Showing results by author "Pema Chödrön" in All Categories

The best-selling author and beloved Buddhist teacher shares her insights on the practice of compassion and enlightened mind (bodhichitta). COMPASSION IS A SKILL. It’s not a special trait that we either have or don’t, but a practice that we can all nurture in our daily lives. And the benefits...

Beloved Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön has a unique gift for helping those of all faiths to work with their most difficult inner and outer challenges. In this supportive series of talks, listeners will join her at her best - showing us the way back to our wisest and most heartful selves. Here, Pema shares three simple, time-honored steps to practice when we are in pain or crisis.

The Sanskrit word paramitas means "actions that take us to the other shore". In this inspiring audio program, beloved teacher and author Pema Chödrön shows us how to use the six paramitas to move out of isolation and fear and into the compassion and courage of our awakened Buddha nature.

What would happen if we looked with fresh eyes at the struggles and "impossible situations" that we face every day - and found there four gifts that changed everything? For decades, Pema Chödrön has brought clarity and heart to the core teachings of the Buddha, helping to make them relevant and useful in our everyday lives. With The Truth of Our Existence, she immerses us in one of Buddhism’s essential distillations of written wisdom known as The Four Marks of Existence.

Pema Chodron is one of today's leading meditation teachers. With more than one million books sold to date, she draws sold out crowds across the U.S. and Canada. On Unconditional Confidence, she offers two accessible sessions to help anyone find courage in times of challenge and change.

Have you ever wanted to love and connect with others more deeply... but felt that you could use a little help shedding your "emotional armor" and opening your heart? With Awakening Love, Pema Chodron invites you to start wherever you are, amid any and all of the challenges, frustrations, or fears you may be facing, and to use them as the starting place to awaken the natural and boundless capacity to give and receive love more fully.

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.

When her granddaughter was accepted to Naropa University, the celebrated author Pema Chödrön promised that she'd speak at the commencement ceremony. Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better contains the wisdom shared on that day. "What do we do when life doesn't go the way we hoped?" begins Pema. "We say 'I'm a failure.'" But what if failing wasn't just "okay"... but the most direct way to becoming a more complete, loving, and fulfilled human being?

For over 800 years, Tibetan Buddhists have used lojong (literally, "mind training") to transform difficulties into insights, and conflict into genuine communication. Lojong practice uses a special meditation technique and 59 written maxims - a treasury of practical wisdom that inspires everyday awareness. Awakening Compassion is the first audio retreat on the practice of lojong taught by Pema Chödrön, the American-born Tibetan Buddhist nun and best-selling author.

Most of us are well aware of the benefits of meditation, and new research is providing us with more and more evidence of what the world's spiritual traditions have known for years: meditation can positively impact every area of our lives. So why do many of us struggle to make time for this...

Where will we look when we are afraid? How do we find strength? In what can we place our trust? According to Tibetan Buddhism, there are four noble aspirations, known as the Four Great Catalysts of Awakening, which we can call on to cultivate strength and openness in any situation. From Fear to Fearlessnessbrings us into the company of beloved teacher Pema Chödrön to discover and cultivate these four immeasurables: maitri (loving-kindness), compassion, joy, and equanimity.

How can human suffering become good medicine? Through tonglen: the ancient Tibetan meditation that transforms pain into compassion on the medium of your own breath. Pema Chödrön and Alice Walker in Conversation reveals the revolutionary power of tonglen through a dialogue between two hearts...

What do a Jesuit priest and a Buddhist nun have in common? It may sound like the opening to a joke, but it’s actually the question that initiated an extraordinary spiritual collaboration. Father Greg Boyle and Pema Chödrön came together in a night of interfaith conversation for a great cause: aiding Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest rehabilitation, re-entry, and job training program for former gang members. Originally founded by Father Greg in 1992, Homeboy Industries has helped thousands of people find renewed hope after leaving gang life.

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.

Tibetan Buddhism describes three gates that everyone must pass through on the road to spiritual liberation. With the Three Commitments, Pema Chodron brings her unique blend of insight and gentle instruction to guide practitioners through each of these thresholds as they seek the source of true happiness. As Pema explains, suffering arises when we resist the laws of impermenance-the fact that everything we know, including ourselves, will one day die.

Pain, loss, shame, sadness - suffering is an unavoidable part of being human. The practice of tonglen offers us a way to transform our relationship with suffering - our own and that which is all around us. In The Courage to Love the World, beloved teacher Pema Chödrön shares insightful and heartfelt stories about tonglen, along with direct instruction and guided practice.

For 1,300 years, Tibetans have been practicing shamatha-vipashyana (peaceful dwelling-insight), a profound form of meditation that illuminates and purifies the obstacles to spiritual realization. Tibetan Buddhists today regard shamatha-vipashyana as both the fundamental and the most advanced...

As a child, did you ever sit under a favorite tree, immersed in the wonder of a single, precious leaf? As our days grow more complex, teaches Pema Chödrön, these vibrant and wholehearted moments may begin to elude even seasoned meditators. But it doesn't have to be that way. Buddhism’s Four...

As a child, did you ever sit under a favortie tree, immersed in the wonder of a single, precious leaf? As our days grow more complex, teaches Pema Chodron, these vibrant and wholehearted moments may begin to elude even seasoned meditators. But it doesn't have to be that way. With Natural Awareness, this celebrated teacher guides us through Buddhism's Four Foundations of Mindfulness to a surprising destination: that effortless state of presence known as known as "non-meditation". It's a journey back to the unabashed presence and delight of the "Child Mind"....

Within the wisdom teachings of Buddhism, there are many stories that refer to its founder as the Supreme Physician, a healer of all illness—mental, physical, and spiritual. The Buddha understood suffering and its antidote, and his prescription and philosophy for right living led directly to a...