Pema Chödrön
Encyclopedia
Pema Chödrön is a notable American
figure in Tibetan Buddhism
. A disciple of Chögyam Trungpa
Rinpoche, she is an ordained nun, author, and teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist
lineage which Trungpa founded.
A prolific author, she has conducted workshops, seminars, and meditation retreats in Europe
, Australia
, and throughout North America
. She is resident and teacher of Gampo Abbey
, a monastery in rural Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada
.
. She attended Miss Porters School in Farmington, Connecticut and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley
. She worked as an elementary school teacher in California and New Mexico before her conversion to Buddhism
.
Following a second divorce, Chödrön began to study with Lama
Chime Rinpoche in the French Alps
. She became a Buddhist nun in 1974 while studying with him in London
. She is a fully ordained bhikṣuṇī
in a combination of the Mulasarvastivadin
and Dharmaguptaka
lineages of vinaya
, having received full ordination in Hong Kong in 1981 at the behest of the sixteenth Karmapa
. She has been instrumental in trying to reestablish full ordination for nuns in the Mulasarvastivadin order, to which all Tibetan Buddhist monastics have traditionally belonged; various conferences have been convened to study the matter.
Ani Pema first met Chögyam Trungpa
Rinpoche in 1972, and at the urging of Chime Rinpoche, she took him as her root guru ("Ani" is a Tibetan honorific for a nun). She studied with him from 1974 until his death in 1987. Trungpa Rinpoche's son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
, appointed Chödrön an acharya (senior teacher) shortly after assuming leadership of his father's Shambhala
lineage in 1992.
Trungpa Rinpoche appointed Ani Pema director of the Boulder Shambhala Center (then Boulder Dharmadhatu) in Colorado in the early 1980s. It was during this period that she became ill with chronic fatigue syndrome
. In 1984, Ani Pema moved to Gampo Abbey
and became its director in 1986. There, she published her first two books. Her health gradually improved, she claims, with the help of a homeopath and careful attention to diet.
In late 2005, Pema Chödrön published No Time to Lose, a commentary on Shantideva
's Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life. She published Practicing Peace in Times of War in 2006.
Lama
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
, and spends seven months of each year in solitary retreat under his direction in Crestone, Colorado
.
Chödrön continues to teach the traditional Yarne (Tib. rainy season; Sanskrit: Vassāvāsa) retreat for monastics at Gampo Abbey
each winter. In recent years, she has spent the summers teaching on the Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life in Berkeley
. A central theme of her teachings is shenpa, the Tibetan
word for "attachment", which she interprets as anger, low self-esteem, or addiction in response to an insult by another person.
word shenpa, or how we get hooked.
, except her granddaughter who attends Naropa University
in Boulder, Colorado
.
Americans
The people of the United States, also known as simply Americans or American people, are the inhabitants or citizens of the United States. The United States is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...
figure in Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...
. A disciple of Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was a Buddhist meditation master and holder of both the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages, the eleventh Trungpa tülku, a tertön, supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and originator of a radical re-presentation of Shambhala vision.Recognized...
Rinpoche, she is an ordained nun, author, and teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist
Shambhala Buddhism
The term Shambhala Buddhism was introduced by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche in the year 2000 to describe his presentation of the Shambhala teachings, originally conceived by Chögyam Trungpa as secular practices for achieving enlightened society, in concert with the Tibetan Buddhist Kagyu and Nyingma...
lineage which Trungpa founded.
A prolific author, she has conducted workshops, seminars, and meditation retreats in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, and throughout North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. She is resident and teacher of Gampo Abbey
Gampo Abbey
Gampo Abbey is a Buddhist abbey located in Pleasant Bay, Nova Scotia.It was founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1984 as a centre of North American Buddhism in the Vajrayana tradition of the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. The Abbey is associated with the Vajradhatu Buddhist Church of...
, a monastery in rural Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada
Cape Breton Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia
Cape Breton Regional Municipality often shortened to simply CBRM, is a regional municipality in Nova Scotia's Cape Breton County.According to the 2006 Census of Canada, the population within the Cape Breton Regional Municipality is 102,250...
.
History
Pema Chödrön was born in or around 1936 in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. She attended Miss Porters School in Farmington, Connecticut and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. She worked as an elementary school teacher in California and New Mexico before her conversion to Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
.
Following a second divorce, Chödrön began to study with Lama
Lama
Lama is a title for a Tibetan teacher of the Dharma. The name is similar to the Sanskrit term guru .Historically, the term was used for venerated spiritual masters or heads of monasteries...
Chime Rinpoche in the French Alps
French Alps
The French Alps are those portions of the Alps mountain range which stand within France, located in the Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regions....
. She became a Buddhist nun in 1974 while studying with him in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. She is a fully ordained bhikṣuṇī
Bhikkhuni
A bhikkhuni or bhikṣuṇī is a fully ordained female Buddhist monastic. Male monastics are called bhikkhus. Both bhikkhunis and bhikkhus live by the vinaya...
in a combination of the Mulasarvastivadin
Mulasarvastivada
The Mūlasarvāstivāda was an early school of Buddhism, developed in India during the 2nd century AD and in decline by the 7th century. Its vinaya lineage has been preserved by Tibetans and Mongolians up to the present, although until recently, only Mulasarvastivadin monks existed - the lineage of...
and Dharmaguptaka
Dharmaguptaka
The Dharmaguptaka are one of the eighteen or twenty early Buddhist schools, depending on one's source. They are said to have originated from another sect, the Mahīśāsakas...
lineages of vinaya
Vinaya
The Vinaya is the regulatory framework for the Buddhist monastic community, or sangha, based in the canonical texts called Vinaya Pitaka. The teachings of the Buddha, or Buddhadharma can be divided into two broad categories: 'Dharma' or doctrine, and 'Vinaya', or discipline...
