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I Dedicate The Merit Of The Occasion To All Beings. This Gesture Of Universal Friendship Has Been Likened To A Drop Of Fresh Spring Water. If We Put It On A Rock In The Sunshine, It Will Soon Evaporate. If We Put It In The Ocean, However, It Will Never Be Lost. Thus The Wish Is Made That We Not Keep The Teachings To Ourselves But To Use Them To Benefit Others.

-Pema Chodron

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I Dedicate The Merit

Pema Chodron

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I Dedicate The Merit Of The Occasion To All Beings. This Gesture Of Universal Friendship Has Been Likened To A Drop Of Fresh Spring Water. If We Put It On A Rock In The Sunshine, It Will Soon Evaporate. If We Put It In The Ocean, However, It Will Never Be Lost. Thus The Wish Is Made That We Not Keep The Teachings To Ourselves But To Use Them To Benefit Others.

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What You Do For Yourself, You're Doing For Others, And What You Do For Others, You're Doing For Yourself.

Doing For Others

We Can Drop The Fundamental Hope That There Is A Better "me" Who One Day Will Emerge. We Can't Just Jump Over Ourselves As If We Were Not There.

When We Are Willing To Stay Even A Moment With Uncomfortable Energy, We Gradually Learn Not To Fear It.

When You Open The Door And Invite In All Sentient Beings As Your Guests, You Have To Drop Your Agenda.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Be Kinder To Yourself. And Then Let Your Kindness Flood The World.

Use Your Life To Wake You Up.

Meditation Is Not A Matter Of Trying To Achieve Ecstasy, Spiritual Bliss, Or Tranquillity, Nor Is It Attempting To Become A Better Person. It Is Simply The Creation Of A Space In Which We Are Able To Expose And Undo Our Neurotic Games, Our Self-deceptions, Our Hidden Fears And Hopes.

Meditation Practice

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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. The Idea Of Karma Is That You Continually Get The Teachings That You Need To Open Your Heart. To The Degree That You Didn't Understand In The Past How To Stop Protecting Your Soft Spot, How To Stop Armoring Your Heart, You're Given This Gift Of Teachings In The Form Of Your Life, To Give You Everything You Need To Open Further.

Feel The Feelings And Drop The Story.

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

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

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.

The Treasure We Seek Requires No Lengthy Expedition, No Expensive Equipment, No Superior Aptitude Or Special Company. All We Lack Is The Willingness To Imagine That We Already Have Everything We Need. The Only Thing Missing Is Our Consent To Be Where We Are.

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

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.

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

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

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

Our Neurosis And Our Wisdom Are Made Out Of The Same Material. If You Throw Out Your Neurosis, You Also Throw Out Your Wisdom.

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.

Clarity And Decisiveness Come From The Willingness To Slow Down, To Listen To And Look At What’s Happening.

Fear Itself Is The Vanguard Of Wisdom

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.

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

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.

Compassion Is Not A Relationship Between The Healer And The Wounded. It’s A Relationship Between Equals.

Sticking With That Uncertainty, Getting The Knack Of Relaxing In The Midst Of Chaos, Learning Not To Panic-this Is The Spiritual Path.

Hell Is Just Resistance To Life.

None Of Us Is Ever Ok, But We All Get Through Everything Just Fine.

You Build Inner Strength Through Embracing The Totality Of Your Experience, Both The Delightful Parts And The Difficult Parts.

When Things Are Shaky And Nothing Is Working, We Might Realize That We Are On The Verge Of Something.

Meditation Practice Isn’t About Trying To Throw Ourselves Away And Become Something Better. It’s About Befriending Who We Are Already. The Ground Of Practice Is You Or Me Or Whoever We Are Right Now, Just As We Are. That’s The Ground, That’s What We Study, That’s What We Come To Know With Tremendous Curiosity And Interest.

Meditation Practice

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Treat Yourself As Your Own Beloved Child.

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

We Are Undoing A Pattern... It's The Human Pattern: We Project Onto The World A Zillion Possibilities Of Attaining Resolution.

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

Tonglen Practice Begins To Dissolve The Illusion That Each Of Us Is Alone With This Personal Suffering That No One Else Can Understand.

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

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.

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.

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.

Compassion Is Not A Relationship Between The Healer And The Wounded. It's A Relationship Between Equals. Only When We Know Our Own Darkness Well Can We Be Present With The Darkness Of Others. Compassion Becomes Real When We Recognize Our Shared Humanity.

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.

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.

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 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.

Whatever Is Happening Is The Path To Enlightenment.

Path To Enlightenment

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

The Root Of Compassion, Is Compassion For Oneself.

