Pema Chodron: Core Teachings, Key Ideas and Practices

A clear account of Pema Chodron teachings on groundlessness and staying with difficulty, her life and books, how to do tonglen practice step by step, and the criticism she has faced.

Who is Pema Chodron and what does she actually teach?

Pema Chodron is an American Buddhist nun in the Tibetan tradition, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in New York City in 1936, and the author of When Things Fall Apart and a long shelf of related books. Raised Catholic and educated at Miss Porter's School in Connecticut, she went on to Sarah Lawrence College and the University of California, Berkeley, and worked for years as an elementary school teacher in New Mexico and California. She married twice and had two children, and both marriages ended in divorce. The collapse of the second sent her looking for something that could account for the experience rather than repair it, which is the biographical seed of nearly everything she later taught. Pema Chodron's teaching is narrow and repeatable. She argues that the ordinary human strategy of arranging life so that nothing painful reaches us is the source of most suffering, and that the alternative is to stay with discomfort long enough to stop being run by it. Around that claim she builds instruction on meditation and on the Tibetan mind-training slogans.

What separates Pema Chodron from most Western dharma writers is her refusal to promise improvement. Her books do not describe a state you reach, and they do not treat difficulty as a phase that precedes something better. The Wisdom of No Escape, her first book, takes its title from the position it argues for, which is that there is nowhere to get to and no exit from the conditions of a life. In her framing, that is good news rather than bleak news, because the energy spent maintaining an escape route becomes available once the search is dropped. She also writes about herself without much varnish. Accounts of losing her temper or of wanting a difficult situation to end appear throughout the books, and they carry the argument better than the doctrinal passages do. Readers arriving for inspiration often report being unsettled instead, because Pema Chodron keeps returning them to the exact thing they came to the book to avoid.

How did Pema Chodron become a Buddhist nun?

Pema Chodron met Lama Chime Rinpoche while traveling in the French Alps in her mid-thirties and studied with him during subsequent visits to London. She took novice ordination in 1974 from the Sixteenth Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, and in 1981 received full bhikshuni ordination in Hong Kong through the Chinese lineage, since the Tibetan tradition did not have an intact ordination line for women. She is often described as among the first American women to hold that full ordination.

What is Gampo Abbey and what was Pema Chodron's role there?

Gampo Abbey is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery on the coast of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, founded in 1984 within the Shambhala lineage established by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Pema Chodron had been directing the Karma Dzong center in Boulder, Colorado, and moved to Cape Breton to become the abbey's first director. She remained its resident teacher for decades, and the long winter retreats there are where much of the material in her books was first delivered as talks to monastics.

What does Pema Chodron mean by groundlessness?

Groundlessness, in Pema Chodron's usage, is the accurate description of a situation in which nothing you can hold on to will hold still. It is not a mood and not a spiritual attainment. She uses the word for the ordinary fact that health, relationships, reputation, and the sense of who you are all change without asking permission, and that no amount of planning converts them into solid footing. The Buddhist background is impermanence and the absence of a fixed self, but Pema Chodron almost never argues it philosophically. She points instead to the moment a diagnosis arrives or a partner leaves, and notes that the ground was never there before those events either. What changed was only your ability to pretend. Her claim about groundlessness is that the discomfort people feel in those moments is not the loss itself but withdrawal from an addiction to solid ground. She treats the free fall as the beginning of accuracy rather than a problem to be solved, and much of her instruction is about how to remain in it without immediately grabbing something.

Pema Chodron distinguishes between the fact of groundlessness and the panic reaction to it, which she treats as separate events. The fact is neutral. The reaction is a set of familiar moves, including blaming someone, building a story, seeking reassurance, or reaching for whatever reliably numbs. She calls the moment before those moves fire the most useful moment available, because it is the only point where a different outcome is still possible. Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change, published in 2012, is her most sustained treatment of the theme and organizes it around three commitments drawn from Buddhist vow traditions, moving from not causing harm, to taking care of others, to embracing the world without conditions. Pema Chodron does not claim groundlessness feels pleasant once understood. She describes it as continuing to feel like falling, with the difference being that you stop treating the falling as evidence that something has gone wrong.

Is groundlessness the same thing as anxiety?

