Home Explore. My Cart. Advanced Search. Home Living Beautifully. Living Beautifully. Add to Cart. Amazon eBook Download X. Apple eBook Download X. Google eBook Download X. Kobo eBook Download X. Instead of dread or a need to control, we develop curiosity.
Everyone is bound to break the three vows over and over. Each time we do, we start again from wherever we are and reaffirm the vow. On the warrior path, we train in never turning away from our experience. We get there inch by inch, moment by moment, step by step, working with our heart and mind. Oct 05, Tanya McGinnity rated it really liked it. How can it feel both good and bad at the same time?
How can it be like medicine that burns going down but yet helps to soothe? Based on a series of talks delivered at Gampo Abbey in during a winter retreat, the material in the book centers around how we as laypeople can work with The Three Vows Pratimoksha, Boddhisattva and Samaya. The vows are viewed as a way to work with our lives and to provide us with an opportunity to wake up and be more gentle with ourselves and others.
She works to help untangle the confusion that comes from being born into the human realm such as uncertainty and impermanence and uses her own experiences as a nun, teacher, student and human being to illustrate the points within the book. In a nutshell, the vows relate to different methods and areas of focus to help work with ourselves and navigate in our world and link with the Three Vehicles of Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana and are as follows: Pratimoksha Vow: This vow relates to the commitments around personal liberation and not causing harm via words or actions.
Bodhisattva Vow: This vow moves towards helping others and working to ease the suffering of all sentient beings. The book is chock full of guidance and good advice and digs deep into feelings and emotions and how the vows can help us to untether from the usual storylines we find ourselves embroiled in. Take it or leave it.
The Eight Worldly Concerns are also mentioned in the book and hook into these teachings quite well on how the vows can guide us from being at the whims of such emotions, feelings and distractions.
Considering the author has put out numerous books, audio and video teachings, to a seasoned Pema fangirl like myself, some of the material is a bit repetitive ie: teachings on breathing, meditation, tonglen , but there is enough meat within to have kept me captivated regardless.
Jan 21, K. Johnson-Weider rated it it was amazing. An excellent book, presenting the three levels of Buddhist vows in the Tibetan tradition called the Pratimoksha, Bodhisattva, and Samaya Vows in the form of three commitments that correspond to three components of spiritual training and growth.
Pema Chodron always seems very understanding of the problems we are facing, while also being relentlessly insistent that we can do this spiritual warrior training, no matter where we are starting from or what we are grappling with.
Thus her teachings se An excellent book, presenting the three levels of Buddhist vows in the Tibetan tradition called the Pratimoksha, Bodhisattva, and Samaya Vows in the form of three commitments that correspond to three components of spiritual training and growth. Thus her teachings seem completely practical at the same time that they are very inspiring. Two of my favorite quotes from this book: "We have a choice.
We can spend our whole life suffering because we can't relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased.
This can be a painful experience. I can't overestimate the importance of accepting ourselves exactly as we are right now, not as we wish we were or think we ought to be. By cultivating nonjudgmental openness to ourselves and to whatever arises, to our surprise and delight we will find ourselves genuinely welcoming the never-pin-downable quality of life, experiencing it as a friend, a teacher, and a support, and no longer as an enemy.
Jun 30, Paula Cappa rated it it was amazing. This is about building inner strength, emotionally and mentally. Choosing to be brave! Chodron explains about taking a fresh look at your belief system that causes pain and suffering and going through the process of releasing and finding your true self.
Chodron says that we all cling to fixed ideas and our fixed identity and therein lies the problem. Unmask, let go, open the mind and heart. Be totally honest. She uses a metaphor of a rapidly moving river as life. We are clinging to the shore, af This is about building inner strength, emotionally and mentally. We are clinging to the shore, afraid to let go. Getting comfortable with uncertainty and change is essential to a happy life and relationships.
Most of this philosophy comes from Buddhism. There is an excellent instruction on meditation and explanation about posture, eyes, mouth, hands, and breathing. Rewarding reading all the way through! Sep 29, John rated it it was amazing Shelves: fav. A really great book that found me at a really opportune time. As a person who deals with fear by bracing myself and rushing through, the practices described are challenging and I believe will help me in the long run.
