It's about befriending who we are already

Tyson Williams on April 14, 2008 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

My dear friend from UK posted this quote on her blog yesterday and I just had to repost it here as it is something we often do not think of or even realize it. Thank you for sharing it Sujatin!

When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they're going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are. It's a bit like saying, "If I jog, I'll be a much better person." "If I could only get a nicer house, I'd be a better person." "If I could meditate and calm down, I'd be a better person"... But loving-kindness - maitri - toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

- Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness

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1 Comments

Sujatin

said:

:-)

April 15, 2008 5:02 AM

It's about befriending who we are already

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