Awakening Compassion: Meditation Practice for Difficult Times

by Pema Chodron

Overview

For more than 800 years, Tibetan Buddhists have used the practice of lojong, or mind training, to transform difficulties into insights. Lojong training is grounded in a special meditation technique and complemented by 59 written maxims—a treasury of practical wisdom that inspires everyday awareness.

On Awakening Compassion, Pema Chödrön, one of the Western world's best-known lojong teachers and practitioners, shows you how to use your own painful emotions as stepping stones to wisdom, compassion, and fearlessness. You will learn how to make friends with the painful parts of your life experience and how to use your natural courage and honesty to transform even the most difficult situations.

With an informal teaching style, both playful and insightful, Pema Chödrön makes this timeless way of bringing compassion into the world easy to understand and apply to your own life. More than seven hours of practical, compassionate guidance for shedding your cocoon and meeting your world with fresh appreciation. Includes a nine-page study guide with lojong slogans and additional resources.

Learn More About:

How to see your life freshly, clearly, and vividly

• Using the lojong slogans to cultivate your bravery

• The attitude of a bodhisattva, or fully awakened person

• Practical techniques for working with jealousy, resentment, and rage

• How to open your heart in even the most difficult situations

• On-the-spot practices for dealing with anger, jealousy, and fear

• How to change the habits that shut you off from those who love you most

• The secret of transforming conflict into genuine communication

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781591791287
Publisher:	Sounds True
Publication date:	09/01/2003
Edition description:	Unabridged
Pages:	9
Product dimensions:	6.66(w) x 6.52(h) x 1.02(d)

About the Author

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. Pema has two children and three grandchildren.

While in her mid-thirties, 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 Pema received her ordination from him.

Pema first met her root teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, 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 Sixteenth Karmapa, she received the full monastic ordination in the Chinese lineage of Buddhism in 1981 in Hong Kong.

Pema served as the director of Karma Dzong, in Boulder, until moving in 1984 to rural Cape Breton, Nova Scotia to be the director of Gampo Abbey. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche asked her to work towards the establishment of a monastery for western monks and nuns.

Pema currently teaches in the United States and Canada and plans for an increased amount of time in solitary retreat under the guidance of Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche.

Pema is interested in helping establish the monastic tradition in the West, as well in continuing her work with Buddhists of all traditions, sharing ideas and teachings. She has written several books: The Wisdom of No Escape, Start Where You Are, When Things Fall Apart, The Places that Scare You, No Time to Lose, Practicing Peace in Times of War, and most recently, Smile at Fear.

For more information, visit pemachodronfoundation.org.