Showing results by author "Pema Chodron" in All Categories

How can we live our lives when everything seems to fall apart—when we are continually overcome by fear, anxiety, and pain? The answer, Pema Chödrön suggests, might be just the opposite of what you expect. Here, in her most beloved and acclaimed work, Pema shows that moving toward painful situations and becoming intimate with them can open up our hearts in ways we never before imagined. Drawing from traditional Buddhist wisdom, she offers life-changing tools for transforming suffering and negative patterns into habitual ease and boundless joy.

As much as we might try to resist, endings happen in every moment—the end of a breath, the end of a day, the end of a relationship, and ultimately the end of life. And accompanying each ending is a beginning, though it may be unclear what the beginning holds. In How We Live Is How We Die, Pema Chödrön shares her wisdom for working with this flow of life—learning to live with ease, joy, and compassion through uncertainty, embracing new beginnings, and ultimately preparing for death with curiosity and openness rather than fear.

Learn how to use the gift of pain with Pema Chödrön, a Buddhist nun in the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition. She teaches that it is in suffering where you will find the seeds of your awakening and that vulnerability is actually your greatest spiritual resource. You'll learn how to create your own spiritual retreat, the key teachings necessary for cultivating your own "soft spot" - the gateway to your own noble heart, the promise of the Four Limitless Ones, and the teachings on the Six Paramitas: the Buddha's own map of the journey to enlightenment. This program was recorded within the peaceful shrine room of Gampo Abbey, Chödrön's home on the cliffs of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.

Here Pema provides the tools to deal with the problems and difficulties that life throws our way. This wisdom is always available to us, she teaches, but we usually block it with habitual patterns rooted in fear. Beyond that fear lies a state of openheartedness and tenderness. This audiobook teaches us how to awaken our basic goodness and connect with others, to accept ourselves and others complete with faults and imperfections, and to stay in the present moment by seeing through the strategies of ego that cause us to resist life as it is.

You can't get away from suffering. That's the good news, teaches Pema Chodron. For at the core of your most painful experiences, you will find the seeds of your awakening. On Noble Heart, this best-selling author and Tibetan Buddhist nun shows you how vulnerability is our greatest spiritual resource amid life's difficulties. Using special meditations and teachings, she shows how to cultivate your own noble heart, one that sheds its armor, and opens fearlessly to both heartache and delight.

Start Where You Are is an indispensable audiobook for cultivating fearlessness and awakening a compassionate heart. With insight and humor, Pema Chödrön offers guidance on how we can accept our flaws and embrace ourselves wholeheartedly as a prerequisite for developing compassion.

On Getting Unstuck, Pema Chodron introduces a rare Tibetan teaching she received from her teacher, Dzigar Kontrul Rinpoche, and one that has become critical to her practice. Here, she unveils the mystery of an ineffable quality; a "pre-emotional" feeling that arises in us, brings us discomfort, and causes us to react by escaping the discomfort, often with harmful habits. With Getting Unstuck, she offers us a first look at "both the itch and the scratch": what Tibetan Buddhists call shenpa.

Pema Chodron, one of the West's most beloved teachers of Buddhism, makes the Tibetan vajrayana tradition accessible in today's world. Now three of her most popular teachings are available in one audiobook set.

Happiness is your birthright and it is readily available at any given moment, teaches Pema Chodron. So, why do we live in such suffering? "The potential for happiness is not based on outer things; they come and go, causing us misery," she begins. "We're always chasing after something, trying to avoid the difficult places. But there are a lot of small sweetnesses that we ignore because they're so fleeting."

Chögyam Trungpa offers us a vision of moving beyond fear to discover the innate bravery, trust, and delight in life that lies at the core of our being. Drawing on the Shambhala Buddhist teachings, he explains how we can each become a spiritual warrior: a person who faces each moment of life with openness and fearlessness. "The ultimate definition of bravery is not being afraid of who you are," writes Chögyam Trungpa. In this audiobook, he offers the insights and strategies to claim victory over fear.

Fear and guilt are two of the greatest challenges we face on the spiritual path—but there is a way to transform these painful feelings into courageous self-acceptance. Here Pema Chödrön presents the five aphorisms for developing fearlessness that were given to Machig Lapdronma, one of Tibetan Buddhism's greatest female teachers.

It's one thing to hear a life-changing truth or to have a conceptual grasp on spiritual wisdom. But it’s another thing to "walk the walk" - or to put into practice the good advice we've been given. What does it mean to walk the walk in our everyday lives? According to Pema Chödrön, it means being down-to-earth, genuine, and perhaps most importantly, it means engaging in the teachings in order to actively confront anything and everything we’ve heretofore rejected in our attempts to find happiness.

Life has a way of provoking us with traffic jams and computer malfunctions, with emotionally distant partners and crying children—and before we know it, we're upset. We feel terrible, and then we end up saying and doing things that only make matters worse. But it doesn't have to be that way, says Pema Chödrön. It is possible to relate constructively to the inevitable shocks, losses, and frustrations of life so that we can find true happiness. The key, Pema explains, is not biting the "hook" of our habitual responses.

ChgyamTrungpa's unique ability to express the essence of Buddhist teachings in the language and imagery of modern American culture makes his books among the most accessible works of Buddhist philosophy. Here Trungpa explores the true meaning of freedom, showing us how our preconceptions, attitudes, and even our spiritual practices can become chains that bind us to repetitive patterns of frustration and despair.

What if you could cultivate the mind of a bodhisattva -- one who has dedicated one's life to the benefit of others? According to Pema Chödrön, best-selling author and American-born Buddhist nun, you can. On Bodhisattva Mind, she examines sheshin, or "guarding alertness", and the other qualities of mind we need to develop on the path to enlightenment.

It’s true, as they say, that we can only love others when we first love ourselves and we can only experience real joy when we stop running from pain. The key to understanding these truisms lies in remaining open to life in all circumstances, and here Pema Chödrön shows us how. Because when we embrace the happiness and suffering, intelligence and confusion that are a natural part of life, we can begin to discover a wellspring of courageous love within our hearts.

Have you ever found yourself thinking your way into a tangle of fret, frustration, or gloom? And then something small - a few kind words, the sun glancing through the clouds, a warm cup of tea - gave you a welcome pause from all your inner chatter? With Making Friends with Your Mind, that's what Pema Chödrön helps us to do, not by chance but with our full intention: to stop fighting with our thoughts and reopen ourselves to wonder as naturally as we breathe.

By reflecting on the Buddhist teachings of right and wrong, Chodron imparts valuable wisdom on how to cope with the grim reality that life is not always fair, and you don't always get what you deserve - bad or good.

The 59 provocative slogans presented here - each with a commentary by the Tibetan meditation master Chgyam Trungpa - have been used by Tibetan Buddhists for eight centuries to help meditation students remember and focus on important principles and practices of mind training. They emphasize meeting the ordinary situations of life with intelligence and compassion under all circumstances. Slogans include, "Don't be swayed by external circumstances," "Be grateful to everyone," and "Always maintain only a joyful mind."

Over the years, Pema Chödrön's books have offered an exciting new way of living: developing fearlessness, generosity, and compassion in all aspects of their lives. In No Time to Lose Pema invites listeners to venture further along the path of the "bodhisattva warrior", explaining in depth how we can awaken the softness of our hearts and develop true confidence amid the challenges of daily living.