When You Open Yourself To The Continually Changing, Impermanent, Dynamic Nature Of Your Own Being And Of Reality, You Increase Your Capacity To Love And Care About Other People And Your Capacity To Not Be Afraid. You're Able To Keep Your Eyes Open, Your Heart Open, And Your Mind Open. And You Notice When You Get Caught Up In Prejudice, Bias, And Aggression. You Develop An Enthusiasm For No Longer Watering Those Negative Seeds, From Now Until The Day You Die. And, You Begin To Think Of Your Life As Offering Endless Opportunities To Start To Do Things Differently.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

One Very Powerful And Effective Way To Work With This Tendency To Push Away Pain And Hold On To Pleasure Is The Practice Of Tonglen.  in Tonglen Practice, When We See Or Feel Suffering, We  breathe In With The Notion Of Completely Feeling It, Accepting It, And Owning It.

Enlightenment Is A Direct Experience With Reality.

When You Refrain From Habitual Thoughts And Behavior, The Uncomfortable Feelings Will Still Be There. They Don’t Magically Disappear. Over The Years, I’ve Come To Call Resting With The Discomfort “the Detox Period,” Because When You Don’t Act On Your Habitual Patterns, It’s Like Giving Up An Addiction. You’re Left With The Feelings You Were Trying To Escape. The Practice Is To Make A Wholehearted Relationship With That

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.

The Future Is The Result Of What We Do Right Now.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Never Underestimate The Power Of Compassionately Recognizing What's Going On.

Never Underestimate

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.

If You Have Rage And Righteously Act It Out And Blame It All On Others, It's Really You Who Suffers. The Other People And The Environment Suffer Also, But You Suffer More Because You're Being Eaten Up Inside With Rage, Causing You To Hate Yourself More And More

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

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.

The First Noble Truth Of The Buddha Is That When We Feel Suffering, It Doesn’t Mean That Something Is Wrong. What A Relief.

Allow Situations In Your Life To Become Your Teacher.

Only To The Extent That We Expose Ourselves Over And Over To Annihilation Can That Which Is Indestructible In Us Be Found.

Pain Is Not A Punishment; Pleasure Is Not A Reward.

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.

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.

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.

Hold The Sadness And Pain Of Samsara [suffering, Confusion] In Your Heart And At The Same Time The Power And Vision Of The Great Eastern Sun [fundamental Awake Human Nature]. Then The Warrior [brave Enough To Look At & Work With Reality] Can Make A Proper Cup Of Tea.

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

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.

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

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.

Searching For Happiness Prevents Us From Ever Finding It.

Searching For Happiness

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

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.

One Of The Main Discoveries Of Meditation Is Seeing How We Continually Run Away From The Present Moment, How We Avoid Being Here Just As We Are. That’s Not Considered To Be A Problem. The Point Is To See It.

The Trick Is To Keep Exploring And Not Bail Out, Even When We Find Out That Something Is Not What We Thought. That's What We're Going To Discover Again And Again And Again. Nothing Is What We Thought. I Can Say That With Great Confidence. Emptiness Is Not What We Thought. Neither Is Mindfulness Or Fear. Compassion––not What We Thought. Love. Buddha Nature. Courage. These Are Code Words For Things We Don't Know In Our Minds, But Any Of Us Could Experience Them. These Are Words That Point To What Life Really Is When We Let Things Fall Apart And Let Ourselves Be Nailed To The Present Moment.

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

We Can Gradually Drop Our Ideals Of Who We Think We Ought To Be, Or Who We Think We Want To Be, Or Who We Think Other People Think We Want To Be Or Ought To Be.

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

Inspirational Love

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.

Are You Experiencing Restlessness? Stay! Are Fear And Loathing Out Of Control? Stay! Aching Knees And Throbbing Back? Stay! What's For Lunch? Stay! I Can't Stand This Another Minute! Stay!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Instead Of Asking Ourselves, 'how Can I Find Security And Happiness?' We Could Ask Ourselves, 'can I Touch The Center Of My Pain? Can I Sit With Suffering, Both Yours And Mine, Without Trying To Make It Go Away? Can I Stay Present To The Ache Of Loss Or Disgrace-disapp Ointment In All Its Many Forms-and Let It Open Me?' This Is The Trick.

The Next Time You Lose Heart And You Can’t Bear To Experience What You’re Feeling, You Might Recall This Instruction: Change The Way You See It And Lean In. Instead Of Blaming Our Discomfort On Outer Circumstances Or On Our Own Weakness, We Can Choose To Stay Present And Awake To Our Experience, Not Rejecting It, Not Grasping It, Not Buying The Stories That We Relentlessly Tell Ourselves. This Is Priceless Advice That Addresses The True Cause Of Suffering—yours, Mine, And That Of All Living Beings.

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

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.

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

Opening Our Hearts

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.

When We Protect Ourselves So We Won't Feel Pain, That Protection Becomes Like Armor, Like Armor That Imprisons The Softness Of Of The Heart.

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

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

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.

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

If We're Willing To Give Up Hope That Insecurity And Pain Can Be Eliminated, Then We Can Have The Courage To Relax With The Groundlessness Of Our Situation. This Is The First Step On The Path.

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

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

Lean Into The Sharp Points And Fully Experience Them. The Essence Of Bravery Is Being Without Self-deception. Wisdom Is Inherent In (understanding) Emotions.

