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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.

-Pema Chodron

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Difficult Things Provoke All

Pema Chodron

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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.

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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.

A Further Sign Of Health Is That We Don't Become Undone By Fear And Trembling, But We Take It As A Message That It's Time To Stop Struggling And Look Directly At What's Threatening Us.

We Think That The Point Is To Pass The Test Or To Overcome The Problem, But The Truth Is That Things Don't Really Get Solved. They Come Together And They Fall Apart.

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.

How Will We Experience The World A Month, A Year, Or Five Years From Now? Will We Be Even Angrier, More Grasping And Fearful, Or Will Some Shift Have Occurred? This Depends Entirely On The Tendencies We Reinforce Today.

The Future Is Completely Open And We Are Writing It Moment To Moment.

Live In The Moment

We Feel That We Have To Be Right So That We Can Feel Good... The Whole Right And Wrong Business Closes Us Down And Makes Our World Smaller.

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

Words Of Wisdom

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

All Situations Teach You, And Often It's The Tough Ones That Teach You Best.

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.

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.

Things Become Clear When There Is No Escape.

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

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

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

Each Time You Stay Present With Fear And Uncertainty, You're Letting Go Of A Habitual Way Of Finding Security And Comfort.

Everything In Our Lives Has The Potential To Wake Us Up Or Put Us To Sleep. Allowing It To Awaken Us Is Up To Us.

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.

You Must Learn To Sit With The Restless, Painful Energy And Not Let The Momentum Pull You Under And Cause You To Do The Same Thing Over And Over That's Ruining Your Life And The Lives Of Those Around You.

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.

There's Nothing More Important On Our Spiritual Path Than Developing Gentleness To Oneself.

When We Sit Down To Meditate, We Connect With Something Unconditional - A State Of Mind, A Basic Environment That Does Not Grasp Or Reject Anything. Meditation Is Probably The Only Activity That Doesn't Add Anything To The Picture. Everything Is Allowed To Come And Go Without Further Embellishment. Meditation Is A Totally Nonviolent, Non Aggressive Occupation. Not Filling The Space, Allowing For The Possibility Of Connecting With Unconditional Openness - This Provides The Basis For Real Change.

Honesty Without Kindness, Humor, And Goodheartedness Can Be Just Mean.

Even If You Don't Feel Appreciation, Just Look. Feel What You Feel; Take An Interest And Be Curious.

Everybody Loves Something, Even If It's Only Tortillas.

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.

It Isn't The Things That Happen To Us In Our Lives That Cause Us To Suffer, It's How We Relate To The Things That Happen To Us That Causes Us To Suffer.

We Are One Blink Of An Eye Away From Being Fully Awake

When Things Fall Apart” And I Quote “life Is A Good Teacher And A Good Friend. Things Are Always In Transition, If We Could Only Realize It. Nothing Ever Sums Itself Up In The Way That We Like To Dream About. The Off-center, In-between State Is An Ideal Situation, A Situation In Which We Don't Get Caught And We Can Open Our Hearts And Minds Beyond Limit. It's A Very Tender, Nonaggressive, Open-ended State Of Affairs.

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

Uncertainty Of Life

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

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.

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.

Resisting What Is Happening Is A Major Cause Of Suffering.

If You Ask Why We Meditate, I Would Say It's So We Can Become More Flexible And Tolerant To The Present Moment.

The Teacher Will Never Give Up On The Student No Matter How Mixed Up He Or She Might Be

We Practice To Liberate Ourselves From A Burden.

"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.

Ego Is Something That You Come To Know - Something That You Befriend By Not Acting Out Or By Repressing All The Feelings That You Feel.

All You Need To Know Is That The Future Is Wide Open And You Are About To Create It By What You Do.

The More Neurosis The More Wisdom.

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.

Rather Than Going After Our Walls And Barriers With A Sledgehammer, We Pay Attention To Them. With Gentleness And Honesty, We Move Closer To Those Walls. We Touch Them And Smell Them And Get To Know Them Well. We Begin A Process Of Acknowledging Our Aversions And Our Cravings. We Become Familiar With The Strategies And Beliefs We Use To Build The Walls: What Are The Stories I Tell Myself? What Repels Me And What Attracts Me? We Start To Get Curious About What’s Going On.

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.

This Moving Away From Comfort And Security, This Stepping Out Into What Is Unknown, Uncharted And Shaky - That's Called Liberation.

The Second Noble Truth Says That This Resistance Is The...mechanism Of What We Call Ego, That Resisting Life Causes Suffering.