No. Pema Chodron treats groundlessness as a description of how things are, while anxiety is one possible response to noticing it. She does describe the physical signature of the two as similar, including the dropping sensation in the stomach and the urge to do something immediately. The distinction matters practically, because anxiety pushes toward action that restores a feeling of control, whereas her instruction is to feel the sensation without acting and to let the situation stay unresolved for longer than is comfortable.

Why does Pema Chodron call groundlessness good news?

Pema Chodron argues that maintaining the illusion of solid ground consumes enormous effort, and that the effort is the source of much ordinary exhaustion and defensiveness. If nothing is solid, then nothing has to be defended, and the energy spent on defense becomes available for other things. She also argues that a person who has stopped requiring stability can act with more warmth toward others, since much unkindness comes from protecting a position. The claim is hers rather than an established finding, and readers can test it only in their own experience.

What is the core message of When Things Fall Apart?

When Things Fall Apart argues that the moments when your life comes apart are more workable than the moments when it holds together, because the usual defenses are temporarily out of order. Published by Shambhala Publications in the 1990s and assembled from talks given at Gampo Abbey, the book is the reason most readers know the name Pema Chodron at all. Its chapters are short, largely independent, and written for someone who cannot concentrate, which is a deliberate choice for a book aimed at people in crisis. The central instruction is stated many ways but does not change. When something painful arises, do not fix it, explain it, or escape it immediately. Stay with the physical experience of it for as long as you can, then a little longer. Pema Chodron calls the willingness to do this the practice of leaning in, and she treats it as the opposite of the more familiar advice to be positive or to move on. The book also introduces maitri, which she translates as unconditional friendliness toward yourself, including toward the parts you would rather not have.

The book's structure is worth noticing. Rather than building an argument across chapters, When Things Fall Apart circles the same instruction from different angles, which means a reader can open it anywhere. That design has kept it useful in hospital waiting rooms for decades, and it is also why the book resists summary. A page of quotations does not carry the effect, because the effect comes from repetition. Pema Chodron's treatment of hopelessness is the part readers most often find surprising. She writes about giving up hope as a positive step, meaning the specific hope that this situation will resolve into something comfortable, and she distinguishes that from despair. In her framing, hope and fear are the same movement, since both keep attention fixed on a future that has not arrived. That argument is unusual in the self-help market where the book is often shelved, and it accounts for both the loyalty and the resistance it attracts.

What does Pema Chodron mean by leaning in?

Leaning in, in Pema Chodron's teaching, means moving attention toward an unpleasant feeling rather than away from it, at the level of physical sensation rather than thought. The instruction is concrete. Locate where the feeling sits in the body, describe its texture to yourself, and keep attention there while the impulse to check your phone or call someone rises and passes. She contrasts this with both suppression and venting, since both end the contact with the feeling rather than sustaining it.

Is When Things Fall Apart a self-help book?

When Things Fall Apart is usually shelved as self-help but does not follow the genre's logic, since it offers no program, no stages, and no promised outcome. It is a collection of Buddhist dharma talks addressed originally to monastics and lightly adapted for general readers. The confusion is understandable because the book is genuinely practical and avoids technical vocabulary. Readers expecting a method with steps sometimes find it frustrating, and readers expecting encouragement sometimes find it cold.

What is shenpa and how do you catch it in daily life?

Shenpa is the Tibetan word Pema Chodron popularized in English as getting hooked, and it names the split second of tightening that arrives before a habitual reaction takes over. She credits the framing to Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, who describes shenpa as the charge underneath liking and not liking. The practical point is that shenpa is physical and arrives first. Someone makes a remark, and before any thought forms there is a clench in the chest or a heat rising in the face. The story about why the remark was unfair comes afterward, and by then the reaction is usually already committed. Pema Chodron's instruction is to intervene at the physical stage, which she treats as the only leverage point that exists. Catching shenpa in daily life means learning your own early warning signs rather than studying the concept. Most people have two or three reliable ones, such as a tightening jaw or a sudden urge to explain themselves. Once the signal is recognized, the practice is to pause, feel the charge without acting, and wait for it to lose force, which it does surprisingly quickly when it is not fed by rehearsal.

