Many of us prefer practices that will not cause discomfort, yet at the same time we want to be healed. But bodhichitta training doesn’t work that way. A warrior accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next. We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability, always hoping to be comfortable and safe. But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not knowing is part of the adventure, and it’s also what makes us afraid.
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:
- Cultivating equanimity
- 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
- The anxiety of opening
- Everyday uncertainty
- Cultivating equanimity
- Happiness
- Life preferences
- The root of happiness
- Awakening our unlimited potential