcome This Whisper That You're Not. That's A Big Contrast To Actually Uncovering The Whisper, Realizing That It's A Passing Memory, And Moving Closer To All Those Fears And All Those Edgy Feelings That Maybe You're Not Okay. Well, No Big Deal. None Of Us Is Okay And All Of Us Are Fine. It's Not Just One Way. We Are Walking, Talking Paradoxes.

The Trick Is To Keep Exploring And Not Bail Out, Even When We Find Out That Something Is Not What We Thought.

The Essence Of Practice Is Always The Same: Instead Of Falling Prey To A Chain Reaction Of Revenge Or Self-hatred, We Gradually Learn To Catch The Emotional Reaction And Drop The Story Lines.

We Practice To Liberate Ourselves From A Burden.

Rejoicing In The Good Fortune Of Others Is A Practice That Can Help Us When We Feel Emotionally Shut Down And Unable To Connect With Others. Rejoicing Generates Good Will.

When We Feel Left Out, Inadequate, Or Lonely, Can We Take A Warrior’s Perspective And Contact Bodhichitta?

Relaxing With Something As Familiar As Loneliness Is Good Discipline For Realizing The Profundity Of The Unresolved Moments Of Our Lives. We Are Cheating Ourselves When We Run Away From The Ambiguity Of Loneliness.....rather Than Persecuting Yourself Or Feeling That Something Terribly Wrong Is Happening, Right There In The Moment Of Sadness And Longing, Could You Relax And Touch The Limitless Space Of The Human Heart?

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.

Take Three Conscious Breaths. Just Pause. Let It Be A Contrast To Being All Caught Up. Let It Be Like Popping A Bubble. Let It Be Just A Moment In Time, And Then Go On. Maybe You Are On Your Way To Whatever You Need To Do For The Day. You Are In Your Car, Or On The Bus, Or Standing In Line. But You Can Still Create That Gap By Taking Three Conscious Breaths And Being Right There With The Immediacy Of Your Experience, Right There With Whatever You Are Seeing, With Whatever You Are Doing, With Whatever You Are Feeling.

Knowing Pain Is A Very Important Ingredient Of Being There For Another Person.

What If Rather Than Being Disheartened By The Ambiguity, The Uncertainty Of Life, We Accepted It And Relaxed Into It?

Uncertainty Of Life

Don't Worry About Achieving. Don't Worry About Perfection. Just Be There Each Moment As Best You Can. When You Realize You've Wandered Off Again, Simply Very Lightly Acknowledge That. This Light Touch Is The Golden Key To Reuniting With Our Openness.

Nothing In Its Essence Is One Way Or The Other.

If You See A Homeless Person On The Street, And They Need Food, Housing, Medical Attention - If You Can Give That, Do It. But At The Same Time, Work With Tonglen, Because That Is How You Start Dissolving The Barrier Between You And Them.

For One Day, Or For One Day For A Week, Refrain From Something You Habitually Do To Run Away, To Escape. Pick Something Concrete, Such As Overeating Or Excessive Sleeping Or Overworking Or Spending Too Much Time Texting Or Checking E-mails. Make A Commitment To Yourself To Gently And Compassionately Work With Refraining From This Habit For This One Day. Really Commit To It. Do This With The Intention That It Will Put You In Touch With The Underlying Anxiety Or Uncertainty That You've Been Avoiding. Do It And See What You Discover.

Openness Doesn’t Come From Resisting Our Fears But Rather From Getting To Know Them Well.

Compassionate Action Involves Working With Ourselves As Much As Working With Others.

Working With Others

As Long As Our Orientation Is Toward Perfection Or Success, We Will Never Learn About Unconditional Friendship With Ourselves, Nor Will We Find Compassion.

The Greatest Obstacle To Connecting With Our Joy Is Resentment.

We Are Like Children Building A Sand Castle. We Embellish It With Beautiful Shells, Bits Of Driftwood, And Pieces Of Colored Glass. The Castle Is Ours, Off Limits To Others. We’re Willing To Attack If Others Threaten To Hurt It. Yet Despite All Our Attachment, We Know That The Tide Will Inevitably Come In And Sweep The Sand Castle Away. The Trick Is To Enjoy It Fully But Without Clinging, And When The Time Comes, Let It Dissolve Back Into The Sea.

If You Follow Your Heart, You're Going To Find That It Is Often Extremely Inconvenient.

Follow Your Heart

Honesty Without Kindness, Humor, And Goodheartedness Can Be Just Mean. From The Very Beginning To The Very End, Pointing To Our Own Hearts To Discover What Is True Isn’t Just A Matter Of Honesty But Also Of Compassion And Respect For What We See.

