When everything seems to fall apart—when fear, anxiety, and pain seem constant—how do we keep going?
In times like these, Pema Chödrön's most beloved and acclaimed book offers a path forward. 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.
This is a rare, commemorative edition that was released slightly before the book’s 20th anniversary in honor of Ani Pema’s 80th birthday in 2016.
Ani Pema Chödrön was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in 1936, in New York City. She attended Miss Porter’s School in Connecticut and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. She taught as an elementary school teacher for many years in both New Mexico and California.
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 Karmapa during that time.
Pema first met her root guru, the teacher with whom she had the most profound connection, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in 1972, and she studied closely with him until his death in 1987.
In 1984, at the behest of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Ani Pema moved from Boulder, Colorado to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia to be the director of Gampo Abbey. She currently teaches throughout the United States and Canada and continues her studies and meditative retreat under the guidance of Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche.
The nonprofit Pema Chödrön Foundation was established to further Ani Pema’s interest in helping establish Tibetan Buddhist monasticism in the West as well as to support the continuation of her teachings across traditions.