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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.

-Pema Chodron

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We Have Two Alternatives:

Pema Chodron

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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

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.

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

People Get Into A Heavy-duty Sin And Guilt Trip, Feeling That If Things Are Going Wrong, That Means That They Did Something Bad And They Are Being Punished. That's Not The Idea At All. The Idea Of Karma Is That You Continually Get The Teachings That You Need To Open Your Heart. To The Degree That You Didn't Understand In The Past How To Stop Protecting Your Soft Spot, How To Stop Armoring Your Heart, You're Given This Gift Of Teachings In The Form Of Your Life, To Give You Everything You Need To Open Further.

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.

To Stay With That Shakiness-to Stay With A Broken Heart, With A Rumbling Stomach, With The Feeling Of Hopelessness And Wanting To Get Revenge-that Is The Path Of True Awakening. Sticking With That Uncertainty, Getting The Knack Of Relaxing In The Midst Of Chaos, Learning Not To Panic-this Is The Spiritual Path.

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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.

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

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.

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

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.

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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.

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Painful Experiences

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.

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

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When You Have Made Good Friends With Yourself, Your Situation Will Be More Friendly Too.

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

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.

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

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.

Every Moment Is Unique, Unknown, Completely Fresh.

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The Trick Is To Keep Exploring And Not Bail Out, Even When We Find Out That Something Is Not What We Thought.

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

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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

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

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.

If Your Everyday Practice Is Open To All Your Emotions, To All The People You Meet, To All The Situations You Encounter, Without Closing Down, Trusting That You Can Do That - Then That Will Take You Are Far As You Can Go. And Then You'll Understand All The Teachings That Anyone Has Ever Taught.

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

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.

Feel The Feelings And Drop The Story.

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.

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

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

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.

Everything Is Fresh, The Essence Of Realization.

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

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.

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

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

Holding On To Anything Blocks Wisdom.

We Practice To Liberate Ourselves From A Burden.

There Are Many Changes In The Weather Of A Day.

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.

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.

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

Use Your Life To Wake You Up.

Compassion For Others Begins With Kindness To Ourselves.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Doing For Others

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

On The Journey Of The Warrior-bodhisattva, The Path Goes Down, Not Up, As If The Mountain Pointed Toward The Earth Instead Of The Sky. Instead Of Transcending The Suffering Of All Creatures, We Move Toward Turbulence And Doubt However We Can. We Explore The Reality And Unpredictability Of Insecurity And Pain, And We Try Not To Push It Away. If It Takes Years, If It Takes Lifetimes, We Let It Be As It Is. At Our Own Pace, Without Speed Or Aggression, We Move Down And Down And Down. With Us Move Millions Of Others, Companions In Awakening From Fear.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Getting What You Want

My Moods Are Continuously Shifting Like The Weather.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Whatever Is Happening Is The Path To Enlightenment.

Path To Enlightenment

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

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

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

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

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.

There's Nothing More Important On Our Spiritual Path Than Developing Gentleness To Oneself.

Honesty Without Kindness, Humor, And Goodheartedness Can Be Just Mean.

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

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.

It Is Possible To Move Through The Drama Of Our Lives Without Believing So Earnestly In The Character That We Play. That We Take Ourselves So Seriously, That We Are So Absurdly Important In Our Own Minds, Is A Problem For Us. We Feel Justified In Being Annoyed With Everything. We Feel Justified In Denigrating Ourselves Or In Feeling That We Are More Clever Than Other People. Self-importance Hurts Us, Limiting Us To The Narrow World Of Our Likes And Dislikes. We End Up Bored To Death With Ourselves And Our World. We End Up Never Satisfied.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Inspirational Love

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

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.

Nothing Ever Goes Away Until It Has Taught Us What We Need To Know. Even If We Run A Hundred Miles An Hour To The Other Side Of The Continent, We Find The Very Same Problem Awaiting Us When We Arrive.

This Genuine Heart Of Sadness Can Teach Us Great Compassion. It Can Humble Us When We're Arrogant And Soften Us When We Are Unkind.

