The Pocket Pema Chodron (Shambhala Pocket Classics)

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When we do, we begin to see not only how much better it feels to live an openhearted life, but we find that we begin to naturally and more effectively reach out to help and heal all those around us. This book offers short, stand-alone teachings designed to help us cultivate compassion and awareness amid the challenges of daily living. The short passages here are perfect to have any time during the day, and that's how I intend to dip into this again. This book teaches us how to awaken our basic goodness and connect with others, to accept ourselves and others completey with faults and imperfections. Amid our difficulties, wisdom is always available to us, but we usually block it with habitual patterns rooted in fear.

LIFE’S work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into your life wake you up rather than put you to sleep. But if that’s all that’s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal, and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. These bite-sized readings focus on self-acceptance and make me see and love myself in a ways I never have.Oft-quoted, much beloved, and radiating kindness, Chödrön remains a guiding light for those seeking spiritual growth. If you stay in bed all day with the covers over your head, if you overeat for the millionth time in your life, if you get drunk, if you get stoned, if it’s just this habitual thing that you think is going to make you feel better, you know that’s going to depress you and make you more discouraged. As much as we might try to resist, endings happen in every moment—the end of a breath, the end of a day, the end of a relationship, and ultimately the end of life. I admire her forthrightness, her ability to distill Buddhist thought into bite-sized morsels and above all, the sense of humor that is evident from behind her words.

I am not preaching or trying to tell anyone else to read this, but it is doing wonders for me, because it is truthful for me. It feels like someone just put a whole bunch of quotes in a jar and then pulled them out randomly and inserted them into the book. The limitless qualities of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity are your deep-down, ultimate reality, and those are qualities that can’t be improved upon. It’s a continual process of opening and surrender, like taking off layer after layer of clothes, until we’re completely naked, with nothing to hide.I have two copies—one I take with me most places and another copy that stays at home incase the other gets lost or damaged.

I'd read excerpts of Chödrön's work before, and I guess that's still all I have, just at greater length. In this book, Pema Chödrön shows us how to break free of destructive patterns in our lives and experience a new sense of freedom and happiness. In cultivating loving-kindness, we train first to be honest, loving and compassionate toward ourselves.This self-study course offers a special opportunity to experience Pema Chödrön’s generous heart and deep wisdom. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and was an elementary school teacher for many years in New Mexico and California. If you enjoy Pema Chodron or are seeking practical wisdom to get through hardships, this book is a MUST! It's not like we can just follow these specific steps and we'll be all fixed and happy and enlightened.