Pema Chodron: Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion
The Beloved Buddhist teacher, author, nun, and mother, Pema Chodron, has inspired millions of people from around the world who have been touched by her example and message of practicing peace in these turbulent times.
Pema Chodron: Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion
Ani Pema Chodron was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in 1936, in New York City. Pema Chodron grew up on a New Jersey farm. She has said that she had a pleasant childhood with her Catholic family, but that her spiritual life didn’t begin until she attended boarding school, where her intellectual curiosity was cultivated, She attended Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut. At age twenty-one, Pema got married. Over the next few years, the couple had two children, and the young family moved to California. She began studying at the University of California at Berkeley, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English literature and a master’s in elementary education.
After graduating from UC Berkeley, she spent years as an elementary school teacher, wife, and mother of two children for many years in between both New Mexico and California. In her mid-twenties, Pema Chodron’s marriage dissolved, and she remarried. Then, eight years later, that relationship also fell apart. “When my husband told me, he was having an affair and wanted a divorce,” she said in an interview with Bill Moyers, “that was a big groundless moment. Reality as we knew it wasn’t holding together.”
To cope with her loss, she explored different therapies and spiritual traditions, but nothing helped. Then she read an article by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche that suggested working with emotions rather than trying to get rid of them, and this struck a chord. She has said, however, that at the time she didn’t know anything about Buddhism and wasn’t aware that a Buddhist even wrote the article.
“We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t get solved. They come together, and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” ~Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heartfelt Advice for Hard Times
But things changed for her dramatically the day Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche visited her classroom to talk to her young charges: He became her first root teacher, and, with his encouragement, she pursued the monastic life, ultimately taking full ordination.
Continuing her exploration, while in her mid-thirties, Pema traveled to the French Alps and encountered Tibetan Buddhist teacher Lama Chime Rinpoche with whom she studied for several years and had what she has described as a “strong recognition experience.” He agreed to her request to study with him in London, and for the next several years she divided her time between the U.S. and England. She became a novice nun in 1974 while studying with Lama Chime in London. His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa came to England at that time, and Pema received her ordination from him.
As full ordination is denied to women in the Tibetan tradition, Pema didn’t think she would ever take the full bhikshuni vows that would make her an entirely ordained nun. A Bhikkhuni is a fully ordained female monastic in Buddhism. Male monastics are called bhikkhus. Both bhikkhunis and bhikkhus live by the Vinaya, a set of rules. Until recently, the lineages of female monastics only remained in Mahayana Buddhism and thus are prevalent in countries such as Korea, Vietnam, China, and Taiwan, but a few women have taken the full monastic vows in the Theravada and Vajrayana schools over the last decade. But in 1977, the Karmapa encouraged her to seek out someone who was authorized and willing to perform the ceremony. This search took several years and finally brought her to Hong Kong, where in July 1981 she became the first American in the Vajrayana tradition to undergo bhikshuni ordination under the Sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, head of the Tibetan Kagyu lineage.
When in the U.S., she lived at Chögyam Trungpa’s center in San Francisco, where she followed Chime Rinpoche’s advice to study with Trungpa Rinpoche. She and Chögyam Trungpa had a profound connection. He had the ability; she has said, to show her how she was stuck in habitual patterns and aspects of her life.
“There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs, and the Tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up, and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is the predicament that we are always in, regarding our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.” Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World
Trungpa Rinpoche supported Pema when she decided not to remarry or to get involved in another relationship. “My real appetite and my real passion were for wanting to go deeper,” she told Lenore Friedman in Meetings With Remarkable Women. “I felt that I was somehow thick and that to connect really… with things as they are… I needed to put all my energy into it.” For Pema Chodron, this meant, in 1974, to be ordained as a novice nun.
This search took several years and finally brought her to Hong Kong, where in July 1981 she became the first American in the Vajrayana tradition to undergo bhikshuni ordination. At the request of the Sixteenth Karmapa, she received the full bikshuni ordination in the Chinese lineage of Buddhism in Hong Kong. Ani Pema served as the director of Karma Dzong in Boulder, Colorado.