Pema Chodron gives shenpa a life cycle, and understanding it changes what you look for. The hook fires, then comes the scratching, which is her word for whatever relieves the itch, whether that is a sharp reply, a drink, a purchase, or an hour of scrolling. The relief is real but brief, and it strengthens the pattern for next time. She describes the sequence as a chain reaction, and is clear that the aim is not to eliminate the hook, which will keep arising, but to stop the automatic scratching. Don't Bite the Hook, released as an audio program and later in print, is her most direct treatment of the material. The teaching maps closely onto what behavioral therapists call urge surfing, though the traditions arrived at it separately. Pema Chodron adds an element clinical versions usually omit, which is the instruction to extend warmth toward yourself while the urge is active rather than treating the hook as a personal failure.

What is Pema Chodron's three-breath pause?

The pause practice Pema Chodron teaches involves stopping whatever you are doing, taking three deliberate breaths while feeling the body, and then continuing. She suggests placing it at natural transitions such as before opening a laptop or after ending a call, and treats it as the smallest workable unit of practice for people who will not sit for thirty minutes. Its function is to interrupt momentum, and repetition matters more than duration.

How is shenpa different from an emotion?

Shenpa, as Pema Chodron uses the term, is not the emotion itself but the sticky quality that makes an emotion compelling. Anger can arise and pass without shenpa, whereas anger with shenpa produces the urge to act, rehearse, and justify. She locates shenpa closer to sensation than to feeling and describes it as a charge or a clutch. The practical consequence is that trying to analyze why you are angry usually happens too late, while noticing the clutch happens early enough to matter.

How do you actually do tonglen practice, step by step?

Tonglen practice reverses the ordinary instinct by breathing in what is painful and breathing out relief, and Pema Chodron teaches it in four stages that build on one another. Stage one is a brief flash of openness before anything else, a second or two of resting with a blank, clear mind. Stage two works with texture rather than content, breathing in heat, heaviness, and darkness, and breathing out coolness, lightness, and freshness, until the rhythm is established through the whole body rather than only the nose. Stage three brings in a real situation. Breathe in the specific pain you or someone you have in mind is experiencing, and breathe out whatever would relieve it, such as ease or ordinary comfort. Stage four widens the circle to include everyone else in the same situation, so the practice stops being about one person. A full session runs ten to twenty minutes. Pema Chodron also teaches on-the-spot tonglen, done in a few breaths when you encounter suffering in a hospital corridor or in the news, using the same reversal without the formal stages.

A workable first week looks like this. Days one and two, sit for ten minutes doing nothing but stages one and two, so the rhythm becomes familiar before emotional content is added. Day three, add stage three using a person you feel simple warmth toward, such as a friend having a hard week, since starting with your own worst material makes the practice harder than it needs to be. Days four and five, do the same for your own distress, breathing in the feeling as you find it rather than a tidied version. Days six and seven, add stage four and end each session with a short rest. Two errors are common enough to name. The first is trying to feel compassionate, which turns the practice into a performance when the instruction only asks you to move the breath. The second is bracing against the in-breath, which shows up as shallow breathing and a tight chest. If either appears, drop back to stage two.

Does tonglen practice mean you take on other people's suffering?

No, and Pema Chodron is explicit that tonglen practice does not transfer suffering from one person to another. The imagery is a training device that works on the practitioner's own resistance to discomfort, not a mechanism acting on the world. She describes the practice as dissolving the armor around the heart by repeatedly doing the opposite of what self-protection dictates. People who worry about absorbing harm are usually reassured by starting with stage two, which involves no other person at all.

Can you do tonglen for yourself?

Yes, and Pema Chodron often recommends starting there for people who find compassion for others easier than compassion for themselves. The version she teaches, sometimes called compassionate abiding, involves breathing the difficult feeling in fully, letting it be as unpleasant as it is, and breathing out a sense of room around it. She then suggests widening to include everyone else feeling the same thing at that moment, which keeps the practice from collapsing into self-absorption while still addressing your own pain.

Where did Pema Chodron's teachings come from?

Pema Chodron's teachings come from Tibetan Buddhism, and specifically from the lojong or mind-training tradition traced to the eleventh-century Indian master Atisha and organized in Tibet as the Seven Points of Mind Training. Lojong consists of pithy slogans, commonly numbered at fifty-nine, that are meant to be memorized and applied in ordinary situations rather than studied. Tonglen practice sits at the center of that system. Start Where You Are, published in 1994, is Pema Chodron's slogan commentary and is the book that most directly shows the lineage behind her popular writing. Her root teacher was Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the Tibetan lama who founded Naropa University and the Shambhala organization and who translated Tibetan practice into a blunt, secular-sounding English that she inherited wholesale. She has also cited Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, from whom she took the shenpa teaching, and she received ordination from the Sixteenth Karmapa. Her commentary on Shantideva's The Way of the Bodhisattva, published as No Time to Lose in 2005, connects her material to one of the most studied texts in Mahayana Buddhism.

