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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.

-Pema Chodron

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The Most Complete And

Pema Chodron

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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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Live In The Moment

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Enlightenment Is A Direct Experience With Reality.

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.

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

In A Nutshell, When Life Is Pleasant, Think Of Others. When Life Is A Burden, Think Of Others.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Right Down There In The Thick Of Things, We Discover The Love That Will Not Die.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Things Become Clear When There Is No Escape.

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

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

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

Inspirational Love

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Compassion Starts With Making Friends With Ourselves.

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.

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

Hell Is Just Resistance To Life.

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.

The Root Of Compassion, Is Compassion For Oneself.

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

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

Searching For Happiness Prevents Us From Ever Finding It.

Searching For Happiness

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

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.

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

There Are Many Changes In The Weather Of A Day.

Compassion For Others Begins With Kindness To Ourselves.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Getting What You Want

Instead Of Making Others Right Or Wrong, Or Bottling Up Right And Wrong In Ourselves, There's A Middle Way, A Very Powerful Middle Way...... Could We Have No Agenda When We Walk Into A Room With Another Person, Not Know What To Say, Not Make That Person Wrong Or Right? Could We See, Hear, Feel Other People As They Really Are? It Is Powerful To Practice This Way..... True Communication Can Happen Only In That Open Space.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Never Underestimate The Desire To Bolt.

Never Underestimate

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Allow Situations In Your Life To Become Your Teacher.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Doing For Others

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Fear Is A Natural Reaction To Moving Closer To The Truth

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Nothing In Its Essence Is One Way Or The Other.

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

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.

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

It's Helpful To Remind Yourself That Meditation Is About Opening And Relaxing With Whatever Arises, Without Picking And Choosing.

Meditation Practice

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

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

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

Again And Again

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The Essence Of Bravery Is Being Without Self-deception.

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

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

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.

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.

Remind Yourself, In Whatever Way Is Personally Meaningful, That It Is Not In Your Best Interest To Reinforce Thoughts And Feelings Of Unworthiness. Even If You've Already Taken The Bait And Feel The Familiar Pull Of Self-denigration, Marshal Your Intelligence, Courage, And Humor In Order To Turn The Tide. Ask Yourself: Do I Want To Strengthen What I'm Feeling Now? Do I Want To Cut Myself Off From My Basic Goodness? Remind Yourself That Your Fundamental Nature Is Unconditionally Open And Free.

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

Live In The Moment

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.

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

Words Of Wisdom

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

Patience Is Not Learned In Safety.

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

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

When Things Fall Apart In Your Life, You Feel As If Your Whole World Is Crumbling. But Actually It’s Your Fixed Identity That’s Crumbling. And As Chögyam Trungpa Used To Tell Us, That’s Cause For Celebration.

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.

The Greatest Obstacle To Connecting With Our Joy Is Resentment.

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

Never Underestimate

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow Your Heart

The Most Heartbreaking Thing Of All Is How We Cheat Ourselves Of The Present Moment.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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

The Essence Of Our Whole Path Is In That Place Of Discomfort, And What Do We Do With It?

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

We 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.

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

Working With Others

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Lower Your Standards And Relax As It Is.

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

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

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