, having received full ordination in Hong Kong in 1981 at the behest of the sixteenth Karmapa
Rangjung Rigpe Dorje
The sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje was spiritual leader of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism...
. She has been instrumental in trying to reestablish full ordination for nuns in the Mulasarvastivadin order, to which all Tibetan Buddhist monastics have traditionally belonged; various conferences have been convened to study the matter.
Ani Pema first met Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam Trungpa
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was a Buddhist meditation master and holder of both the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages, the eleventh Trungpa tülku, a tertön, supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and originator of a radical re-presentation of Shambhala vision.Recognized...
Rinpoche in 1972, and at the urging of Chime Rinpoche, she took him as her root guru ("Ani" is a Tibetan honorific for a nun). She studied with him from 1974 until his death in 1987. Trungpa Rinpoche's son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
Sakyong Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche, Jampal Trinley Dradul is the head of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage and Shambhala International, a worldwide network of urban Buddhist meditation centers, retreat centers, monasteries, a university, and other enterprises, founded by his father, the Buddhist teacher...
, appointed Chödrön an acharya (senior teacher) shortly after assuming leadership of his father's Shambhala
Shambhala
In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala or Shangri-la is a mythical kingdom hidden somewhere in Inner Asia...
lineage in 1992.
Trungpa Rinpoche appointed Ani Pema director of the Boulder Shambhala Center (then Boulder Dharmadhatu) in Colorado in the early 1980s. It was during this period that she became ill with chronic fatigue syndrome
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Chronic fatigue syndrome is the most common name used to designate a significantly debilitating medical disorder or group of disorders generally defined by persistent fatigue accompanied by other specific symptoms for a minimum of six months, not due to ongoing exertion, not substantially...
. In 1984, Ani Pema moved to Gampo Abbey
Gampo Abbey
Gampo Abbey is a Buddhist abbey located in Pleasant Bay, Nova Scotia.It was founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1984 as a centre of North American Buddhism in the Vajrayana tradition of the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. The Abbey is associated with the Vajradhatu Buddhist Church of...
and became its director in 1986. There, she published her first two books. Her health gradually improved, she claims, with the help of a homeopath and careful attention to diet.
In late 2005, Pema Chödrön published No Time to Lose, a commentary on Shantideva
Shantideva
Shantideva was an 8th-century Indian Buddhist scholar at Nalanda University and an adherent of the Madhyamaka philosophy of Nagarjuna....
's Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life. She published Practicing Peace in Times of War in 2006.
Present
Pema Chödrön is a member of The Committee of Western Bhikshunis which was formed in 2005. She is currently studying with the VenerableVenerable
The Venerable is used as a style or epithet in several Christian churches. It is also the common English-language translation of a number of Buddhist titles.-Roman Catholic:...
Lama
Lama
Lama is a title for a Tibetan teacher of the Dharma. The name is similar to the Sanskrit term guru .Historically, the term was used for venerated spiritual masters or heads of monasteries...
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche is the title of a tulku lineage of Tibetan Buddhist lamas. They originate with Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye, one of the most illustrious lamas of recent history, known for his central role in the rimé or non-sectarian movement in 19th Century Tibet. Jigme Namgyel is the...
, and spends seven months of each year in solitary retreat under his direction in Crestone, Colorado
Crestone, Colorado
Crestone is a statutory town in Saguache County in Southwestern Colorado, United States. The population was 73 at the 2000 census. It is a small village at the foot of the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Range, in the northern part of the San Luis Valley. Crestone was a small mining town, but...
.
Chödrön continues to teach the traditional Yarne (Tib. rainy season; Sanskrit: Vassāvāsa) retreat for monastics at Gampo Abbey
Gampo Abbey
Gampo Abbey is a Buddhist abbey located in Pleasant Bay, Nova Scotia.It was founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1984 as a centre of North American Buddhism in the Vajrayana tradition of the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. The Abbey is associated with the Vajradhatu Buddhist Church of...
each winter. In recent years, she has spent the summers teaching on the Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life in Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
. A central theme of her teachings is shenpa, the Tibetan
Standard Tibetan
Standard Tibetan is the most widely used spoken form of the Tibetan languages. It is based on the speech of Lhasa, an Ü-Tsang dialect belonging to the Central Tibetan languages. For this reason, Standard Tibetan is often called Central Tibetan...
word for "attachment", which she interprets as anger, low self-esteem, or addiction in response to an insult by another person.
Teachings
A central theme of Pema Chödrön's teachings is the TibetanStandard Tibetan
Standard Tibetan is the most widely used spoken form of the Tibetan languages. It is based on the speech of Lhasa, an Ü-Tsang dialect belonging to the Central Tibetan languages. For this reason, Standard Tibetan is often called Central Tibetan...
word shenpa, or how we get hooked.
Personal life
Pema has two children and three grandchildren, all of whom live in the San Francisco Bay AreaSan Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
, except her granddaughter who attends Naropa University
Naropa University
Naropa University is a private American liberal arts university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher and Oxford University scholar Chögyam Trungpa, it is named for the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda.Naropa describes itself as...
in Boulder, Colorado
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
.