The next big step in Pema Chodron’s life was to help Trungpa Rinpoche establish Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia. In 1984, at Trungpa Rinpoche’s request, she found Gampo Abbey, the first monastery in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition intended for Western monks and nuns. As the director of the Abbey, she was interested in helping establish Tibetan Buddhist monasticism in the West, as well as continuing her work with western Buddhists of all traditions, sharing ideas and teachings. The Abbey, completed in 1985, was the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in North America for Western men and women. But from that isolated spot-where, she spends a good deal of her time even more isolated in solitary retreat-she has become one of the most influential spiritual teachers of our time.
She has written several books: The Wisdom of No Escape, Start Where You Are, When Things Fall Apart, The Places that Scare You, No Time to Lose, Practicing Peace in Times of War, How to Meditate, and Living Beautifully. All are available from Shambhala Publications and Sounds True.
Pema Chodron’s’s first book, The Wisdom of No Escape, was published in 1991, followed by Start Where You Were in 1994, and When Things Fell Apart in 1997. Her earthy, insightful teachings moved readers, and her retreats were suddenly full to overflowing. She was now continually being asked to give talks and to take part in media events.
“When we touch the center of sorrow, when we sit with discomfort without trying to fix it, when we stay present to the pain of disapproval or betrayal and let it soften us, these are times that we connect with bodhicitta.”
Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times
Meanwhile, in 1994 she was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and environmental illness—sicknesses she was still struggling with when she met Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, a young Tibetan Buddhist teacher. “There was this longing that I had since Trungpa Rinpoche died—to have someone to ask my questions of,” Pema Chodron said in an interview in Crucial Point. Today, Kongtrul Rinpoche is Pema’s teacher, and she devotes herself to his rigorous training methods. She is also an acharya (senior teacher) in the Shambhala community.
Pema Chodron’s best-selling books reach a remarkably broad audience, including many non-Buddhists, is a testament not only to the universal applicability of the teachings to which she has dedicated her life but also to her skill in conveying them in a way that cuts across boundaries and speaks directly to the heart.
Pema Chodron and Gampo Abbey
Under the direction of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, the spiritual head of Shambhala International, Gampo Abbey is guided by its abbot the Venerable Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche and principal teacher Acharya Pema Chodron.
“I think the concept of the monastery is always up to date whether it is in medieval times or the 20th century. The monastic tradition has a particular kind of discipline, and it displays a natural dignity. Monastic discipline embodies the principals of Shila, Samadhi, and Prajna so that the monastery is in contact with living dharma. Because monastic practitioners are much more in contact with the reality of spiritual discipline, we could say that they are more in contact with the Buddha himself…. The point is that there is some discipline and some natural dignity that the monastic tradition displays.” — Vidyadhara the Venerable Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
That sentiment was the seed for establishing a monastery in the west. A farmhouse on the remote tip of Cape Breton Island was purchased as the first step in creating Gampo Abbey. When Trungpa Rinpoche visited the site that overlooks the Gulf of Saint Lawrence on Cape Breton Island a double rainbow appeared in the sky.
Life at the Abbey is very earthy and very full. Though residents might be some distance from “civilization,” because the community is busy and intimate, one rarely feels isolated. And while the silence might seem intense (until noon in the morning and after eight in the evening), and the discipline challenging (4-1/2 hours of practice each day), many find that it is that silence and discipline that lets in fresh air.
Having recently celebrated the milestone of her eightieth birthday, Pema Chodron is currently spending a more significant amount of her time in retreat under the guidance of her teacher Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, though her commitment to transmitting the buddhadharma to the world will continue to result in more books, audios, and live teachings in the future.
For a quarter-century now, we at Shambhala Publications have had the honor to be her publisher. Here, as a guide, is a list of her books, audios, and videos that were published over the last twenty-five years, in chronological order.
The Pema Chodron Foundation is dedicated to preserving and sharing Pema Chodron’s inspiration and teachings so that they might help us all awaken wisdom and compassion in ourselves and the world around us.