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

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

As Long As We're Caught Up In Always Looking For Certainty And Happiness, Rather Than Honoring The Taste And Smell And Quality Of Exactly What Is Happening, As Long As We're Always Running From Discomfort, We're Going To Be Caught In A Cycle Of Unhappiness And Discomfort, And We Will Feel Weaker And Weaker. This Way Of Seeing Helps Us Develop Inner Strength. And What's Especially Encouraging Is The View That Inner Strength Is Available To Us At Just The Moment When We Think That We've Hit The Bottom, When Things Are At Their Worst.

Lower Your Standards And Relax As It Is.

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.

Buddhism Itself Is All About Empowering Yourself, Not About Getting What You Want.

Getting What You Want

Compassion Starts With Making Friends With Ourselves.

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.

The Next Time You Encounter Fear, Consider Yourself Lucky. This Is Where The Courage Comes In. Usually We Think That Brave People Have No Fear. The Truth Is That They Are Intimate With Fear. When I Was First Married, My Husband Said I Was One Of The Bravest People He Knew. When I Asked Him Why, He Said Because I Was A Complete Coward But Went Ahead And Did Things Anyhow.

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

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.

Constantly Apply Cheerfulness, If For No Other Reason Than Because You Are On This Spiritual Path. Have A Sense Of Gratitude To Everything, Even Difficult Emotions, Because Of Their Potential To Wake You Up.

Learning How To Be Kind To Ourselves, Learning How To Respect Ourselves, Is Important. The Reason It's Important Is That, Fundamentally, When We Look Into Our Own Hearts And Begin To Discover What Is Confused And What Is Brilliant, What Is Bitter And What Is Sweet, It Isn't Just Ourselves That We're Discovering. We're Discovering The Universe.

The Greatest Obstacle To Connecting With Our Joy Is Resentment.

Since Death Is Certain And The Time Of Death Is Uncertain, What Is The Most Important Thing?

We Think That The Point Is To Pass The Test Or Overcome The Problem, But The Truth Is That Things Don't Really Get Solved. They Come Together And They Fall Apart. Then They Come Together Again And Fall Apart Again. It's Just Like That. The Healing Comes From Letting There Be Room For All Of This To Happen: Room For Grief, For Relief, For Misery, For Joy. (10)

The Truth Is That Good And Bad Coexist; Sour And Sweet Coexist. They Aren't Really Opposed To Each Other.

The Process Of Becoming Unstuck Requires Tremendous Bravery, Because Basically We Are Completely Changing Our Way Of Perceiving Reality.

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

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.

Every Small Problem Most Likely Stems From The Same Root As Large Problems, And So There Is No Need To Always Go Deep. One Can Use Anything For The Therapeutic Process And/if This Link Is Made.

Our Wisdom Is All Mixed Up With What We Call Our Neurosis. Our Brilliance, Our Juiciness, Our Spiciness, Is All Mixed Up With Our Craziness And Our Confusion, And Therefore It Doesn’t Do Any Good To Try To Get Rid Of Our So-called Negative Aspects, Because In That Process We Also Get Rid Of Our Basic Wonderfulness. We Can Lead Our Life So As To Become More Awake To Who We Are And What We’re Doing Rather Than Trying To Improve Or Change Or Get Rid Of Who We Are Or What We’re Doing. The Key Is To Wake Up, To Become More Alert, More Inquisitive And Curious About Ourselves.

Like All Explorers, We Are Drawn To Discover What's Out There Without Knowing Yet If We Have The Courage To Face It.

Buddhist Words Such As Compassion And Emptiness Don't Mean Much Until We Start Cultivating Our Innate Ability Simply To Be There With Pain With An Open Heart And The Willingness Not To Instantly Try To Get Ground Under Our Feet. For Instance, If What We're Feeling Is Rage, We Usually Assume That There Are Only Two Ways To Relate To It. One Is To Blame Others. Lay It All On Somebody Else; Drive All Blames Into Everyone Else. The Other Alternative Is To Feel Guilty About Our Rage And Blame Ourselves.

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

No One Ever Tells Us To Stop Running Away From Fear...the Advice We Usually Get Is To Sweeten It Up, Smooth It Over, Take A Pill, Or Distract Ourselves, But By All Means Make It Go Away. (5)

Somehow, In The Process Of Trying To Deny That Things Are Always Changing, We Lose Our Sense Of The Sacredness Of Life. We Tend To Forget That We Are Part Of The Natural Scheme Of Things.

