Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Pema Chödrön

(Deirdre Blomfield-Brown)

1936 CE –

First American Vajrayana nun

Growing up on a New Jersey farm, studying elementary education at UC Berkeley in the 1950’s, and having a family life with two divorces and two children; Pema Chodrin came to Chögyam Trungpa and Tibetan Buddhism from a status-quo American background. From this ground, she became the first fully ordained American nun in the Vajrayana tradition, the first director of the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in North America, and one of the most respected teachers in today’s world. Her 16 books, regular teaching and practice seminars continue to spread deep wisdom and authentic compassion.

Eras

Sources

When Things Fall Apart

Unlisted Sources

Interview with Alice Walker, 1999

Start Where You Are

Quotes by Pema Chödrön (38 quotes)

“As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find compassion.”

Chapters: 2. The Wordless Teachings

Themes: Success

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“Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something… We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment.”

Chapters: 15. Inscrutability

Themes: Hope Fear

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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.”

Chapters: 17. True Leaders

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“Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all.”

Chapters: 25. The Mother of All Things

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“When one realizes that our many thoughts of anger and desire… are devoid of any self-nature, everything becomes a land of gold.
Patience is the antidote to anger, a way to learn to love and care for whatever we meet on the path.”

Chapters: 32. Uncontrived Awareness

Themes: Anger Patience

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“One can appreciate and celebrate each moment — there’s nothing more sacred. There’s nothing more vast or absolute. In fact, there’s nothing more!”

Chapters: 35. The Power of Goodness

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“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”

Chapters: 37. Nameless Simplicity

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“We are all capable of becoming fundamentalists because we get addicted to other people's wrongness.”

Chapters: 38. Fruit Over Flowers

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“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.”

Chapters: 46. Enough

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“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.”

Chapters: 52. Cultivating the Changeless

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“The Buddha’s principal message that day was that holding on to anything blocks wisdom. Any conclusion that we draw must be let go.”

Chapters: 57. Wu Wei

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“Maybe the most important teaching is to lighten up and relax. It’s such a huge help in working with our crazy mixed-up minds to remember that what we’re doing is unlocking a softness that is in us and letting it spread. We’re letting it blur the sharp corners of self-criticism and complaint.”

Chapters: 63. Easy as Hard

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“When one of the emperors of China asked Bodhidharma what enlightenment was, his answer was, ‘Lots of space, nothing holy’… It’s all good juicy stuff … the art of living in the present moment.”

Chapters: 64. Ordinary Mind

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“The truth you believe in and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.”

Chapters: 65. Simplicity: the Hidden Power of Goodness

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“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.”

Chapters: 66. Go Low

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“if you can live with the sadness of human life , if you can be willing to feel fully and acknowledge continually your own sadness and the sadness of life, but at the same time not be drowned in it… you experience balance and completeness, joining heaven and earth, joining vision and practicality.”

Chapters: 68. Joining Heaven & Earth

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“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.”

Chapters: 69. No Enemy

Themes: Compassion

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“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.”

Chapters: 81. Journey Without Goal

Themes: Karma

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“We already have everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement… 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.”

Chapters: 81. Journey Without Goal

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“We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.”

Chapters: 40. Returning

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“‘No … big … deal’… don’t make too big a deal because that leads to arrogance and pride, or a sense of specialness. On the other hand, making too big a deal about your difficulties takes you in the other direction; it takes you into poverty, self-denigration, and a low opinion of yourself.”

Chapters: 48. Unlearning

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“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.”

from When Things Fall Apart

Chapters: 24. Unnecessary Baggage

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“Idiot compassion is a great expression… In some ways, it’s whats called enabling, the general tendency to give people what they want because you can’t bear to see them suffering.”

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“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… But it's up to you whether your life is a mandala of neurosis or a mandala of sanity.”

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“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which in indestructible be found in us.”

from When Things Fall Apart

Themes: Problems

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“We don't know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don't know.”

from When Things Fall Apart

Themes: Doubt

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“Meditation is an invitation to notice when we reach our limit and to not get carried away by hope and fear... opening and relaxing with whatever arises, without picking and choosing.”

from When Things Fall Apart

Themes: Meditation

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“This very moment is the perfect teacher... feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear [are] like messengers that show us exactly where we're stuck.”

from When Things Fall Apart

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“all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it... the rampant materialism that we see in the world stems from this moment.”

from When Things Fall Apart

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“Mindfulness is the ground; refraining is the path... not grabbing for entertainment the minute we feel a slight edge of boredom coming on.”

from When Things Fall Apart

Themes: Entertainment

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“The cause of someon's aggression is their suffering and your aggression is not going to help anything... by not yelling back you're just getting smart about what's really going to bring you some happiness.”

from Interview with Alice Walker, 1999

Themes: Aggression

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“No one ever tells us to stop running away from fear. We are very rarely told to move closer, to just be there, to become familiar with fear.”

from When Things Fall Apart

Themes: Fear

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“Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we don't struggle against it, we are in harmony with reality.”

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“The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.”

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“If we were to make a list of people we don't like... we would find a lot about those aspects of ourselves that we can't face.”

from Start Where You Are

Themes: Projection

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“My feeling is that all Trungpa Rinpoche did was get people to take responsibility for themselves, get them to grow up. He was a master of not confirming: talking to him was like talking to a huge space in which everything bounced back — you had to be accountable for yourself.”

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“Now more than ever, His Holiness the Karmapa’s teachings provide tools for all of us—beyond background, nationality, and culture—to work together in our interdependent, interconnected worldwide community. Everyone, and the world itself, will benefit from the profound teachings in [his] book.”

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“Place your fearful mind in the cradle of loving kindness and nurse it with the profound brilliant milk of doubtlessness, and in the cool shade of fearlessness, fan it with the fan of joy and happiness.”

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