when things fall apart pema chödrön quotes

It is how we awaken our intelligence and connect with fundamental buddha nature.'ĥ) ' We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong'.Ħ) 'How do I communicate to the heart so that a stuck situation can ventilate? How do I communicate so that things that seem frozen, unworkable, and eternally aggressive begin to soften up, and some kind of compassionate exchange begins to happen? Well, it starts with being willing to feel what we are going through. It is how what is seemingly ugly and problematic and unwanted actually becomes our teacher.'ģ) ' We can let ourselves feel our emotions as hot or cold, vibrating or smooth, instead of using our emotions to keep ourselves ignorant or dumb.'Ĥ) ' Rather than trying to get rid of something or buying into a dualistic sense of being attacked, we take the opportunity to see how we close down when we're squeezed. That awareness is what turns the sword into a flower. By becoming aware of how we do this silly thing again and again because we don't want to dwell in the uncertainty and awkwardness and pain of not knowing, we begin to develop true compassion for ourselves and everyone else, because we see what happens and how we react when things fall apart. If we can look at and see the wildness of emotion, we can not only begin to befriend and soften toward ourselves, but we can also begin to befriend all human beings and indeed all living beings. 'Ģ) 'Again, we do not have to consider this process an obstacle or a problem. Instead, we throw kerosene on the emotion so it will feel more real.

There's no particular need to spread blame and self-justification. We could just sit with the emotional energy and let it pass. We use them to try to make everything secure and predictable and real again, to.fool ourselves about what's really true. We use them to try to deny that in fact no one has ever known or will ever know what's happening.

In their essence, they are simply part of the goodness of being alive, but instead of letting them be, we take them and use them to regain our ground. So what began as an enormous open space becomes a forest fire, a world war, a volcano erupting, a tidal wave. 'When really strong emotion comes up, all the doctrines and beliefs that we've held on to seem kind of pitiful by comparison, because emotions are so much more powerful. This book was such a catalyst for change and helped immensely in refreshing my perspectives on interpersonal and inner conflict.

When things fall apart pema chödrön quotes