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.

Only In An Open, Nonjudgmental Space Can We Acknowledge What We Are Feeling. Only In An Open Space Where We're Not All Caught Up In Our Own Version Of Reality Can We See And Hear And Feel Who Others Really Are, Which Allows Us To Be With Them And Communicate With Them Properly.

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.

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

Holding On To Anything Blocks Wisdom.

People Get Into A Heavy-duty Sin And Guilt Trip, Feeling That If Things Are Going Wrong, That Means That They Did Something Bad And They Are Being Punished. That's Not The Idea At All.

Every Moment Is Unique, Unknown, Completely Fresh.

We Think That By Protecting Ourselves From Suffering, We Are Being Kind To Ourselves. The Truth Is We Only Become More Fearful, More Hardened And More Alienated. We Experience Ourselves As Being Separate From The Whole. This Separateness Becomes Like A Prison For Us - A Prison That Restricts Us To Our Personal Hopes And Fears, And To Caring Only For The People Nearest To Us. Curiously Enough, If We Primarily Try To Shield Ourselves From Discomfort, We Suffer. Yet, When We Don't Close Off, When We Let Our Hearts Break, We Discover Our Kinship With All Beings.

The Happiness We Seek Cannot Be Found Through Grasping, Trying To Hold On To Things. It Cannot Be Found Through Getting Serious And Uptight About Wanting Things To Go In The Direction We Think Will Bring Happiness. We Are Always Taking Hold Of The Wrong End Of The Stick. The Point Is That The Happiness We Seek Is Already Here And It Will Be Found Through Relaxation And Letting Go Rather Than Through Struggle.

If You Work With Your Mind, Instead Of Trying To Change Everything On The Outside, That's How Your Temper Will Cool Down.

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.

Compassion For Others Begins With Kindness To Ourselves.

But All The Time Our Warmth And Brilliance Are Right Here. This Is Who We Really Are. We Are One Blink Of An Eye Away From Being Fully Awake.

That Nothing Is Static Or Fixed, That All Is Fleeting And Impermanent, Is The First Mark Of Existence. Everything Is In Process.

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.

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

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

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

Simply Be Present With Your Own Shifting Energies And With The Unpredictabilit Y Of Life As It Unfolds.

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.

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.

Without Giving Up Hope—that There’s Somewhere Better To Be, That There’s Someone Better To Be—we Will Never Relax With Where We Are Or Who We Are.

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

Inspirational Love

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.

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.

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

When We Start Out On A Spiritual Path We Often Have Ideals We Think We're Supposed To Live Up To. We Feel We're Supposed To Be Better Than We Are In Some Way. But With This Practice You Take Yourself Completely As You Are. Then Ironically, Taking In Pain - Breathing It In For Yourself And All Others In The Same Boat As You Are Heightens Your Awareness Of Exactly Where You're Stuck.

At Least Once A Year, I Imagine That I Am About To Die. Looking Back As Truthfully As I Can At My Entire Life, I Give Full Attention To The Things I Wish Hadn’t Occurred. Recognizing These Mistakes Honestly But Without Self-recrimination, I Try To Rejoice In The Innate Wisdom That Allows Me To See So Bravely, And I Feel Compassion For How I So Frequently Messed Up. Then I Can Go Forward. The Future Is Wide Open, And What I Do With It Is Up To Me.

Ego Is Like A Room Of Your Own, A Room With A View With The Temperature And The Smells And The Music That You Like. You Want It Your Own Way. You'd Just Like To Have A Little Peace, You'd Like To Have A Little Happiness, You Know, Just Gimme A Break.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Letting There Be Room For Not Knowing Is The Most Important Thing Of All. When There's A Big Disappointment, We Don't Know If That's The End Of The Story. It May Just Be The Beginning Of A Great Adventure. Life Is Like That. We Don't Know Anything. We Call Something Bad; We Call It Good. But Really We Just Don't Know.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Tonglen Is A Way For You To Be With People Who Need You - Beginning With Yourself.

Nothing In Its Essence Is One Way Or The Other.

Allow Situations In Your Life To Become Your Teacher.

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

Each Person's Life Is Like A Mandala - A Vast, Limitless Circle. We Stand In The Center Of Our Own Circle, And Everything We See, Hear And Think Forms The Mandala Of Our Life ... Everything That Shows Up In Your Mandala Is A Vehicle For Your Awakening.

Although We Have The Potential To Experience The Freedom Of A Butterfly, We Mysteriously Prefer The Small And Fearful Cocoon Of Ego.

