Pema Chödrön | |
---|---|
Title | Bhikkhuni |
Personal | |
Born | Deirdre Blomfield-Brown July 14, 1936 |
Religion | Buddhism |
Children | Edward Bull Arlyn Bull |
Lineage | Shambhala Buddhism |
Education |
Sarah Lawrence College University of California, Berkeley |
Occupation | resident teacher Gampo Abbey |
Senior posting | |
Teacher |
Chögyam Trungpa Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche |
Website |
pemachodronfoundation |
Pema Chödrön (པདྨ་ཆོས་སྒྲོན། padma chos sgron “lotus dharma lamp”; born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown, July 14, 1936) is an American Tibetan-Buddhist. She is an ordained nun, former acharya of Shambhala Buddhism [1] and disciple of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. [2] [3] Chödrön has written several dozen books and audiobooks, and is principal teacher at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia. [3] [4]
Chödrön was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in 1936 in New York City. [2] [5] She grew up Catholic. [5] She attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and grew up on a New Jersey farm with an older brother and sister. [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]