Product Description

Start Where You Are is an indispensable handbook for cultivating fearlessness and awakening a compassionate heart, from bestselling author Pema Chodron. With insight and humour, she presents down-to-earth guidance on how to make friends with ourselves and develop genuine compassion towards others. This book 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 a joyful state of mind', 'Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment' and '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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20196 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Review
"Pema's deep experience and her fresh way of looking at things are like mountain water -- clear and deep.' Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. 'As one of Pema Chodron's grateful students, I have been learning the most pressing and necessary lesson of all: how to keep opening wider my own heart.' Alice Walker 'It is a lively and accessible take on ancient techniques for transforming terror and pain into joy and compassion.' O, the Oprah Winfrey magazine

Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry
'Pema’s deep experience and her fresh way of looking at things are like mountain water - clear and deep.’

About the Author
Pema Chodron is an American Buddhist nun and one of the foremost students of Chogyam Trungpa, the renowned Tibetan meditation master. She is the author of The Wisdom of No Escape, Start Where You Are, The Places that Scare You and the best-selling When Things Fall Apart. She is the resident teacher at Gampo Abbey, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the first Tibetan monastery in North America established for Westerners.

Customer Reviews

Heart warming
Pema has done it again! She manages to write about the spiritual path and buddhist teachings with such simplicity and earthiness. This is not detached in any way. A moving book that teaches us all about ourselves and that nothing is forbidden, we are simply human beings moving through our life together. If you are on the path to discover who you really are then this is a book you should read.

Finally A Book That Supports the Embracing of Humaness!
Chodron's book was such a fresh breath! While most books are giving us the top ten reasons why we should deny, hide or get rid of our not-so-good feelings and emotions, she suggests that we start right there and breathe them in. She points out that as our feelings are shared simultaneously with millions of others, we are never alone. This is so obvious, but the point is rarely made.

Chodron teaches us that the self-improvement market can join the human experience! We are worthy as is.

Terrific way to restart your life
This book changed many of my perspectives on life. Ms. Chodron teaches a simple method to handle daily up and downs along with the really tough situations. If you've always been waiting for everything to be just right before starting a spiritual practice/meditation, etc, but have never gotten to that perfect place, this is the book for you.