The First Noble Truth Of The Buddha Is That When We Feel Suffering, It Doesn’t Mean That Something Is Wrong. What A Relief. Finally Somebody Told The Truth. Suffering Is Part Of Life, And We Don’t Have To Feel It’s Happening Because We Personally Made The Wrong Move. In Reality, However, When We Feel Suffering, We Think That Something Is Wrong. As Long As We’re Addicted To Hope, We Feel That We Can Tone Our Experience Down Or Liven It Up Or Change It Somehow, And We Continue To Suffer A Lot.

The Buddha Taught That We're Not Actually In Control, Which Is A Pretty Scary Idea. But When You Let Things Be As They Are, You Will Be A Much Happier, More Balanced, Compassionate Person.

Remember That This Is Not Something We Do Just Once Or Twice. Interrupting Our Destructive Habits And Awakening Our Heart Is The Work Of A Lifetime.

We Tend To Forget That We Are Part Of The Natural Scheme Of Things.

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.

In Tonglen Practice, When We See Or Feel Suffering, We  breathe In With The Notion Of Completely Feeling It, Accepting It, And Owning It. Then We Breathe Out, Radiating Compassion, Lovingkindness, Freshness - Anything That Encourages Relaxation And Openness.  So You're Training In Softening, Rather Than Tightening, Your Heart. In This Practice, It's Not Uncommon To Find Yourself Blocked, Because You Come Face To Face With Your Own Fear, Resistance, Or Whatever Your Personal "stuckness" Happens To Be At That Moment.

What You Do For Yourself, Any Gesture Of Kindness, Any Gesture Of Gentleness, Any Gesture Of Honesty And Clear Seeing Toward Yourself, Will Affect How You Experience Your World. In Fact, It Will Transform How You Experience The World. What You Do For Yourself, You’re Doing For Others, And What You Do For Others, You’re Doing For Yourself.

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.

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.

We Insist On Being Someone, With A Capital S. We Get Security From Defining Ourselves As Worthless Or Worthy, Superior Or Inferior. We Waste Precious Time Exaggerating Or Romanticizing Or Belittling Ourselves With A Complacent Surety That Yes, That’s Who We Are. We Mistake The Openness Of Our Being—the Inherent Wonder And Surprise Of Each Moment—for A Solid, Irrefutable Self. Because Of This Misunderstanding, We Suffer.

Hell Is Just Resistance To Life.

Blaming Is A Way To Protect Your Heart, Trying To Protect What Is Soft And Open And Tender In Yourself.

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

Obstacles Are Our Friends: They Teach Us Where We're Stuck.

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.

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.

Fear Itself Is The Vanguard Of Wisdom

We Can Stop Thinking That Good Practice Is When It’s Smooth And Calm, And Bad Practice Is When It’s Rough And Dark. If We Can Hold It All In Our Hearts, Then We Can Make A Proper Cup Of Tea.

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.

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

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

As Buddhism Moved To The West, One Of The Big Characteristics Was The Strong Place Of Women. That Didn't Exist In The Countries Of Origin. It's Just A Sign Of Our Culture.

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

Treat Yourself As Your Own Beloved Child.

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.

All The Terrible Things We Do To Ourselves And Others From Alcoholism To Character Assignation To Abuse To Murder Come From One Cause: The Inability To Stay Present With An Uncomfortable Feeling In The Body And Seek Short-term Relief.

It Becomes Increasingly Clear That We Won’t Be Free Of Self-destructive Patterns Unless We Develop A Compassionate Understanding Of What They Are.

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.

Welcome The Present Moment As If You Had Invited It. Why? Because It Is All We Ever Have.

We See How Beautiful And Wonderful And Amazing Things Are, And We See How Caught Up We Are. It Isn’t That One Is The Bad Part And One Is The Good Part, But That It’s A Kind Of Interesting, Smelly, Rich, Fertile Mess Of Stuff. When It’s All Mixed Up Together, It’s Us: Humanness.

True Compassion Does Not Come From Wanting To Help Out Those Less Fortunate Than Ourselves But From Realizing Our Kinship With All Beings.

Times Are Difficult Globally; Awakening Is No Longer A Luxury Or An Ideal. It’s Becoming Critical. We Don’t Need To Add More Depression, More Discouragement, Or More Anger To What’s Already Here. It’s Becoming Essential That We Learn How To Relate Sanely With Difficult Times. The Earth Seems To Be Beseeching Us To Connect With Joy And Discover Our Innermost Essence. This Is The Best Way That We Can Benefit Others.

