Working with groundlessness
The central argument of Pema Chödrön's teaching can be stated in one sentence: the moments when the ground falls away — illness, grief, failure, humiliation — are precisely the moments when the practice becomes real. The instinct is to protect, to close down, to find the ground again. Her instruction is to stay open: to lean into the sharp points rather than away from them. This is not stoicism. It is a practical application of the Vajrayāna view that the energy we resist is the same energy the practice is trying to liberate.
Tonglen
Tonglen — Tibetan for sending and taking — is her most distinctive teaching. Conventional breathing instinct takes in what is pleasant and releases what is painful. Tonglen deliberately reverses this: breathe in the suffering, breathe out ease. The practice is an embodied version of bodhicitta, the vow to hold all beings in care. It goes against every self-protective reflex, which is, in the Vajrayāna view, exactly the point: what keeps the heart closed is the very same mechanism that the practice is designed to open.
The Vajrayāna context
Her teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was one of the first Tibetan teachers to work directly with Western students, and one of the most controversial — his later years were marked by conduct that troubled many inside and outside his community. Pema Chödrön's decision to remain in the lineage while acknowledging its difficulties is itself a teaching in holding complexity without demanding resolution. The Karma Kagyü lineage she represents is one of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism — Vajrayāna, or tantric Buddhism — with a continuous lineage of teachers running back to Tilopa in the eleventh century.
In the index
When Things Fall Apart is the index's primary entry into the Pema Chödrön corpus — the book that most directly addresses the central situation: things are not working, and the practice has to meet that directly rather than promising it will improve. The course on awakening compassion covers tonglen and the broader lojong (mind training) tradition. Both sit under the Buddhism entry, where the Vajrayāna vehicle is mapped.
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