The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times
Gampo Abbey (Pleasant Bay, Cape Breton) · 2001
P
Pema Chödrön
Pema Chödrön
1936 CE · Modern · New York City
b. July 14, 1936 (living)
Pema Chödrön (b. Deirdre Blomfield-Brown, 1936) is an American Tibetan Buddhist nun and a senior teacher in the Shambhala lineage founded by Chögyam Trungpa. Ordained as a novice in 1974 and taking full bhikṣuṇī ordination in 1981—among the first American women in the Vajrayāna tradition—she became the founding director of Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia in 1984. She is widely read for accessible books such as When Things Fall Apart, drawing on the mind-training (lojong) and compassion teachings. She continues to teach.
Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→Trace on the map →
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Stop 1 of 2Born
New York CityUnited States
What they did here
Born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in 1936; worked as a schoolteacher before turning to Buddhism.
About New York City
New York City, in the US state of New York, began as the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam in the 1620s, was renamed by the English in 1664, and took its present five-borough form in 1898. Its universities, Columbia among them (founded 1754), made it a major centre of science and scholarship; B. R. Ambedkar earned his doctorate in economics at Columbia. Union Theological Seminary, founded in 1836, counted Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich among its faculty and hosted Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a fellow in 1930, and the Orthodox theologian Georges Florovsky also worked in the city. In 1930 Sokei-an founded what became the First Zen Institute of America there, an early landmark of Buddhism in the United States.
In New York City at the same time
Sokei-an (Shigetsu Sasaki), B. R. Ambedkar, Alan Watts, Robert Thurman, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Sharon Salzberg
Across the traditions, in New York City at the same time
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Pema Chödrön’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
Sokei-an (Shigetsu Sasaki), B. R. Ambedkar, Alan Watts, Robert Thurman, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Sharon Salzberg
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pema Chödrön’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works(2)
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
Gampo Abbey (Pleasant Bay, Cape Breton) · 1997