Pema Chödrön

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

There is no one outside to save us: nontheism is relaxing into uncertainty

No creator GodStated explicitly

Pema Chödrön, a nun of the Tibetan tradition trained by Chögyam Trungpa, addresses the question explicitly in When Things Fall Apart. There she presents Buddhism as nontheistic, but not in the sense of a thesis about the existence of God: nontheism consists in no longer seeking an outside figure, belief or babysitter to protect us from the ambiguity of the present moment. What she calls theism is the hope that someone will resolve our groundlessness for us; growing up means ceasing to wait for that. Instead of an absolute to be addressed, her teaching points to the openness of mind and to bodhichitta, the awakened heart, which are not held as beliefs but discovered by staying with experience as it is.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

The self is an attempt at solid ground; egolessness is openness, not loss

There is no permanent selfInferred from their doctrine

Pema Chödrön sets out the Buddhist teaching of the absence of a permanent self through the teaching of her teacher Chögyam Trungpa, whose work on ego she comments on in Another Kind of Freedom. Ego appears in her work less as a substance than as a strategy: the continual effort to manufacture a solid identity and firm ground in the face of a life that has none. In her teachings on the three marks of existence she presents egolessness as one of them, alongside impermanence and suffering. But she insists that discovering it is no threat: it is the condition of openness and of tenderness towards others, and what is found on letting go of identity is not a bleak void but an open mind that had never gone away.

Why do we suffer?

We suffer from seeking firm ground and biting the hook of reaction

Craving and attachmentStated explicitly

Pema Chödrön describes suffering as the result of fleeing groundlessness, which is the real condition of life. In When Things Fall Apart she holds that crisis is not a fault to be corrected but a kind of testing and also a kind of healing, and that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. Her best-known contribution is the Tibetan notion of shenpa, developed in Taking the Leap: the hook, the instant in which something catches us and drags us into the habitual reaction of anger, desire or flight. Pain is inevitable; what turns it into repeated suffering is biting the hook again and again. Recognising the hook and staying with the discomfort without acting it out interrupts the cycle.

What happens after death?

The bardos teach how to die and to live: every ending is a transition

Rebirth according to karmaStated explicitly

Pema Chödrön devoted a whole book to the question, How We Live Is How We Die, based on the Tibetan teachings on the bardos, the intermediate states between death and rebirth. She sets out her tradition's view: after death consciousness passes through states in which its mental habits carry it away or in which it may recognise the open nature of mind, and rebirth depends on this. But she presents these teachings above all as a guide for living: every ending in daily life, every loss and every change is a bardo in miniature, and the way we meet them now is the way we will meet death. Already in When Things Fall Apart she linked death with giving up the hope of firm ground.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

Start where you are: meditation, tonglen and mind training

Through disciplined practiceStated explicitly

Pema Chödrön proposes a path of gradual practice taken from Tibetan Buddhism. Its basis is sitting meditation, which she understands as unconditional friendship with oneself (maitri): seeing what arises with honesty and tenderness, without trying to improve oneself. On this are built lojong, the mind-training slogans she comments on in Start Where You Are, and tonglen, the practice of breathing in one's own and others' pain and breathing out relief. Her principle is that the difficult situations of daily life are the material of awakening: there is no need to wait for ideal conditions. The goal is to awaken bodhichitta, the open heart, and to live the three commitments she sets out in Living Beautifully.

Is a teacher necessary?

She always sought a teacher, yet teaches a practice that starts where you are

Helpful but not indispensableInferred from their doctrine

Pema Chödrön's path is bound up with her teachers. She trained for years with Chögyam Trungpa, whose teachings she still comments on, and after his death, as she has recounted, she felt a longing for someone to put her questions to, until she found Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, on whose instruction she bases her commentary on Shantideva in No Time to Lose. In her tradition the teacher has a central role. But her books are addressed to any reader and offer practices that can be done alone, from one's own situation. Her relationship to the institution has not been uncritical: in 2020 she stepped down as senior teacher of Shambhala, in a public letter, because she disagreed with the direction the community was taking.