Pema Chodron's influence has run in the other direction as well, mostly through people who are not Buddhists. Her framing of staying with difficulty has been absorbed into secular mindfulness curricula, hospice work, and a broad range of therapy practices, often without attribution. Her language about hopelessness and about not needing a situation to improve has spread further than the practice instruction attached to it. Within Buddhist publishing her role is more specific. Pema Chodron demonstrated that Tibetan mind training could be delivered in plain English to readers with no interest in ritual or lineage, and much of the subsequent Shambhala Publications catalog follows that template. She did this while remaining a fully ordained monastic in a traditional setting, which distinguishes her from popularizers who dropped the institutional side. The tension between those positions is what later made her resignation from Shambhala consequential.

What is lojong and why does Pema Chodron use it?

Lojong is a Tibetan mind-training system built on short slogans that are applied in daily situations rather than contemplated in isolation. Examples include instructions to treat obstacles as practice material and to drop the habit of cataloguing other people's faults. Pema Chodron uses lojong because it requires no retreat conditions and no special circumstances, which suits an audience of working adults. Start Where You Are and Always Maintain a Joyful Mind are her main slogan books, and both trace back through Atisha to the Seven Points of Mind Training.

How much of Pema Chodron's teaching comes from Chogyam Trungpa?

A great deal of it. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was Pema Chodron's root teacher, and concepts she uses regularly, including spiritual materialism and the emphasis on unconditional confidence, come directly from his teaching. Her prose style, which favors short declarative statements over scholarly hedging, is recognizably his. What Pema Chodron added was accessibility and a personal register that Chogyam Trungpa did not use, along with a sustained focus on tonglen practice as the central discipline rather than one technique among many.

Which Pema Chodron books should you read first?

Pema Chodron has written more than a dozen books, and they fall into three practical groups. The foundational trio is The Wisdom of No Escape from 1991, which is the clearest on basic meditation instruction, Start Where You Are from 1994, which is the lojong slogan commentary and the fullest early treatment of tonglen practice, and When Things Fall Apart from the 1990s, which is the crisis book and the best-known title. The second group develops specific themes. The Places That Scare You, published in 2001, treats fear and bodhichitta. No Time to Lose from 2005 is her Shantideva commentary and the most demanding thing she has written. Practicing Peace in Times of War from 2006 applies the material to aggression. Taking the Leap and Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change return to habit and groundlessness in shorter form. The third group is compilations, including Comfortable with Uncertainty and The Pocket Pema Chodron, which repackage existing material. Later titles include Welcoming the Unwelcome in 2019 and How We Live Is How We Die in 2022, which addresses dying and the Tibetan bardo teachings.

A caution about the catalog is worth stating plainly. Many Pema Chodron products are the same talks reissued in different formats, and the excerpt collections overlap heavily with the books they draw from. Readers who buy several titles at once often discover they have paid twice for material they already own. The audio programs, many produced by Sounds True, are frequently the original source, since most of her books began as recorded talks and were transcribed afterward. Some readers prefer the recordings, since timing and humor survive better in speech than on the page. Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better is a short illustrated book built from a commencement address she gave at Naropa University, closer to a gift item than a practice manual. How We Live Is How We Die is the most substantial late work and covers dying, which her earlier popular books touched only lightly.

What is the most difficult Pema Chodron book?

No Time to Lose, published in 2005, is by some distance the most demanding book Pema Chodron has written. It is a chapter-by-chapter commentary on Shantideva's The Way of the Bodhisattva, an eighth-century Indian text in verse, and it assumes a reader willing to work through classical Buddhist argument rather than skim for encouragement. Readers who found When Things Fall Apart approachable are sometimes surprised by it. It is also the book that shows most clearly that her popular writing rests on traditional study.

Are Pema Chodron's audio talks better than her books?

Many of Pema Chodron's books originated as recorded talks, so the audio versions are often the primary source rather than a secondary format. Listeners tend to notice humor and timing that the edited transcripts flatten, and guided practice is easier to follow when spoken. Books hold an advantage for reference and rereading, which matters for the slogan material in Start Where You Are. Anyone learning tonglen practice for the first time will usually find a guided recording easier than following written stages alone.