We Cannot Be Present And Run Our Story-line At The Same Time.

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.

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.

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.

Discomfort Of Any Kind Becomes The Basis For Practice. We Breathe In Knowing Our Pain Is Shared.

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

Everything Is Fresh, The Essence Of Realization.

So Even If The Hot Loneliness Is There, And For 1.6 Seconds We Sit With That Restlessness When Yesterday We Couldn't Sit For Even One, That's The Journey Of The Warrior. (68)

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

We Can Begin To Open Our Hearts To Others When We Have No Hope Of Getting Anything Back. We Just Do It For Its Own Sake.

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

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

Wholeheartedly Do What It Takes To Awaken Your Clear-seeing Intelligence, But One Day At A Time, One Moment At A Time. If We Live That Way, We Will Benefit This Earth.

One Day At A Time

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.

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.

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

According To The Buddhist Belief, You Can Go On And On Indefinitely, So You See Your Life As Just A Brief Moment In Time.

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

The Root Of Compassion, Is Compassion For Oneself.

Cool Loneliness Allows Us To Look Honestly And Without Aggressionat Our Own Minds. We Can Gradually Drop Our Ideals Of Who We Think Weought To Be, Or Who We Think We Want To Be, Or Who We Think Other Peoplethink We Want To Be Or Ought To Be. We Give It Up And Just Look Directlywith Compassion And Humor At Who We Are. Then Loneliness Is No Threat Andheartache, No Punishment.

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.

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

We Hold On To Hope, And Hope Robs Us Of The Present Moment.

Generosity Is An Activity That Loosens Us Up. By Offering Whatever We Can - A Dollar, A Flower, A Word Of Encouragement - We Are Training In Letting Go.

Few Of Us Are Satisfied With Retreating From The World And Just Working On Ourselves. We Want Our Training To Manifest And To Be Of Benefit. The Bodhisattva-warrior, Therefore, Makes A Vow To Wake Up Not Just For Himself But For The Welfare Of All Beings.

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

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.

It Has A Lot To Do With Developing Patience, Not With The Check-out Person So Much, But With Your Own Pain That Arises, The Rawness And The Vulnerability, And Sending Some Kind Of Warmth And Love To That Rawness And Soreness. I Think That's How We Have To Practice.

When Things Are Shaky And Nothing Is Working, We Might Realize That We Are On The Verge Of Something. We Might Realize That This Is A Very Vulnerable And Tender Place, And That Tenderness Can Go Either Way. We Can Shut Down And Feel Resentful Or We Can Touch In On That Throbbing Quality. (9)

A Heartfelt Sense Of Aspiring Cuts Through Negativity About Yourself; It Cuts Through The Heavy Trips You Lay On Yourself.

Opening To The World Begins To Benefit Ourselves And Others Simultaneously. The More We Relate With Others, The More Quickly We Discover Where We're Blocked.

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.

The Best Spiritual Instruction Is When You Wake Up In The Morning And Say, 'i Wonder What's Going To Happen Today.' And Then Carry That Kind Of Curiosity Through Your Life.

This Is The Tendency Of All Living Things: To Avoid Pain And To Cling To Pleasure.

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

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

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

In Meditation, You Learn How To Get Out Of Your Own Way Long Enough For There To Be Room For Your Wisdom To Manifest

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.

The Sad Part Is That All We're Trying To Do Is Not Feel That Underlying Uneasiness. The Sadder Part Is That We Proceed In Such A Way That The Uneasiness Only Gets Worse. The Message Here Is That The Only Way To Ease Our Pain Is To Experience It Fully. Learn To Stay. Learn To Stay With Uneasiness, Learn To Stay With The Tightening, Learn To Stay With The Itch And Urge Of Shenpa, So That The Habitual Chain Reaction Doesn't Continue To Rule Our Lives, And The Patterns That We Consider Unhelpful Don't Keep Getting Stronger As The Days And Months And Years Go By.

Whatever Happens In Your Life, Joyful Or Painful, Do Not Be Swept Away By Reactivity. Be Patient With Yourself And Don't Lose Your Sense Of Perspective.

Meditation Practice Isn't About Trying To Throw Ourselves Away And Become Something Better. It's About Befriending Who We Are Already.

Meditation And Yoga

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.

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.

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

Use What Seems Like Poison As Medicine. Use Your Personal Suffering As The Path To Compassion For All Beings.

My Moods Are Continuously Shifting Like The Weather.

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

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.

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