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If You Look Back At History Or You Look At Any Place In The World Where Religious Groups Or Ethnic Groups Or Racial Groups Or Political Groups Are Killing Each Other, Or Families Have Been Feuding For Years And Years, You Can See - Because You're Not Particularly Invested In That Particular Argument - That There Will Never Be Peace Until Somebody Softens What Is Rigid In Their Heart.

-Pema Chodron

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If You Look Back

Pema Chodron

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If You Look Back At History Or You Look At Any Place In The World Where Religious Groups Or Ethnic Groups Or Racial Groups Or Political Groups Are Killing Each Other, Or Families Have Been Feuding For Years And Years, You Can See - Because You're Not Particularly Invested In That Particular Argument - That There Will Never Be Peace Until Somebody Softens What Is Rigid In Their Heart.

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

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.

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

What's Encouraging About Meditation Is That, Even If We Shut Down, We Can No Longer Shut Down In Ignorance. We See Very Clearly That We're Closing Off. That In Itself Begins To Illuminate The Darkness Of Ignorance.

Meditation Practice

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

One Of The Deepest Habitual Patterns That We Have Is To Feel That Now Is Not Enough.

Compassion For Others Begins With Kindness To Ourselves.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My Moods Are Continuously Shifting Like The Weather.

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

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

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.

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.

Some Of Us Can Accept Others Right Where They Are A Lot More Easily Than We Can Accept Ourselves. We Feel That Compassion Is Reserved For Someone Else, And It Never Occurs To Us To Feel It For Ourselves. My Experience Is That By Practicing Without 'shoulds,' We Gradually Discover Our Wakefulness And Our Confidence. Gradually, Without Any Agenda Except To Be Honest And Kind, We Assume Responsibility For Being Here In This Unpredictable World, In This Unique Moment, In This Precious Human Body.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Unlimited Potential

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.

Meditation Isn't Really About Getting Rid Of Thoughts, It's About Changing The Pattern Of Grasping On To Things, Which In Our Everyday Experience Is Our Thoughts.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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)

Next, Feel Your Heart, Literally Placing Your Hand On Your Chest If You Find That Helpful. This Is A Way Of Accepting Yourself Just As You Are In That Moment, A Way Of Saying, "this Is My Experience Right Now, And It's Okay." Then Go Into The Next Moment Without Any Agenda.

In The Most Ordinary Terms, Egolessness Is A Flexible Identity. It Manifests As Inquisitiveness , As Adaptability, As Humor, As Playfulness. It Is Our Capacity To Relax With Not Knowing, Not Figuring Everything Out, With Not Being At All Sure Who We Are, Or Who Anyone Else Is, Either.

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.

We Practice To Liberate Ourselves From A Burden.

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.

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.

A Thoroughly Good Relationship With Ourselves Results In Being Still, Which Doesn't Mean We Don't Run And Jump And Dance About. It Means There's No Compulsiveness. We Don't Overwork, Overeat, Oversmoke, Overseduce. In Short, We Begin To Stop Causing Harm.

Good Relationship

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Every Moment Is Unique, Unknown, Completely Fresh.

Being Satisfied With What We Already Have Is A Magical Golden Key To Being Alive In A Full, Unrestricted, And Inspired Way.

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

Opening Our Hearts

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.

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.

Ego Could Be Defined As Whatever Covers Up Basic Goodness. From An Experiential Point Of View, What Is Ego Covering Up? It's Covering Up Our Experience Of Just Being Here, Just Fully Being Where We Are, So That We Can Relate With The Immediacy Of Our Experience. Egolessness Is A State Of Mind That Has Complete Confidence In The Sacredness Of The World. It Is Unconditional Well Being, Unconditional Joy That Includes All The Different Qualities Of Our Experience.

Lower Your Standards And Relax As It Is.

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?

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.

We Spend All Our Energy And Waste Our Lives Trying To Re-create These Zones Of Safety, Which Are Always Falling Apart. That's The Essence Of Samsara - The Cycle Of Suffering That Comes From Continuing To Seek Happiness In All The Wrong Places.

Fear Itself Is The Vanguard Of Wisdom

Feeling Irritated, Restless, Afraid, And Hopeless Is A Reminder To Listen More Carefully.

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.

The Real Thing That We Renounce Is The Tenacious Hope That We Could Be Saved From Being Who We Are.

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

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

Holding On To Anything Blocks Wisdom.

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

The Greatest Obstacle To Connecting With Our Joy Is Resentment.

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.

The Buddha Taught That Flexibility And Openness Bring Strength And That Running From Groundlessness Weakens Us And Brings Pain. But Do We Understand That Becoming Familiar With The Running Away Is The Key? Openness Doesn't Come From Resisting Our Fears But From Getting To Know Them Well

The Wisdom, The Strength, The Confidence - The Awakened Heart And Mind Are Always Accessible -- Here, Now, Always.

In Practicing Meditation, We're Not Trying To Live Up To Some Kind Of Ideal -- Quite The Opposite. We're Just Being With Our Experience, Whatever It Is.

Mindfulness Is Loving All The Details Of Our Lives, And Awareness Is The Natural Thing That Happens: Life Begins To Open Up, And You Realize That You're Always Standing At The Center Of The World.