What criticism has Pema Chodron faced?

Pema Chodron has faced substantial and well-documented criticism, most of it concerning her position inside Shambhala during a period when abuse within that organization was being reported. In 2018 the Buddhist Project Sunshine reports, compiled by Andrea Winn, documented allegations of sexual misconduct within Shambhala, including allegations against its leader Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, who stepped back from his duties that year. The Phase 3 report published in August 2018 included an account from a woman who said that when she told Pema Chodron she had been raped by a Shambhala center director, Pema Chodron did not believe her and suggested she may have been a willing participant. In a public statement in September 2018, Pema Chodron acknowledged making those remarks, said she had contacted the woman to apologize directly, said she believed her account, and committed to listening better. Separately, a law firm engaged by Shambhala reported in 2019 on allegations against Sakyong Mipham. In January 2020 Pema Chodron resigned as an acharya, citing his stated intention to resume teaching and an interim board's invitation for him to lead a ceremony in Europe.

A second and longer-running criticism concerns her relationship to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. His heavy drinking and sexual relationships with students are documented by his own community and by outside reporting, and his appointed regent, Osel Tendzin, continued sexual contact with students after learning he was HIV positive, with at least one student subsequently infected. Critics argue that Pema Chodron's continued public devotion to Chogyam Trungpa, sustained across decades of writing, helped preserve the authority of a lineage in which those events occurred. She has addressed the question publicly more than once and has declined to explain the conduct away as enlightened activity, while also saying she cannot resolve it. That answer does not satisfy those who regard it as evasive. A separate criticism from within Buddhist circles is that her most popular writing detaches practice from ethical training and community accountability, making it easier to consume and harder to be corrected by.

Did Pema Chodron apologize for her response to an abuse allegation?

Yes. After the Buddhist Project Sunshine Phase 3 report appeared in August 2018 containing a woman's account that Pema Chodron had dismissed her report of rape by a Shambhala center director, Pema Chodron issued a public statement in September 2018. In it she acknowledged the remarks, said she had reached out to the woman directly to apologize, said she believed her, and said she intended to listen better in future. Commentators differed on whether the apology was adequate, and some found the delay significant.

Is Pema Chodron accused of misconduct herself?

No. The documented criticism of Pema Chodron concerns her response to reports of misconduct by others and her ongoing association with a lineage in which abuse occurred, not any allegation of abuse by her. This distinction is worth keeping clear, because online discussion of Shambhala often collapses the two. The specific and verified item on the record is her own 2018 acknowledgment that she dismissed a woman's account of assault, together with her apology for having done so.

How do Pema Chodron's teachings differ from Tara Brach's, and who do they not suit?

Pema Chodron and Tara Brach cover overlapping ground but come from different places and aim at different results. Tara Brach is a clinical psychologist as well as a meditation teacher, works in the Theravada and insight tradition rather than the Tibetan one, and built her best-known method, RAIN, as a four-step sequence ending in nurturing yourself. Radical Acceptance, her main book, is explicitly therapeutic in vocabulary and gives significant attention to shame and the self-critical mind. Pema Chodron is a Tibetan-lineage monastic whose material comes from lojong and whose central practice, tonglen, turns toward pain without offering a soothing endpoint. She uses almost no psychological vocabulary. The practical difference is temperature. Tara Brach tends to warm a distressed reader, while Pema Chodron tends to remove the reader's remaining escape routes. Neither approach suits everyone. Pema Chodron's teaching is a poor fit for someone in acute crisis who needs stabilization first, for someone whose difficulty is external and requires action rather than acceptance, and for anyone who reads acceptance as a reason not to leave a harmful situation.

The comparison extends to two other figures. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen teacher, shares her plain language but frames practice around present-moment awareness and social engagement rather than turning toward pain, and his tone is markedly gentler. Byron Katie works the same territory of painful thought through interrogation, asking whether a stressful belief is true, which is closer to argument than to sitting with sensation. Pema Chodron does not dispute the content of thoughts at all, a methodological difference rather than a matter of style. The honest limits of her approach are worth stating. It does not resolve situations, it does not produce a stable good mood, and it makes no claim to treat clinical conditions. It also asks for repeated exposure to discomfort, which some people find worsens their state. Those who report the most benefit are usually people whose problem is not fixable and who have run out of strategies for making it fixable.

