Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Daily Dharma: Ego is like a room of your own

A good Daily Dharma from Pema Chodron:

Ego is like a room of your own

Ego is like a room of your own, a room with a view with the temperature and the smells and the music that you like. You want it your own way. You'd just like to have a little peace, you'd like to have a little happiness, you know, just “gimme a break.”

But the more you think that way, the more you try to get life to come out so that it will always suit you, the more your dear of other people and what's outside your room grows. Rather than becoming more relaxed, you start pulling down the shades and locking the door. When you do go out, you find the experience more and more unsettling and disagreeable. You become touchier, more fearful, more irritable than ever. The more you try to get it your way, the less you feel at home.

~ Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are; from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith.

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