When We Practice Generating Compassion, We Can Expect To Experience Our Fear Of Pain. Compassion Practice Is Daring. It Involves Learning To Relax And Allow Ourselves To Move Gently Toward What Scares Us. The Trick To Doing This Is To Stay With Emotional Distress Without Tightening Into Aversion, To Let Fear Soften Us Rather Than Harden Into Resistance.

Don’t Worry About Achieving. Don’t Worry About Perfection. Just Be There Each Moment As Best You Can.

Nobody Else Can Really Begin To Sort Out For You What To Accept And What To Reject In Terms Of What Wakes You Up And What Makes You Fall Asleep. No One Else Can Really Sort Out For You What To Accept - What Opens Up Your World - And What To Reject - What Seems To Keep You Going Round And Round In Some Kind Of Repetitive Misery.

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.

When You Begin To Touch Your Heart Or Let Your Heart Be Touched, You Begin To Discover That It's Bottomless.

Opening Our Hearts

That Nothing Is Static Or Fixed, That All Is Fleeting And Impermanent, Is The First Mark Of Existence. It Is The Ordinary State Of Affairs. Everything Is In Process. Everything - Every Tree, Every Blade Of Grass, All The Animals, Insects, Human Beings, Buildings, The Animate And The Inanimate - Is Always Changing, Moment To Moment.

Compassionate Action Starts With Seeing Yourself When You Start To Make Yourself Right And When You Start To Make Yourself Wrong. At That Point You Could Just Contemplate The Fact That There Is A Larger Alternative To Either Of Those, A More Tender, Shaky Kind Of Place Where You Could Live.

The Painful Thing Is That When We Buy Into Disapproval, We Are Practicing Disapproval. When We Buy Into Harshness, We Are Practicing Harshness. The More We Do It, The Stronger These Qualities Become. How Sad It Is That We Become So Expert At Causing Harm To Ourselves And Others. The Trick Then Is To Practice Gentleness And Letting Go. We Can Learn To Meet Whatever Arises With Curiosity And Not Make It Such A Big Deal.

Words Themselves Are Neutral. It's The Charge We Add To Them That Matters

Sitting Meditation Gives Us A Way To Move Closer To Our Thoughts And Emotions And To Get In Touch With Our Bodies.

Share The Wealth. Be Generous With Your Joy. Give Away What You Most Want. Be Generous With Your Insights And Delights.

Don’t Get Caught Up In Hopes Of What You’ll Achieve And How Good Your Situation Will Be Some Day In The Future. What You Do Right Now Is What Matters.

It's Hard To Know Whether To Laugh Or To Cry At The Human Predicament. Here We Are With So Much Wisdom And Tenderness, And—without Even Knowing It—we Cover It Over To Protect Ourselves From Insecurity. Although We Have The Potential To Experience The Freedom Of A Butterfly, We Mysteriously Prefer The Small And Fearful Cocoon Of Ego.

The Buddha’s Principal Message That Day Was That Holding On To Anything Blocks Wisdom. Any Conclusion That We Draw Must Be Let Go. The Only Way To Fully Understand The Bodhichitta Teachings, The Only Way To Practice Them Fully, Is To Abide In The Unconditional Openness Of The Prajna, Patiently Cutting Through All Our Tendencies To Hang On.

Having Compassion Starts And Ends With Having Compassion For All Those Unwanted Parts Of Ourselves. The Healing Comes From Letting There Be Room For All Of This To Happen: Room For Grief, For Relief, For Misery, For Joy.

The Most Complete And True Happiness Comes In Moments When You Feel Right There, Completely Present, With No Ideas About Good And Bad, Right And Wrong - Just A Sense Of Open Heart And Open Mind.

Being Fully Present Isn’t Something That Happens Once And Then You Have Achieved It; It’s Being Awake To The Ebb And Flow And Movement And Creation Of Life, Being Alive To The Process Of Life Itself.

The Next Step Is To Learn To Communicate With The People That You Feel Are Causing Your Pain And Misery- Not To Learn How To Prove Them Wrong And Yourself Right But How To Communicate From The Heart.

I Have All The Support I Need To Simply Relax And Be With The Transitional, In-process Quality Of My Life. I Have All I Need To Engage In The Process Of Awakening.

When There's A Disappointment, I Don't Know If It's The End Of The Story. It May Just Be The Beginning Of A Great Adventure.

Things Are As Bad And As Good As They Seem. There's No Need To Add Anything Extra.

Anything We Experience, No Matter How Challenging, Can Become An Open Pathway To Awakening.

