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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.

-Pema Chodron

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The Next Time You

Pema Chodron

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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.

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Good Relationship

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New Opportunity

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

The Essence Of Practice Is Always The Same: Instead Of Falling Prey To A Chain Reaction Of Revenge Or Self-hatred, We Gradually Learn To Catch The Emotional Reaction And Drop The Story Lines.

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

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

Uncertainty Of Life

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

For One Day, Or For One Day For A Week, Refrain From Something You Habitually Do To Run Away, To Escape. Pick Something Concrete, Such As Overeating Or Excessive Sleeping Or Overworking Or Spending Too Much Time Texting Or Checking E-mails. Make A Commitment To Yourself To Gently And Compassionately Work With Refraining From This Habit For This One Day. Really Commit To It. Do This With The Intention That It Will Put You In Touch With The Underlying Anxiety Or Uncertainty That You've Been Avoiding. Do It And See What You Discover.

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.

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

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

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

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...

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Resisting What Is Happening Is A Major Cause Of Suffering.

We Are Not Given Any Promises That, Because Of Our Noble Intentions, Everything Will Be Okay. We Learn That What Truly Heals Is Gratitude And Tenderness. We [need] To Transform Our Minds And Actions For The Sake Of Other People And For The Future Of The World.

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

It Isn't The Things That Are Happening To Us That Cause Us To Suffer, It's What We Say To Ourselves About The Things That Are Happening. The Truth You Believe And Cling To Makes You Unavailable To Hear Anything New.

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

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

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

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.

Not Causing Harm Requires Staying Awake. Part Of Being Awake Is Slowing Down Enough To Notice What We Say And Do. The More We Witness Our Emotional Chain Reactions And Understand How They Work, The Easier It Is To Refrain. It Becomes A Way Of Life To Stay Awake, Slow Down, And Notice.

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.

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.

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)

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

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.

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.

Most Spiritual Experiences Begin With Suffering. They Begin With Groundlessness. They Begin When The Rug Has Been Pulled Out From Under Us.

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

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.

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

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

Meditation Takes Us Just As We Are, With Our Confusion And Our Sanity. This Complete Acceptance Of Ourselves As We Are Is Called Maitri, Or Unconditional Friendliness, A Simple, Direct Relationship With The Way We Are.

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.

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

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

Getting What You Want

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Let Your Curiosity Be Greater Than Your Fear.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Working With Others

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

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.

Nothing In Its Essence Is One Way Or The Other.

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

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.

Everything Is Fresh, The Essence Of Realization.

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.

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

Compassion For Others

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.

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

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.

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

Treat Yourself As Your Own Beloved Child.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Searching For Happiness Prevents Us From Ever Finding It.

Searching For Happiness

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

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

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

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

Meditation Practice

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

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

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.

It's Not A Terrible Thing That We Feel Fear When Faced With The Unknown. It Is A Part Of Being Alive, Something We All Share. We React Against The Possibility Of Loneliness, Of Death, Of Not Having Anything To Hold On To. Fear Is A Natural Reaction To Moving Closer To The Truth.

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

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

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.

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

Doing For Others

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.

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.

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.

The More Neurosis The More Wisdom.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Never Underestimate The Desire To Bolt.

Never Underestimate

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.

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

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

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

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