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Pema Chödrön

Pema Chödrön is among a handful of eminent authors who teach philosophies born of eastern thought and excel at making them relevant to the majority of us, steeped as we are in the teachings of western civilization. Formerly known as Deirdre Brown, she changed her name to Pema Chodron after becoming a Buddhist nun in 1974. She is a prolific author and lecturer as well as the director of Gampo Abbey, a Buddhist monastery in Nova Scotia, Canada. Her principle teacher was Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who founded the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and spread Tibetan Buddhism and the Shambhala teachings across Europe, Canada and the United States. In addition to writing, teaching and her responsibilities as Abbey director, Pema Chödrön typically devotes over half of each year to silent retreat and study.

“People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That’s not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn’t understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you’re given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further.”

“A psychotic drowns in the very same stuff a mystic swims in.”

“Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we’re going to be more cheerful in the future, it’s because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.”

                

“We can drop the fundamental hope that there is a better “me” who one day will emerge. We can’t just jump over ourselves as if we were not there.”     

“Rejoicing in ordinary things takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us we enter the warrior’s world.”

“Training in equanimity requires that we leave behind some baggage: the comfort of rejecting whole parts of ourselves, for example, [or] the security of only welcoming what is pleasant. The courage to continue with the unfolding process comes from self-compassion and from giving ourselves plenty of time.”

“We cannot be present and run our story line at the same time.”

“It’s also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that’s sitting right here right now... with its aches and it pleasures... is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.”

“Ego could be defined as whatever covers up basic goodness. From an experiential point of view, what is ego covering up? It’s covering up our experience of just being here, just fully being where we are, so that we can relate with the immediacy of our experience. Egolessness is a state of mind that has complete confidence in the sacredness of the world. It is unconditional well being, unconditional joy that includes all the different qualities of our experience.”

 - Pema Chödrön  (1936- )

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Pema Chödrön

An ordained Buddhist nun, Pema Chödrön is an acclaimed author and teacher. Her works are primarily aimed at applying the principles originally taught by Buddha to everyday life. Before becoming a Buddhist, she worked as an elementary school teacher.

“When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn’t have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.”

 - Pema Chödrön  (1936- )

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