start where you are Pema Chodron

START WHERE You ARE is an indispensable handbook for cultivating fearlessness and awakening a compassionate heart. With insight and humor, Pema Chodron, author of The Wisdom of No Escape and When Things Fall Apart, presents down-to-earth guidance on how to make friends with ourselves and develop genuine compassion toward others. The author shows how we can "start where we are" by embracing rather than denying the painful aspects of our lives. Pema Chodron frames her teachings on compassion around fifty-nine traditional Tibetan Buddhist maxims, or slogans, such as: "Always apply only a joyful state of mind" "Don't seek others' pain as the limbs of your own happiness" "Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment" "Be grateful to everyone" Working with these slogans and through the practice of meditation, Start Where You Are shows how we can all develop the courage to work with our own inner pain and discover joy, well-being, and confidence.

PEMA C H O D R O N is an American Buddhist nun and one of the foremost students of Chogyam Trungpa, the renowned meditation master. She is the resident teacher at Gampo Abbey, in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the first Tibetan monastery in North America established for Westerners.