Is Pema Chodron's teaching a form of spiritual bypassing?

Pema Chodron's core instruction is close to the opposite of spiritual bypassing, since bypassing means using spiritual ideas to avoid difficult feelings and she asks readers to stay in them. The fair version of the criticism is different, and concerns application rather than content. Advice to accept what is happening can be misread by someone in an abusive relationship or an exploitative workplace as a reason to remain. Pema Chodron's writing does not always distinguish clearly between the pain of being human and harm that should be left.

Who benefits most from Pema Chodron's teachings?

Pema Chodron's teachings tend to help people facing something that cannot be repaired, such as bereavement, a terminal diagnosis, an irreversible ending, or a chronic condition. Readers in those situations often report that the absence of promised improvement is precisely what makes the books usable, since encouragement rings hollow. They are less useful for someone with a solvable problem who needs a plan, and less useful for someone whose main need is comfort, because the instruction repeatedly declines to provide it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Pema Chodron still alive and still teaching?

Pema Chodron, born in 1936, is elderly and has stepped back sharply from public teaching. She resigned as an acharya of Shambhala in January 2020 and has not returned to a senior role in that organization. Her books remain in print with Shambhala Publications, her recorded talks continue to circulate, and new titles have appeared, including How We Live Is How We Die in 2022. Anyone looking for current teaching schedules should check the Pema Chodron Foundation or Gampo Abbey directly rather than rely on older listings.

Do you have to be Buddhist to use Pema Chodron teachings?

No. Pema Chodron writes for a general audience and her best-known books assume no prior Buddhist study, no membership, and no belief in rebirth or deities. The vocabulary is mostly ordinary English, and the core instruction, which is to stay with an uncomfortable feeling rather than act on it, does not depend on doctrine. That said, tonglen practice and the lojong slogans come from a specific Tibetan Buddhist lineage, and Pema Chodron does not pretend otherwise.

What is the difference between tonglen and metta or loving-kindness meditation?

Tonglen and metta both aim at compassion but move in opposite directions. Metta, the Pali loving-kindness practice taught by Sharon Salzberg and others, repeats phrases of goodwill and cultivates a pleasant, expansive feeling. Tonglen practice deliberately turns toward pain, breathing in what is unwanted and breathing out relief, and it does not aim to feel good. Beginners often find metta easier to sustain, and some teachers suggest building it first.

Which Pema Chodron book should a complete beginner start with?

Start with When Things Fall Apart if you are currently in difficulty, since its chapters are short and each one works on its own. Start with The Wisdom of No Escape if you want the meditation instruction laid out more plainly, since that book grew out of a month-long retreat and moves at a slower pace. Start Where You Are is the entry point for the lojong slogans and gives the fullest treatment of tonglen practice among her early titles.

What is shenpa in Pema Chodron's teaching?

Shenpa is the Tibetan term Pema Chodron renders as getting hooked, the sudden tightening and charge that arises just before a habitual reaction. She credits the framing to her teacher Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, who describes shenpa as the charge behind liking and not liking. Pema Chodron's instruction is to notice the hook early, stay with the raw sensation without feeding it, and let the urge subside on its own.

Why did Pema Chodron leave Shambhala?

Pema Chodron stepped down as an acharya of Shambhala in a letter to its board dated January 14, 2020, which was made public. She wrote that she was disheartened after Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche indicated he wished to resume teaching and an interim board invited him to lead a ceremony in Europe. Sakyong Mipham had stepped back in 2018 following reports of sexual misconduct published by Buddhist Project Sunshine, and a law firm investigation commissioned by Shambhala reported in 2019. Pema Chodron's stated objection was to the pace of the return, not a repudiation of the tradition itself.

Is tonglen practice safe if you are dealing with trauma or depression?

Tonglen practice deliberately turns attention toward pain, which makes it a poor first choice during acute trauma, active suicidal thinking, or an untreated depressive episode. Teachers commonly suggest starting with breath awareness or loving-kindness and adding tonglen later, beginning with a person you feel warmth toward rather than your own worst material. Pema Chodron presents her teaching as practice instruction, not treatment, and it is not a substitute for therapy. Anyone whose distress worsens during practice should stop and speak to a clinician.