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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?

-Pema Chodron

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Ordinarily We Are Swept

Pema Chodron

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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?

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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

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

Opening Our Hearts

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.

Resisting What Is Happening Is A Major Cause Of Suffering.

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.

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.

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

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.

Things Become Clear When There Is No Escape.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Feel The Wounded Heart That's Underneath The Addiction, Self-loathing, Or Anger.

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

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.

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

Searching For Happiness Prevents Us From Ever Finding It.

Searching For Happiness

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

The More Neurosis The More Wisdom.

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.

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

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.

Holding On To Anything Blocks Wisdom.

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.

Most Of Us Do Not Take These Situations As Teachings. We Automatically Hate Them. We Run Like Crazy. We Use All Kinds Of Ways To Escape - All Addictions Stem From This Moment When We Meet Our Edge And We Just Can't Stand It. We Feel We Have To Soften It, Pad It With Something, And We Become Addicted To Whatever It Is That Seems To Ease The Pain.

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.

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.

Trying To Run Away Is Never The Answer To Being A Fully Human. Running Away From The Immediacy Of Our Experience Is Like Preferring Death To Life.

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

Compassion For Others Begins With Kindness To Ourselves.

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

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.

Whatever Is Happening Is The Path To Enlightenment.

Path To Enlightenment

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.

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 Are One Blink Of An Eye Away From Being Fully Awake

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

Treat Yourself As Your Own Beloved Child.

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

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.

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.

Every Day Is A New Opportunity To Work With What You Have Inside Toward Enlightenment.

New Opportunity

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.

In Order To Have Compassion For Others, We Have To Have Compassion For Ourselves.

Compassion For Others

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

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.

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

The 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.

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

Allow Situations In Your Life To Become Your Teacher.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

My Moods Are Continuously Shifting Like The Weather.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

It's Important To Remember, When We're Out There Aggressively Working For Reform, That, Even If Our Particular Issue Doesn't Get Resolved, We Are Adding Peace To The World. We Have To Do Our Best And At The Same Time Give Up All Hope Of Fruition.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Unlimited Potential

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

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

Hell Is Just Resistance To Life.

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.

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.

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.

Patience Is Not Learned In Safety.

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

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.

I'm Here To Tell You That The Path To Peace Is Right There, When You Want To Get Away.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

To Lead A Life That Goes Beyond Pettiness And Prejudice And Always Wanting To Make Sure That Everything Turns Out On Our Own Terms, To Lead A More Passionate, Full, And Delightful Life Than That, We Must Realize That We Can Endure A Lot Of Pain And Pleasure For The Sake Of Finding Out Who We Are And What This World Is...

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

There Are Many Changes In The Weather Of A Day.

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

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.

When Resistance Is Gone, The Demons Are Gone.

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

Uncertainty Of Life

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.

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

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.

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

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.

When People Are Hurting, What They Really Need Is Someone Who Is Fully There For Them - Not Someone Who Is Condescending Or Officious. The Only Way For You To Be There For Them Is By Facing Your Fear Or Anger, Whatever Feelings Cause You To Shut Down.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The Approach Is That The Best Way To Use Unwanted Circumstances On The Path Of Enlightenment Is Not To Resist But To Lean Into Them.

This Very Moment Is The Perfect Teacher, And, Lucky For Us, It's With Us Wherever We Go.

Loving Kindness Towards Ourselves Doesn't Mean Getting Rid Of Anything. It Means We Can Still Be Crazy After All These Years. We Can Still Be Angry After All These Years. We Can Still Be Timid Or Jealous Or Full Of Feelings Of Unworthiness. The Point Is Not To Try To Throw Ourselves Away And Become Something Better. It's About Befriending Who We Are Already.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Fear Itself Is The Vanguard Of Wisdom

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.

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.

You Could Begin To Notice Whenever You Find Yourself Blaming Others Or Justifying Yourself. If You Spent The Rest Of Your Life Just Noticing That And Letting It Be A Way To Uncover The Silliness Of The Human Condition-the Tragic Yet Comic Drama That We All Continually Buy Into-you Could Develop A Lot Of Wisdom And A Lot Of Kindness As Well As A Great Sense Of Humor.

Finding Yourself

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

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.

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.

We Are Not Human Beings Having A Spiritual Experience, We Are Spiritual Beings Having A Human Experience And Infinite Love Is The Only Truth; Everything Else Is An Illusion.

Positive Thinking

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.

As Buddhism Moved From One Culture To Another, It Always Adapted.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The Essence Of Bravery Is Being Without Self-deception.

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.

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

Lower Your Standards And Relax As It Is.

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... The Whole Right And Wrong Business Closes Us Down And Makes Our World Smaller.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Nothing In Its Essence Is One Way Or The Other.

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

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

Live In The Moment

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

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

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.

Being Preoccupied With Our Self-image Is Like Being Deaf And Blind. It's Like Standing In The Middle Of A Vast Field Of Wildflowers With A Black Hood Over Our Heads. It's Like Coming Upon A Tree Of Singing Birds While Wearing Earplugs.

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.

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.

Ordinarily We Are Swept Away By Habitual Momentum. We Don't Interrupt Our Patterns Even Slightly. With Practice, However, We Learn To Stay With A Broken Heart, With A Nameless Fear, With The Desire For Revenge. 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.

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

Walking Meditation

Impermanence Is A Principle Of Harmony. When We Don't Struggle Against It, We Are In Harmony With Reality.

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.

We Could Learn To Stop When The Sun Goes Down And When The Sun Comes Up. We Could Learn To Listen To The Wind; We Could Learn To Notice That It's Raining Or Snowing Or Hailing Or Calm. We Could Reconnect With The Weather That Is Ourselves, And We Could Realize That It's Sad. The Sadder It Is, And The Vaster It Is, The More Our Heart Opens. 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 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.

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

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.

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

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 Starts With Making Friends With Ourselves.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Live In The Moment

Softening What Is Rigid In Our Hearts.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Way I Regard Those Who Hurt Me Today Will Affect How I Experience The World In The Future. In Any Encounter, We Have A Choice: We Can Strengthen Our Resentment Or Our Understanding And Empathy. We Can Widen The Gap Between Ourselves And Others Or Lessen It.

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.

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.

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.

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