The Essence Of Generosity Is Letting Go. Pain Is Always A Sign That We Are Holding On To Something - Usually Ourselves.

When We Touch The Center Of Sorrow, When We Sit With Discomfort Without Trying To Fix It, When We Stay Present To The Pain Of Disapproval Or Betrayal And Let It Soften Us, These Are Times That We Connect With Bohdichitta.

The Mind Is Very Wild. The Human Experience Is Full Of Unpredictability And Paradox, Joys And Sorrows, Successes And Failures. We Can't Escape Any Of These Experiences In The Vast Terrain Of Our Existence. It Is Part Of What Makes Life Grand-and It Is Also Why Our Minds Take Us On Such A Crazy Ride. If We Can Train Ourselves Through Meditation To Be More Open And More Accepting Toward The Wild Arc Of Our Experience, If We Can Lean Into The Difficulties Of Life And The Ride Of Our Minds, We Can Become More Settled And Relaxed Amid Whatever Life Brings Us.

Although It Is Embarrassing And Painful, It Is Very Healing To Stop Hiding From Yourself. It Is Healing To Know All The Ways That You’re Sneaky, All The Ways That You Hide Out, All The Ways That You Shut Down, Deny, Close Off, Criticize People, All Your Weird Little Ways. You Can Know All Of That With Some Sense Of Humor And Kindness. By Knowing Yourself, You’re Coming To Know Humanness Altogether. We Are All Up Against These Things. We Are All In This Together.

If You Work With Your Mind, That Will Alleviate All The Suffering That Seems To Come From The Outside.

We Are All Capable Of Becoming Fundamentalists Because We Get Addicted To Other People's Wrongness.

Most Spiritual Experiences Begin With Suffering. They Begin With Groundlessness. They Begin When The Rug Has Been Pulled Out From Under Us.

We Work On Ourselves In Order To Help Others, But Also We Help Others In Order To Work On Ourselves.

We Feel That We Have To Be Right So That We Can Feel Good. We Don’t Want To Be Wrong Because Then We’ll Feel Bad. But We Could Be More Compassionate Toward All These Parts Of Ourselves. The Whole Right And Wrong Business Closes Us Down And Makes Our World Smaller. Wanting Situations And Relationships To Be Solid, Permanent, And Graspable Obscures The Pith Of The Matter, Which Is That Things Are Fundamentally Groundless.

Without Loving-kindness For Ourselves, It Is Difficult, If Not Impossible, To Genuinely Feel It For Others.

We Don’t Sit In Meditation To Become Good Meditators. We Sit In Meditation So That We’ll Be More Awake In Our Lives.

The Most Fundamental Aggression To Ourselves, The Most Fundamental Harm We Can Do To Ourselves, Is To Remain Ignorant By Not Having The Courage And The Respect To Look At Ourselves Honestly And Gently.

Walking Meditation

There's A Reason You Can Learn From Everything: You Have Basic Wisdom, Basic Intelligence, And Basic Goodness.

Words Of Wisdom

Trying To Change Ourselves Doesn't Work In The Long Run Because We're Resisting Our Own Energy. Self-improvemen T Can Have Temporary Results, But Lasting Transformation Occurs Only When We Honor Ourselves As The Source Of Wisdom And Compassion.

To Put It Concisely, We Suffer When We Resist The Noble And Irrefutable Truth Of Impermanence And Death.

Nothing Ever Goes Away Until It Has Taught Us What We Need To Know.

When We Cling To Thoughts And Memories, We Are Clinging To What Cannot Be Grasped. When We Touch These Phantoms And Let Them Go, We May Discover A Space, A Break In The Chatter, A Glimpse Of Open Sky. This Is Our Birthright—the Wisdom With Which We Were Born, The Vast Unfolding Display Of Primordial Richness, Primordial Openness, Primordial Wisdom Itself. When One Thought Has Ended And Another Has Not Yet Begun, We Can Rest In That Space.

The Painful Thing Is That When We Buy Into Disapproval,we Are Practicing Disapproval. When We Buy Into Harshness,we Are Practicing Harshness.

Whole-heartedn Ess Is A Precious Gift, But No One Can Actually Give It To You. You Have To Find The Path That Has Heart And Then Walk It Impeccably....it' S Like Someone Laughing In Your Ear, Challenging You To Figure Out What To Do When You Don't Know What To Do. It Humbles You. It Opens Your Heart.

This Genuine Heart Of Sadness Can Teach Us Great Compassion. It Can Humble Us When We're Arrogant And Soften Us When We Are Unkind.