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

Follow Your Heart

We Insist On Being Someone, With A Capital S. We Get Security From Defining Ourselves As Worthless Or Worthy, Superior Or Inferior. We Waste Precious Time Exaggerating Or Romanticizing Or Belittling Ourselves With A Complacent Surety That Yes, That’s Who We Are. We Mistake The Openness Of Our Being—the Inherent Wonder And Surprise Of Each Moment—for A Solid, Irrefutable Self. Because Of This Misunderstanding, We Suffer.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Rejoicing In Ordinary Things Is Not Sentimental Or Trite. It Actually Takes Guts. Each Time We Drop Our Complaints And Allow Everyday Good Fortune To Inspire Us, We Enter The Warrior's World.

We Are Like Children Building A Sand Castle. We Embellish It With Beautiful Shells, Bits Of Driftwood, And Pieces Of Colored Glass. The Castle Is Ours, Off Limits To Others. We’re Willing To Attack If Others Threaten To Hurt It. Yet Despite All Our Attachment, We Know That The Tide Will Inevitably Come In And Sweep The Sand Castle Away. The Trick Is To Enjoy It Fully But Without Clinging, And When The Time Comes, Let It Dissolve Back Into The Sea.

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

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

Hell Is Just Resistance To Life.

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...

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Softening What Is Rigid In Our Hearts.

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

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.

Compassion Becomes Real When We Recognize Our Shared Humanity.

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

Meditation Practice

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.

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.

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

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.

Learning How To Be Kind To Ourselves, Learning How To Respect Ourselves, Is Important. The Reason It's Important Is That, Fundamentally, When We Look Into Our Own Hearts And Begin To Discover What Is Confused And What Is Brilliant, What Is Bitter And What Is Sweet, It Isn't Just Ourselves That We're Discovering. We're Discovering The Universe.

What You Do For Yourself, Any Gesture Of Kindness, Any Gesture Of Gentleness, Any Gesture Of Honesty And Clear Seeing Toward Yourself, Will Affect How You Experience Your World. In Fact, It Will Transform How You Experience The World. What You Do For Yourself, You’re Doing For Others, And What You Do For Others, You’re Doing For Yourself.

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

Meditation Practice

So Even If The Hot Loneliness Is There, And For 1.6 Seconds We Sit With That Restlessness When Yesterday We Couldn't Sit For Even One, That's The Journey Of The Warrior. (68)

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

As Long As Our Orientation Is Toward Perfection Or Success, We Will Never Learn About Unconditional Friendship With Ourselves, Nor Will We Find Compassion.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Let Difficulty Transform You. And It Will. In My Experience, We Just Need Help In Learning How Not To Run Away.

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.

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

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

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

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

If We Pause And Breathe In And Out, Then We Can Have The Experience Of Timeless Presence, Of The Inexpressible Wisdom And Goodness Of Our Own Minds. We Can Look At The World With Fresh Eyes And Hear Things With Fresh Ears.

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.

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

The Idea Is To Develop Sympathy For Your Own Confusion.

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.

Everything Is Material For The Seed Of Happiness, If You Look Into It With Inquisitiveness And Curiosity. The Future Is Completely Open, And We Are Writing It Moment To Moment. There Always Is The Potential To Create An Environment Of Blame -or One That Is Conducive To Loving-kindness.

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

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

All The Terrible Things We Do To Ourselves And Others From Alcoholism To Character Assignation To Abuse To Murder Come From One Cause: The Inability To Stay Present With An Uncomfortable Feeling In The Body And Seek Short-term Relief.

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

Unlimited Potential

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

When We Practice Generating Compassion, We Can Expect To Experience Our Fear Of Pain. Compassion Practice Is Daring. It Involves Learning To Relax And Allow Ourselves To Move Gently Toward What Scares Us. The Trick To Doing This Is To Stay With Emotional Distress Without Tightening Into Aversion, To Let Fear Soften Us Rather Than Harden Into Resistance.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Never Underestimate

It's Not A Terrible Thing That We Feel Fear When Faced With The Unknown. It Is Part Of Being Alive, Something We All Share.

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

The More Neurosis The More Wisdom.

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

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 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.

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