When You Begin To Touch Your Heart Or Let Your Heart Be Touched, You Begin To Discover That It's Bottomless, That It Doesn't Have Any Resolution, That This Heart Is Huge, Vast, And Limitless. You Begin To Discover How Much Warmth And Gentleness Is There, As Well As How Much Space.

Softening What Is Rigid In Our Hearts.

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

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.

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.

It's Also Helpful To Realize That This Very Body That We Have, That's Sitting Right Here Right Now... With Its Aches And It Pleasures... Is Exactly What We Need To Be Fully Human, Fully Awake, Fully Alive.

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.

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.

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

Better To Join In With Humanity Than To Set Ourselves Apart.

The Idea Is To Develop Sympathy For Your Own Confusion.

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

If It's Painful, You Become Willing Not Just To Endure It But Also To Let It Awaken Your Heart And Soften You. You Learn To Embrace It.

The More Neurosis The More Wisdom.

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.

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.

Everything Is Fresh, The Essence Of Realization.

The Idea Of Karma Is That You Continually Get The Teaching That You Need To Open Your Heart.

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

Fear Is A Natural Reaction To Moving Closer To The Truth

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

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

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.

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

Life Is Like That. We Don't Know Anything. We Call Something Bad; We Call It Good. But Really We Just Don't Know.

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

The Biggest Obstacle To Taking A Bigger Perspective On Life Is That Our Emotions Capture And Blind Us.

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

By Becoming Intimate With How We Close Down And How We Open Up, We Awaken Our Unlimited Potential.

Unlimited Potential

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

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.

The Essence Of Bravery Is Being Without Self-deception.

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.

We Sow The Seeds Of Our Future Hells Or Happiness By The Way We Open Or Close Our Minds Right Now.

If We Run A Hundred Miles An Hour To The Other End Of The Continent In Order To Get Away From The Obstacle, We Find The Very Same Problem Waiting For Us When We Arrive. It Just Keeps Returning With New Names, Forms, Manifestations Until We Learn Whatever It Has To Teach Us About Where We Are Separating Ourselves From Reality, How We Are Pulling Back Instead Of Opening Up, Closing Down Instead Of Allowing Ourselves To Experience Fully Whatever We Encounter, Without Hesitating Or Retreating Into Ourselves.

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

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.

Meditation Is Not About Getting Out Of Ourselves Or Achieving Something Better. It Is About Getting In Touch With What You Already Are.

Something Better

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Compassion For Others Begins With Kindness To Ourselves.

Once You Create A Self-justifying Storyline, Your Emotional Entrapment Within It Quadruples.

As Human Beings, Not Only Do We Seek Resolution, But We Also Feel That We Deserve Resolution. However, Not Only Do We Not Deserve Resolution, We Suffer From Resolution. We Don't Deserve Resolution; We Deserve Something Better Than That. We Deserve Our Birthright, Which Is The Middle Way, An Open State Of Mind That Can Relax With Paradox And Ambiguity.

Usually We Regard Loneliness As An Enemy. Heartache Is Not Something We Choose To Invite In. It's Restless And Pregnant And Hot With The Desire To Escape And Find Something Or Someone To Keep Us Company. When We Can Rest In The Middle, We Begin To Have A Nonthreatening Relationship With Loneliness, A Relaxing And Cooling Loneliness That Completely Turns Our Usual Fearful Patterns Upside Down.

The More We Witness Our Emotional Reactions And Understand How They Work, The Easier It Is To Refrain.

Welcome The Present Moment As If You Had Invited It. It Is All We Ever Have, So We Night As Well Work With It Rather Than Struggling Against It. We Might As Well Make It Our Friend And Teacher Rather Than Our Enemy.

It's Said That When We Die, The Four Elements - Earth, Air, Fire And Water - Dissolve One By One, Each Into The Other, And Finally Just Dissolve Into Space. But While We're Living, We Share The Energy That Makes Everything, From A Blade Of Grass To An Elephant, Grow And Live And Then Inevitably Wear Out And Die. This Energy, This Life Force, Creates The Whole World.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Underneath Our Ordinary Lives, Underneath All The Talking We Do, All The Moving We Do, All The Thoughts In Our Minds, There's A Fundamental Groundlessness. It's There Bubbling Along All The Time. We Experience It As Restlessness And Edginess. We Experience It As Fear. It Motivates Passion, Aggression, Ignorance, Jealousy, And Pride, But We Never Get Down To The Essence Of It.

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.

To Live Is To Be Willing To Die Over And Over Again.

Patience Takes Courage. It Is Not An Ideal State Of Calm. In Fact, When We Practice Patience We Will See Our Agitation Far More Clearly.

You Are The Sky. Everything Else - It’s Just The Weather.

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 Difference Between Theism And Nontheism Is Not Whether One Does Or Does Not Believe In God. . . Theism Is A Deep-seated Conviction That There's Some Hand To Hold: If We Just Do The Right Things, Someone Will Appreciate Us And Take Care Of Us. . . Nontheism Is Relaxing With The Ambiguity And Uncertainty Of The Present Moment Without Reaching For Anything To Protect Ourselves.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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