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"The whole journey of renunciation, or starting to say yes to life, is first of all realizing that you've come up against your edge, that everything in you is saying no, and then at that point, softening. This is yet another opportunity to develop loving-kindness of yourself, which results in playfulness-learning to play like a raven in the wind."
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"If our mind remains freeze-framed by inhibiting and hampering habits, in an ever-changing world, we won't be able to get rid of that weird feeling of not belonging anywhere and not taking part in authentic life challenges. ['Not on the shortlist']"
"I wasn't ready to think about the other yet: that it wasn't that I wasn't right for Macon, but that maybe he wasn't right for me. There was a difference. Even for someone who things didn't come easy for, someone like me."
"For things I am not thankful for-experiences I would never volunteer to relive-I recognize how they have changed me. My depth of compassion and humility, the sincerity of my empathy and understanding, and the duration of my patience have all been refined by bitter suffering. I thank God for the lessons learned. I am a better person for it, but I still abhor those awful trials."
"If you couldn't sense heat, you'd not be alive. And if that heat never grew uncomfortable, you would never move. And if you were stagnant-unchallenged by unpredictable flares-you would never grow capable of shielding yourself from harsher flames. So yes, life was meant to drag you straight through the fire."
"If at first you don't succeed, you're doing it wrong. Learn from the experience. Try again, but with a different approach."
"Life has me trapped in a cocoon of earth where I must grow and change until the day I sprout wings. And on that day I shall burst free, no longer marooned on a pebble of dust in a universe that only waits for me to find a means to fly."
"I believe life is an education meant to teach us the need to be better people. And I believe this learning often takes place through trial and error which may mean being an awful person at times before clearly seeing and grasping the necessity to improve. If you don't agree with me, just ask Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge. I think Charles Dickens got it quite right."
Explore more quotes by Pema Chodron
"Making good use of our limited time - the limited time from birth to death, as well as our limited time each day - is the key to developing inner steadiness and calm."
"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."
"As the twelfth-century Tibetian yogi Milarepa said when he heard of his student Gampopa's peak experiences, 'They are neither good nor bad. Keep meditating.'"
"Many religions have meditations on death to let it penetrate our thick skulls that life doesn't last forever."
"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."
"We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who is awake, that's death. Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self contained and comfortable, is some kind of death. It doesn't have any fresh air. There's no room for something to come in and interrupt all that. We are killing the moment by controlling our experience."
"In order to work with difficult outer circumstances, we need to gather our inner strength. If even ten or twenty minutes of meditation a day helps us to do this, let's go for it!"
"Yesterday I talked about cultivating precision, gentleness, and openess, and described how the meditation technique helps us to remember the qualities that we already possess."
"Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. 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. 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."
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