Compassion Practice Is Daring. It Involves Learning To Relax And Allowing Ourselves To Move Gently Toward What Scares Us.

One Can Appreciate & Celebrate Each Moment — There’s Nothing More Sacred. There’s Nothing More Vast Or Absolute. In Fact, There’s Nothing More!

It Is Only When We Begin To Relax With Ourselves That Meditation Becomes A Transformative Process. Only When We Relate With Ourselves Without Moralizing, Without Harshness, Without Deception, Can We Let Go Of Harmful Patterns. Without Maitri (metta), Renunciation Of Old Habits Becomes Abusive. This Is An Important Point.

Life Is Glorious, But Life Is Also Wretched. It Is Both...life Is Glorious, But Life Is Also Wretched. It Is Both.

The Only Way To Ease Our Pain Is To Experience It Fully. Learn To Stay With Uneasiness, Learn To Stay With The Tightening, So That The Habitual Chain Reaction Doesn't Continue To Rule Your Life.

The Idea Is To Develop Sympathy For Your Own Confusion.

The Most Important Aspect Of Being On A Spiritual Path May Be To Just Keep Moving.

All Ego Really Is, Is Our Opinions, Which We Take To Be Solid, Real, And The Absolute Truth About How Things Are.

So War And Peace Start In The Human Heart. Whether That Heart Is Open Or Whether That Heart Closes Has Global Implications.

We Can Stop Struggling With What Occurs And See Its True Face Without Calling It The Enemy. It Helps To Remember That Our Spiritual Practice Is Not About Accomplishing Anything - Not About Winning Or Losing - But About Ceasing To Struggle And Relaxing As It Is. That Is What We Are Doing When We Sit Down To Meditate. That Attitude Spreads Into The Rest Of Our Lives.

Surrendering, Letting Go Of Possessiveness, And Complete Nonattachment-all Are Synonyms For Accumulating Merit.

It Is Only To The Extent That We Are Willing To Expose Ourselves Again And Again To Annihilation That We Are Able To Find That Part Of Ourselves That Is Indestructible.

Again And Again

Patience Has Nothing To Do With Suppression. In Fact, It Has Everything To Do With A Gentle, Honest Relationship With Yourself.

Sometimes People's Spiritual Ideas Become Fixed And They Use Them Against Those Who Don't Share Their Beliefs - In Effect, Becoming Fundamentalist. It's Very Dangerous - The Finger Of Righteous Indignation Pointing At Someone Who Is Identified As Bad Or Wrong.

Ordinarily We Are Swept Away By Habitual Momentum And Don't Interrupt Our Patterns Slightly. When We Feel Betrayed Or Disappointed, Does It Occur To Us To Practice?

It Is A Commitment To Respect Whatever Life Brings That We Develop Wholehearted Determination To Use Discomfort As An Opportunity For Awakening, Rather Than Trying To Make It Disappear.

The Point Is That Our True Nature Is Not Some Ideal That We Have To Live Up To. It's Who We Are Right Now, And That's What We Can Make Friends With And Celebrate.

If We Learn To Open Our Hearts, Anyone, Including The People Who Drive Us Crazy, Can Be Our Teacher.

Inspirational Love

Deep Down In The Human Spirit, There Is A Reservoir Of Courage. It Is Always Available, Always Waiting To Be Discovered.

If There's Any Possibility For Enlightenment, It's Right Now, Not At Some Future Time. Now Is The Time.

Live In The Moment

Well, It Starts With Being Willing To Feel What We Are Going Through. It Starts With Being Willing To Have A Compassionate Relationship With The Parts Of Ourselves That We Feel Are Not Worthy Of Existing On The Planet. If We Are Willing Through Meditation To Be Mindful Not Only Of What Feels Comfortable, But Also Of What Pain Feels Like, If We Even Aspire To Stay Awake And Open To What We're Feeling, To Recognize And Acknowledge It As Best We Can In Each Moment, Then Something Begins To Change.

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.

Many People Hope A Spiritual Practice Will Let Them Avoid What They Are Ashamed Of. But When You Hide Something From Yourself, You Are Going To Project It Onto Your World. You Continually Find It In Others And It Becomes The Source Of Prejudices And Dogmatic Views. On Top Of That, You Feel Bad About Yourself, Because You Aren't The Loving, Open-minded, "spiritual" Person You'd Like To Be.

Compassion Isn't Some Kind Of Self-improvement Project Or Ideal That We're Trying To Live Up To. Having Compassion Starts And Ends With Having Compassion For All Those Unwanted Parts Of Ourselves, All Those Imperfections That We Don't Even Want To Look At.

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