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

Our True Nature Is Like A Precious Jewel: Although It May Be Temporarily Buried In Mud, It Remains Completely Brilliant And Unaffected. We Simply Have To Uncover It.

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.

Compassion Becomes Real When We Recognize Our Shared Humanity.

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

The More Neurosis The More Wisdom.

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

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?

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.

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 We Knew That Tonight We Were Going To Go Blind, We Would Take A Long, Last Real Look At Every Blade Of Grass, Every Cloud Formation, Every Speck Of Dust, Every Rainbow, Raindrop-everything.

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

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.

There Are Many Changes In The Weather Of A Day.

We Already Have Everything We Need. There Is No Need For Self-improvement. All These Trips That We Lay On Ourselves—the Heavy-duty Fearing That We’re Bad And Hoping That We’re Good, The Identities That We So Dearly Cling To, The Rage, The Jealousy And The Addictions Of All Kinds—never Touch Our Basic Wealth. They Are Like Clouds That Temporarily Block The Sun. 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.

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.

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 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.

The Root Of Suffering Is Resisting The Certainty That No Matter What The Circumstances, Uncertainty Is All We Truly Have.

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

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

At Some Point, We Realize That What We Do For Ourselves Benefits Others, And What We Do For Others Benefits Us.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Fear Is A Natural Reaction To Moving Closer To The Truth

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

Inspirational Love

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Follow Your Heart

When We Scratch The Wound And Give Into Our Addictions We Do Not Allow The Wound To Heal.

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

Difficult People Are The Greatest Teachers.

Suffering Begins To Dissolve When We Can Question The Belief Or The Hope That There's Anywhere To Hide.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Hope And Fear Come From Feeling That We Lack Something; They Come From A Sense Of Poverty. We Can’t Simply Relax With Ourselves. We Hold On To Hope, And Hope Robs Us Of The Present Moment. We Feel That Someone Else Knows What Is Going On, But That There Is Something Missing In Us, And Therefore Something Is Lacking In Our World.

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.

Never Underestimate The Desire To Bolt.

Never Underestimate

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.

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.

Let Your Curiosity Be Greater Than Your Fear.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Whatever Is Happening Is The Path To Enlightenment.

Path To Enlightenment

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

Allow Situations In Your Life To Become Your Teacher.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

If You Ask Why We Meditate, I Would Say It's So We Can Become More Flexible And Tolerant 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. That We Take Ourselves So Seriously, That We Are So Absurdly Important In Our Own Minds, Is A Problem For Us. We Feel Justified In Being Annoyed With Everything. We Feel Justified In Denigrating Ourselves Or In Feeling That We Are More Clever Than Other People. Self-importance Hurts Us, Limiting Us To The Narrow World Of Our Likes And Dislikes. We End Up Bored To Death With Ourselves And Our World. We End Up Never Satisfied.

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

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

To Be Fully Alive, Fully Human, And Completely Awake Is To Be Continually Thrown Out Of The Nest.

Holding On To Beliefs Limits Our Experience Of Life. That Doesn't Mean That Beliefs Or Ideas Or Thinking Is A Problem; The Stubborn Attitude Of Having To Have Things Be A Particular Way, Grasping On To Our Beliefs And Thoughts, All These Cause The Problems. To Put It Simply, Using Your Belief System This Way Creates A Situation In Which You Choose To Be Blind Instead Of Being Able To See, To Be Deaf Instead Of Being Able To Hear, To Be Dead Rather Than Alive, Asleep Rather Than Awake.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Over Time, As The Thinking Mind Begins To Settle [through The Practice Of Meditation], We’ll Start To See Our Patterns And Habits Far More Clearly. Sometimes This Can Be A Painful Experience. 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. By Cultivating Nonjudgmental Openness To Ourselves And To Whatever Arises, To Our Surprise And Delight We Will Find Ourselves Genuinely Welcoming The Never-pin-downable Quality Of Life, Experiencing It As A Friend, A Teacher, And A Support, And No Longer As An Enemy.

Painful Experiences

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

The Essence Of Bravery Is Being Without Self-deception.

I Equate Ego With Trying To Figure Everything Out Instead Of Going With The Flow. That Closes Your Heart And Your Mind To The Person Or Situation That's Right In Front Of You, And You Miss So Much.

At The Root Of All The Harm We Cause Is Ignorance.

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.

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

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

When Resistance Is Gone, The Demons Are Gone.

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.

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.

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

When We Resist Change, It’s Called Suffering. But When We Can Completely Let Go And Not Struggle Against It, When We Can Embrace The Groundlessness Of Our Situation And Relax Into It’s Dynamic Quality, That’s Called Enlightenment

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

The Truth You Believe And Cling To Makes You Unavailable To Hear Anything New.

Life's Work Is To Wake Up, To Let The Things That Enter Your Life Wake You Up Rather Than Put You To Sleep.

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.

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.

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!

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

The Root Of Compassion, Is Compassion For Oneself.

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.

Rather Than Becoming More Relaxed, You Start Pulling Down The Shades And Locking The Door. When You Do Go Out, You Find The Experience More And More Unsettling And Disagreeable. You Become Touchier, More Fearful, More Irritable Than Ever. The More You Try To Get It Your Way, The Less You Feel At Home.

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.

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Feisal Abdul Rauf

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