Welcoming the Unwelcome: Wholehearted Living in a Brokenhearted World

Welcoming the Unwelcome — Wholehearted Living in a Brokenhearted World is Pema Chödrön's 2019 book, published by Shambhala, written explicitly as a response to the politically and emotionally polarised landscape of the late-2010s United States. The book extends her earlier lojong-based teaching on aversion and bias (Start Where You Are, 1994; Practising Peace in Times of War, 2006) into a treatment of contemporary triggers — racial and gender division, online conflict, the experience of feeling helpless about climate and politics — and uses the practice of tonglen as the operational core for working with what the title calls the unwelcome.

The book is more explicitly social and political in scope than her earlier volumes, while keeping the same Shambhala-tradition contemplative scaffolding. Its twenty chapters include practical instructions for sitting meditation, tonglen, and a four-step engagement practice Chödrön calls LESR (Locate, Embrace, Stop, Remain), alongside personal stories and teaching.

Contents

Reception

Welcoming the Unwelcome is Pema Chödrön's most recent full-length book to date and the volume in which the longer arc of her teaching engages explicitly with the engaged-Buddhist conversation around social and political conflict that Thich Nhat Hanh, Joan Halifax, Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara and Larry Yang have developed over the same period. Reception inside the convert-Buddhist sangha (Lion's Roar, Tricycle) treated the book as a careful but firm extension of the lojong tradition into the political register; reception outside (the New York Times Style section, Vox's culture desk) framed it as a contemplative response to the 2016–2018 political moment in particular. Critics inside the Shambhala lineage following the 2018 leadership crisis at Shambhala International have noted the book's silence on that crisis as a striking omission given its title; Chödrön has discussed her decision around that silence in interviews with Lion's Roar in 2019 and 2020. The book remains continuously in print and is the most-translated of Chödrön's titles after When Things Fall Apart.

Frequently asked

What is Welcoming the Unwelcome about?

It is Pema Chödrön's 2019 response to the polarised political and social landscape of the late-2010s. Drawing on her lojong and tonglen teachings, the book shows how to stay open — rather than harden into aversion or bias — when faced with difficulty, conflict, or the kind of social division that characterised that decade.

How does it differ from her earlier books?

Chödrön's earlier books (When Things Fall Apart, 1996; Start Where You Are, 1994) address personal difficulty and habitual patterns. Welcoming the Unwelcome is more explicitly social and political: it applies the same lojong-based instruction directly to contemporary triggers like racial division, online conflict, and political helplessness — and is more overtly engaged-Buddhist in orientation.

What practices does the book teach?

The book covers three core practices: basic sitting meditation as a foundation; tonglen (the Tibetan sending-and-taking practice, where one breathes in others' difficulty and breathes out relief); and LESR — Locate, Embrace, Stop, Remain — a four-step on-the-spot method for working with a difficult reaction as it arises.