Pema Chödrön
Pema Chödrön | |
|---|---|
| File:Pema chodron 2007 cropped.jpg At the Omega Institute, May 2007. | |
| Title | Bhikkhuni |
| Personal | |
| Born | Deirdre Blomfield-Brown Script error: No such module "age". |
| Religion | Buddhism |
| Children | Edward Bull Arlyn Bull |
| Lineage | Shambhala Buddhism |
| Education | University of California, Berkeley |
| Occupation | resident teacher Gampo Abbey |
| Senior posting | |
| Teacher | Chögyam Trungpa Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche |
| Website | pemachodronfoundation |
Pema Chödrön (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, Canada.[3][4]
Early life and education
Chödrön was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in 1936 in New York City.[2][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 in elementary education from the University of California, Berkeley.[2]
Career
Chödrön began studying with Lama Chime Rinpoche during frequent trips to London over a period of several years.[2] While in the US 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.[citation needed] That year, Chödrön became a member of The Committee of Western Bhikshunis.[11] Practicing Peace in Times of War came out in 2007.[12] In 2016 she was awarded the Global Bhikkhuni Award, presented by the Chinese Buddhist Bhikkhuni Association of Taiwan.[13] In 2020 she retired from her acharya role from Shambhala International 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][14]
Teaching
Chödrön teaches the traditional "Yarne"[15] 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]
Personal life
Chödrön married at age 21 and had two children but was divorced in her mid-twenties.[2] She remarried and then divorced a second time eight years later.[2] She has three grandchildren who all live in the San Francisco Bay Area.[16]
Bibliography
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Famed Buddhist nun Pema Chodron retires, cites handling of sexual misconduct allegations against her group's leader" [archive]. Retrieved 2020-01-17.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 Andrea Miller (October 20, 2014). "Becoming Pema" [archive]. Lion's Roar. Retrieved 2014-10-21.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Ani Pema Chödrön" [archive]. Gampo Abbey. Archived from the original [archive] on 2013-03-24. Retrieved 2014-10-21.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Susan Neunzig Cahill (1996). Wise Women: Over Two Thousand Years of Spiritual Writing by Women [archive]. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 377 [archive]. ISBN 0-393-03946-3.
{{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Bill Moyers and Pema Chödrön . August 4, 2006 [archive]
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Haas, Michaela (2013). "Dakini Power: Twelve Extraordinary Women Shaping the Transmission of Tibetan Buddhism in the West". Snow Lion. ISBN 1559394072, p. 123.
- ↑ Fabrice Midal (2005). Recalling Chögyam Trungpa. Shambhala Publications. p. 476. ISBN 1-59030-207-9.
{{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ↑ Sandy Boucher (1993). Turning the Wheel: American Women Creating the New Buddhism [archive]. Beacon Press. pp. 93–97 [archive]. ISBN 0-8070-7305-9.
{{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ↑ James William Coleman (2001). The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition [archive]. Oxford University Press. p. 150 [archive]. ISBN 0-19-515241-7.
{{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ↑ Boucher (1993) pp. 96-97
- ↑ "The Committee of Western Bhikshunis: Ven. Bhiksuni Pema Chödrön" [archive]. Sep 17, 2006. Archived from the original [archive] on 2014-10-21. Retrieved 2014-10-21.
- ↑ "Practicing Peace In A Time Of War" [archive]. Retrieved 6 June 2017.
- ↑ "8 North American Buddhist nuns, including Pema Chödrön and Thubten Chodron, receive "Global Bhikkhuni Award" - Lion's Roar" [archive]. Lionsroar.com. 2016-11-10. Retrieved 2016-12-10.
- ↑ "Letter from Ani Pema Chödrön" [archive]. 2020-01-16.
- ↑ Buddhist Monks and Monasteries of India: Their History and Contribution to Indian Culture. George Allen and Unwin Ltd, London 1962. pg 54
- ↑ Staff Writer (Interview). "Oprah Talks to Pema Chödrön" [archive]. Oprah.com. Harpo Productions. Retrieved Dec 1, 2015.
External links
| Library resources |
| By Pema Chödrön |
|---|
- File:Commons-logo.svg Media related to Pema Chodron at Wikimedia Commons
- Profile at the Pema Chödrön Foundation [archive]
- Pages with script errors
- CS1 errors: empty unknown parameters
- Pages with broken file links
- Articles having same image on Wikidata and Wikipedia
- All articles with unsourced statements
- Articles with unsourced statements from December 2015
- Articles with invalid date parameter in template
- Articles with hatnote templates targeting a nonexistent page
- Commons category with local link different than on Wikidata
- 1936 births
- Living people
- 20th-century Lamas
- 20th-century American philosophers
- American Buddhist nuns
- American spiritual writers
- Buddhist nuns
- American Buddhist scholars
- Buddhist writers
- Converts to Buddhism from Roman Catholicism
- People with chronic fatigue syndrome
- Tibetan Buddhists from the United States
- Tibetan Buddhist teachers
- UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education alumni
- American women philosophers
- Writers from New York City
- Miss Porter's School alumni
- 20th-century American women writers
- Buddhist acharyas
- American women non-fiction writers
- 20th-century American non-fiction writers
- 20th-century Buddhist nuns
- 21st-century Buddhist nuns
- Sarah Lawrence College alumni