I borrowed this from the library and I think I will re-read to enjoy it all over again. Apr 03, Margot Note added it. This allows you to have a direct experience of it, free of interpretation" Feel your heart. And engage the next moment without an agenda" They don't magically disappear You're left with the feelings you were trying to escape. The practice is to make a wholehearted relationship with that" We are fundamentally good, not fundamentally flawed, and we can trust this" Embracing the totality of your experience is one definition of having loving-kindness for yourself.
Loving-kindness for yourself does not mean making sure you're feeling good all the time--trying to set up your life so that you're comfortable every moment. Rather, it means setting up your life so that you have time for meditation and self-reflection, for kindhearted, compassionate self-honesty. In this way you become more attuned to seeing when you're biting the hook, when you're getting caught in the undertow of emotions, when you're grasping and when you're letting go. This is the way you become a true friend to yourself just as you are, with both your laziness and your bravery.
There is no step more important than this" We never fully arrive. When we're present with the dynamic quality of our lives, we're also present with impermanence, uncertainty, and change" Life doesn't have to be one way or the other.
We don't have to jump back and forth. We can live beautifully with whatever comes--heartache and joy, success and failure, instability and change" We can hold them both--indeed hold it all--at the same time, remembering that everything in these quixotic, unpredictable, unsettled and unsettling, exhilarating and heart-stirring times is a doorway to awakening in sacred world" Apr 04, Pradeep Gunda rated it liked it Shelves: to-repeat , being-better , spiritual , country-american.
Despite being a short one , this has been a strenuous read, demanding complete attention while reading, as a poetic justice to the content it presents! I read this one after many other spiritual but this one still managed to present a different perspective about being completely present and live to the fullest! Pema nicely explains the basic human tendency to label things as an escape from feeling the complete uncertainty of life.
Some powerful lines I liked from the book below Whatever is see Despite being a short one , this has been a strenuous read, demanding complete attention while reading, as a poetic justice to the content it presents! Whatever is seen with the eyes is vividly unreal in emptiness, yet there is still form!
Whatever is heard with the ears is the echo of emptiness, yet real. A favorite poem from the book! Apr 24, Miranda rated it it was amazing. This book was my introduction to Pema Chodron, and she's quickly become one of my favourite authors. She is an American Tibetan Buddhist ordained nun. A lot of her work centres on impermanence and groundlessness.
She speaks about how while these things are what humans fear the absolute most, it is during these experiences which are entirely inevitable that we are actually in touch with our truest essence.
These sentiments have helped me through some challenging life experiences and have become This book was my introduction to Pema Chodron, and she's quickly become one of my favourite authors. These sentiments have helped me through some challenging life experiences and have become a staple in quelling my existential dread. Her writings are extremely digestible, relatable, and she displays good use of humour.
This will be a book that I will continue to return to for the rest of my life. Pema Chodron is my favorite spiritual teacher. Whenever I feel sad or depressed I always go to her teachings or listen to her audio books.
She is always wise,funny and down to earth. In this book she talks about how to embrace life as it is, how to embrace groundless and restless and how to refrain from bad habits that make our life worse.
She talks about three commitments that we need to make in order to have better life. This is not about chasing happiness or temporary pleasures but it is rath Pema Chodron is my favorite spiritual teacher. This is not about chasing happiness or temporary pleasures but it is rather about embracing life as it is with all its highs and lows and changes.
This is a hard book to categorize because I think whether you like it or not will be where you are in your life and whether you are ready for it. I think I was ready. I enjoyed this book over a series of days. I could only read a bit at a time and then needed to digest. That being said, I think to get full beauty from this book, I am going to need to read it again.
I am not so good at that re-reading part I definitely like the book's philosophy and do recommend. There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one ». For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser. Also see our profile and Reader's Guide to the works of Pema Chodron. She taught as an elementary school teacher for many years in both New Mexico and California. Pema has two children and three grandchildren. While in her mid-thirties, Ani Pema traveled to the French Alps and encountered Lama Chime Rinpoche, with whom she studied for several years.
She became a novice nun in while studying with Lama Chime in London. Lama Chime encouraged her to work with Rinpoche, and it was with him that she ultimately made her most profound connection, studying with him from until his death in At the request of the Sixteenth Karmapa, she received the full bikshuni ordination in the Chinese lineage of Buddhism in in Hong Kong.
She currently teaches in the United States and Canada and plans for an increased amount of time in solitary retreat under the guidance of Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche.
She is interested in helping to establish Tibetan Buddhist monasticism in the West, as well as continuing her work with Western Buddhists of all traditions, sharing ideas and teachings.
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