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it is only by practicing through a continual succession of agreeable and disagreeable situations that we acquire true strength. To accept that pain is inherent and to live our lives from this understanding is to create the causes and conditions for happiness.

Bodhichitta training offers no promise of happy endings. Rather, this "I" who wants to find security-who wants something to hold on to can finally learn to grow up. The central question of a warrior's training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort. How do we practice with dif-ficulty, with our emotions, with the unpredictable encounters of an ordinary day?