Training in equanimity is learning to open the door to all, welcoming all beings, inviting life to come visit. Of course, as certain guests arrive, we’ll feel fear and aversion. We allow ourselves to open the door just a crack if that’s all that we can presently do, and we allow ourselves to shut the door when necessary. Cultivating equanimity is a work in progress. We aspire to spend our lives training in the loving-kindness and courage that it takes to receive whatever appears—sickness, health, poverty, wealth, sorrow, and joy. We welcome and get to know them all.

Pema Chödron

from the book The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

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Further quotes from the book The Places That Scare You:

• Dissolving our fear
• At least until you die
• The first mark of existence
• Being in the middle of nowhere
• A flexible identity
• Our Shared Humanity
• Idiot Compassion
• Compassion takes courage
• Abiding in openness
• The essence of generosity
• Doing all with one intention
• Threefold purity
• Stay!
• Forgive into freshness
• Our true nature and condition
• Nothing and no one is fixed
• Whatever we encounter
• Being inspired by everyday good fortune
• The queasy feeling of being in the middle of nowhere