Pema Chödrön

Did You Know?

• She grew up Catholic on a New Jersey farm with an older brother and sister.
• She earned a bachelor's degree in English literature from Sarah Lawrence College and a master's degree in elementary education from the University of California, Berkeley.
• A central theme of her teaching is the principle of 'shenpa', or 'attachment', which she interprets as the moment one is hooked into a cycle of habitual negative thoughts and actions.

Career

Pema Chödrön first encountered Buddhist teachings through Lama Chime Rinpoche, traveling frequently to London to study with him over several years. She later trained under Trungpa Rinpoche in San Francisco. In 1974, she became a novice Buddhist nun with the sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, as her preceptor. Seven years later, in Hong Kong, she made history as the first American in the Vajrayana tradition to receive full ordination as a bhikṣuṇī. Trungpa Rinpoche put her in charge of the Boulder Shambhala Center in Colorado during the early 1980s. She relocated to Gampo Abbey in 1984—the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in North America designed for Western men and women—and took on the role of its first director in 1986. Her debut book, The Wisdom of No Escape, hit shelves in 1991. In 1993, Trungpa’s son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, took over the Shambhala lineage and granted her the title of acharya. A bout with chronic fatigue syndrome struck in 1994, though she gradually recovered. During that time, she met Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche and accepted him as her teacher. That same year saw the publication of Start Where You Are, followed by When Things Fall Apart in 1996. Her commentary on Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, No Time to Lose, came out in 2005, the year she joined the Committee of Western Bhikshunis. Practicing Peace in Times of War was released in 2007. In 2016, the Chinese Buddhist Bhikkhuni Association of Taiwan presented her with the Global Bhikkhuni Award. She stepped down from her acharya position with Shambhala International in 2020, explaining that the organization’s response to sexual misconduct allegations had taken it in an unwise direction, making it impossible for her to continue as a senior teacher and representative.