Pema Chödrön

Chödrön was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in 1936 in New York City.^[2][5] She grew up Catholic.^[5] She grew up on a New Jersey farm with an older brother and sister, and graduated from Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut.^[5][6] She obtained 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.^[2]

Chödrön began studying with Lama Chime Rinpoche during frequent trips to London over a period of several years.^[2] While in the United States she studied with Trungpa Rinpoche in San Francisco.^[2] In 1974, she became a novice Buddhist nun under Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, the sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa.^[2][7] In Hong Kong in 1981 she became the first American in the Vajrayana tradition to become a fully ordained nun or bhikṣuṇī.^[6][8][9]

Trungpa appointed Chödrön director of the Boulder Shambhala Center (Boulder Dharmadhatu) in Colorado in the early 1980s.^[10] Chödrön moved to Gampo Abbey in 1984, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in North America for Western men and women, and became its first director in 1986.^[4] Chödrön's first book, The Wisdom of No Escape, was published in 1991.^[2] Then, in 1993, she was given the title of acharya when Trungpa's son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, assumed leadership of his father's Shambhala lineage.^{[citation needed]}

In 1994, she became ill with chronic fatigue syndrome, but gradually her health improved. During this period, she met Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche and took him as her teacher.^[2] That year she published her second book, Start Where You Are^[2] and in 1996, When Things Fall Apart.^[2] No Time to Lose, a commentary on Shantideva's Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, was published in 2005.^[11] That year, Chödrön became a member of The Committee of Western Bhikshunis.^[12] Practicing Peace in Times of War came out in 2007.^[13] In 2016 she was awarded the Global Bhikkhuni Award, presented by the Chinese Buddhist Bhikkhuni Association of Taiwan.^[14] In 2020 she resigned from her acharya role from Shambhala International, in part due to the group's handling of sexual misconduct allegations, saying, "I do not feel that I can continue any longer as a representative and senior teacher of Shambhala given the unwise direction in which I feel we are going."^[1][15]

Chödrön teaches the traditional "Yarne"^[16] retreat at Gampo Abbey each winter and the Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life in Berkeley each summer.^[5] 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 or self-destructive thoughts and actions. According to Chödrön, this occurs when something in the present stimulates a reaction to a past experience.^[5]

Chödrön married at age 21 and has two children. She divorced in her mid-twenties.^[2] She remarried and then divorced a second time eight years later.^[2] She has three grandchildren, all of whom reside in the San Francisco Bay Area.^[17]

One of Chödrön's most famous books is When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. In her work, Chödrön discusses uncertainty and how to find the good in discomfort.^{[18] [19]}

• Profile at the Pema Chödrön Foundation