WE can learn to rejoice in even the smallest blessings our life holds. It is easy to miss our own good fortune; often happiness comes in ways we don’t even notice.” Everything that occurs is actually the path itself. We can use everything as the means for waking up.

Here is a treasury of 108 short selections from the best-selling books of Pema Chödrön, the beloved Buddhist nun. Designed for on-the-go inspiration, this collection offers teachings on: Ani Pema served as the director of the Karma Dzong, in Boulder, CO, until moving in 1984 to rural Cape Breton, Nova Scotia to be the director of Gampo Abbey. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche gave her explicit instructions on establishing this monastery for western monks and nuns.

Ani Pema first met her root guru, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in 1972. Lama Chime encouraged her to work with Trungpa, and it was with him that she ultimately made her most profound connection, studying with him from 1974 until his death in 1987. At the request of the Sixteenth Karmapa, she received the full bikshuni ordination in the Chinese lineage of Buddhism in 1981 in Hong Kong. Whether we are violent, depressed, addicted or jealous, or even hate ourselves, these are good places to start – just where we are. We must allow ourselves to feel what we feel and not push it away. This means accepting every aspect of ourselves, even the parts we don’t like.

Every day we could reflect on this and ask ourselves, "Am I going to add to the aggression in the world?" Pema tells us that we already have everything we need and are “one blink of an eye away from being fully awake.” This is a treasury of 108 short selections from the best-selling books of Pema. Designed for on-the-go inspiration, this collection offers teachings on: I love Pema Chodron's style and approach. This book has some great excerpts from her books, but some of them don't work well out of context. Some would be super confusing if I was not already used to her style and Buddhism. I do like that they give the resource for every saying though, so if there is one that interests or confuses you, you can go read the full context. With that said though, the ideas skip around and I don't understand how they were organized, if at all. It feels like someone just put a whole bunch of quotes in a jar and then pulled them out randomly and inserted them into the book. Ani Pema Chödrön ( Deirdre Blomfield-Brown) is an American Buddhist nun in the Tibetan tradition, closely associated with the Kagyu school and the Shambhala lineage.

When you heart, comment or share, the article's "Ecosystem" score goes up—helping it to be seen by more readers & helping the author to get paid. Life is both glorious and wretched. Wretchedness softens us up considerably. "Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.”

I Love Pema Chadron. I really can't put my finger on it but whenever I read her I feel inspired to be a better person. She talks openly and honestly about how she fails at times to live you to the whole zen thing but she never makes you feel like you are an asshole if you are struggling to get to a higher plane of existence I guess is how I would put it.Difficulty is inevitable. We cannot escape the reality of death, and there are also the realities of “aging, of illness, of not getting what we want, and of getting what we don’t want”.

In her mid-thirties, Ani Pema met and studied with Lama Chime Rinpoche, becoming a novice nun in 1974 in London. She received ordination from His Holiness the Sixteenth Karampa during that time.Two years ago I didn’t know much about Pema Chodron. It wasn’t until I started to write for elephant journal that I started falling in love with so many snippets of Shambhala wisdom. A portable collection of short inspirational readings by “one of the world’s wisest women”—the American Buddhist teacher and author of When Things Fall Apart ( O, the Oprah Magazine) I admire her forthrightness, her ability to distill Buddhist thought into bite-sized morsels and above all, the sense of humor that is evident from behind her words. What is different about her writings is that she writes not as though she is enlightened but a person just like us with everyday problems and negative feelings.