Is the world real?

Nothing is solid or permanent: embracing the world as it is

A web of causes without substanceInferred from their doctrine

Pema Chödrön is not concerned with the reality of the world as a metaphysical problem; what interests her is how to live in it. Her view is the Buddhist one: everything is impermanent, nothing has a solid core, and life lacks firm ground. In Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change she organises her teaching around three commitments, the last of which consists in embracing the world as it is, with its chaos and unpredictability, without withdrawing into a refuge of certainties. The world is not a deception to escape from, but the only place where compassion can awaken; its instability, which frightens, is also what makes it alive and open.

What is love?

Compassion begins with unconditional friendship with oneself

Boundless compassionStated explicitly

Compassion is the centre of Pema Chödrön's work. Her starting point is maitri, unconditional friendship with oneself, which consists not in improving oneself but in knowing oneself with honesty and tenderness; without it, she holds, compassion for others becomes idealistic or condescending. In The Places That Scare You she sets out her tradition's four limitless qualities, love, compassion, joy and equanimity, and warns against their near counterfeits. Tonglen turns one's own pain into a bridge to others: when suffering something, one thinks of all who suffer the same and wishes them relief. The goal is bodhichitta, a heart that does not close to anyone, not even to those who harm us.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

Karma is habit, and habit can be interrupted in this very moment

Karma and choiceStated explicitly

Pema Chödrön presents karma less as destiny than as a pattern of habits. Each repeated reaction, anger, flight, attachment, strengthens the tendency to repeat it, and so the past conditions the present. But in that same mechanism lies freedom: in the instant when something hooks us, the shenpa she describes in Taking the Leap, there is a space in which one can recognise the impulse and not bite the hook. Each time the habit is interrupted the chain is weakened and another seed is sown. Her recorded teachings on karma develop this idea: we are not condemned to repeat ourselves, though change demands patience and the willingness to stay with discomfort.

Why meditate or pray?

Meditating is befriending oneself and seeing clearly what arises

Seeing reality as it isStated explicitly

Pema Chödrön teaches the shamatha-vipashyana meditation of Trungpa's tradition: one attends lightly to the out-breath, recognises thoughts, labelling them «thinking» if need be, and returns to the breath without self-judgement. In The Wisdom of No Escape she presents this practice as a form of unconditional friendship with oneself: one does not meditate to become someone else, but to know with precision and tenderness the person one already is. From this comes the capacity to see clearly what is happening, the impermanence of states and the hook of reactions, and to stay with discomfort without running away. Meditation is thus training of attention and of the heart at once.

Can reason know the ultimate?

She leaves the question aside: drop the storyline and touch experience

Did not address it

Pema Chödrön is not concerned with reason's capacity to know the ultimate; her work is practical, not epistemological. The closest thing is her advice, repeated in her books, to drop the storyline the mind tells itself, the story of why something offends or frightens us, and stay with the raw energy of experience without interpreting it. At the same time she values study: she has commented for years on Shantideva's Bodhicharyavatara and on the lojong slogans, and in Another Kind of Freedom she rereads Trungpa's work. The attitude she recommends is neither the sceptic's nor the believer's, but an open curiosity, interest in what is happening without needing to close the question.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

Peace in the world begins with not feeding one's own aggression

The revolution is innerStated explicitly

Pema Chödrön, who lives as a nun at Gampo Abbey, preaches neither withdrawal nor activism, but a transformation that begins in each person. In Practicing Peace in Times of War she locates the origin of war in everyone's aggressive reactions: each time someone bites the hook of anger and clings to their position against another, they sow the same seed that on a large scale produces conflicts. Practising peace consists in recognising that impulse and not acting it out. In Welcoming the Unwelcome she applies this idea to contemporary polarisation, asking us to respond without closing down or attacking. She does not deny the value of action in the world, but holds that without that inner work the cycle repeats itself.