A Quote by Pema Chodron

If you see a homeless person on the street, and they need food, housing, medical attention - if you can give that, do it. But at the same time, work with tonglen, because that is how you start dissolving the barrier between you and them.
Clearly, there are a thousand and one scenarios for how someone can slip through the cracks. I'll walk down the street and see a homeless person, and I'll want to stop them and say, How did this happen? Where's your mother? Are you physically ill? Mentally ill?
One very powerful and effective way to work with this tendency to push away pain and hold on to pleasure is the practice of tonglen. ?In tonglen practice, when we see or feel suffering, we ?breathe in with the notion of completely feeling it, accepting it, and owning it.
My only reason why I am not doing films is my children. My children need my attention, and it's my duty to give them my time. I have not given birth to them to just dump them and go off to work. I am not that kind of a person.
You know, if I listened to Michael Dukakis long enough, I would be convinced we're in an economic downturn and people are homeless and going without food and medical attention and that we've got to do something about the unemployed.
I'm in that comfortable niche where I'm not that famous and sometimes people do need to put a barrier between them and their followers. When you're real famous you need to do that but I'm not that famous so I don't need that kind of barrier.
I have this horrific thing where I'm really bad with names and faces. I have an appalling memory. Someone will come up to me in the street and go, 'Eddie!', and I'll try and give myself time by going into overdrive, 'Hey, hi! Nice to see you!' and start a whole conversation because I can't distinguish between who I know and who I don't.
We need more housing in San Francisco, plain and simple, and we especially need more affordable housing for our low-income households, seniors, teachers, formerly homeless people, veterans, and middle-income residents.
We get to go out into the schools and work with the kids on connecting them to their food at a young age, to actually see where their food is coming from, to see that their food is coming from the earth and not just from a supermarket. Once they make that connection, they can start to build upon that.
I used to say to my dad, 'How did you and Mom stay married for all this time?' and he'd say, 'Two things. Number one: You gotta have the same dreams. One person can't be daydreaming about walking down the street in Paris, the other person want to work in a coal mine. Number two: We never wanted to get divorced at the same time.'
We need to work less to achieve more. We need to stop fighting food and start embracing it. We need to stop punishing our bodies and start providing for them. We need to slow down and enjoy and then we’ll get the results we’ve been looking for—and sooner than we expect.
If seeing that other person's pain brings up your fear or anger or confusion (which often happens), just start doing tonglen for yourself and all the other people who are stuck in the very same way.
I don't think love is a tricky issue at all. Love is best understood when we share: Share time, energy, food, resources, insights, information, whatever. It's usually thought of as something that exists between two people, but that's just because it's easier to see and feel in the space between them. Each person is sharing a lot with the other.
We see parts of each other, and we put them together. But if I want to see you in totality, you need to move away; we need space between us. Across the street, I can see all of you at once, but then I also see this huge vista of space surrounding you, coming in and compressing you.
The act of compassion begins with full attention, just as rapport does. You have to really see the person. If you see the person, then naturally, empathy arises. If you tune into the other person, you feel with them. If empathy arises, and if that person is in dire need, then empathic concern can come. You want to help them, and then that begins a compassionate act. So I'd say that compassion begins with attention.
I can remember the time when, if we wanted a house or housing, we relied on private enterprise. In fact, Americans built more square feet of housing per person than any other country on the face of the earth. Despite that remarkable accomplishment, more and more people are coming to believe that the only way we can have adequate housing is to use government to take the earnings from some and give these earnings, in the form of housing, to others.
I'm one of those people when I see a homeless person on the street, I want to know their story. There's a reason they got there.
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