Pema Chodron is a leading exponent of teachings on meditation
and how they apply to everyday life. She is widely known for her charming
and down-to-earth interpretation of Tibetan Buddhism for Western audiences.
Pema is the resident teacher at Gampo
Abbey, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia,
the first Tibetan monastery for Westerners and has authored several
books, including: Oprah
Talks to Pema Chodron: Buddhism has been described as a religion,
philosophy, ideology and a way of life. Pema Chödrön, one
of the first Western women to become fully ordained as a Buddhist monastic
and author of When Things Fall Apart, talks to Oprah about learning
from pain and what it means to be a Buddhist.
Ane Pema Chodron 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 (Go Bears!).
She taught as an elementary school teacher for many years in both New
Mexico and California. Pema has two children and three grandchildren.
While in her mid-thirties, Ane Pema traveled to the French
Alps and encountered Lama Chime Rinpoche, with whom she studied for
several years. She became a novice nun in 1974 while studying with Lama
Chime in London. His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa came to England
at that time, and Ane Pema received her ordination from him.
Pema first met her root guru, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche,
(the "Vidyadhara") in 1972. Lama Chime encouraged her to work
with Rinpoche, 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 Karmapa, she received the full bikshuni
ordination in the Chinese lineage of Buddhism in 1981 in Hong Kong.
She first met Ayya Khema at the first Buddhist nuns conference in Bodhgaya
India in 1987, and they were close friends from that time until her
death. To
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QUOTES
• We work on ourselves
in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on
ourselves. Pema Chodron
• When we start out
on a spiritual path we often have ideals we think we're supposed to
live up to. Pema Chodron
• If we learn to open
our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be
our teacher.
• There's a reason you
can learn from everything: you have basic wisdom, basic intelligence,
and basic goodness.
• Compassionate action
starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and
when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just
contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of
those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live. - In
the Gap Between Right and Wrong. Pema Chodron
