About the Author: Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in New York City in 1936, is one of the most influential spiritual teachers in the West. A former teacher and wife, her life transformed after a series of personal challenges, including a painful divorce, which led her to explore Tibetan Buddhism. She became a student of Lama Chime Rinpoche in the French Alps and was later ordained as a Buddhist nun in London by the Sixteenth Karmapa. Under the guidance of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, she deepened her practice and teaching.
Pema is the director emeritus of Gampo Abbey, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery for Westerners, in Nova Scotia, Canada. She is a prolific author, known for works like When Things Fall Apart and The Places That Scare You, which explore mindfulness, compassion, and resilience. Her teachings emphasize finding liberation through vulnerability and embracing life’s challenges as opportunities for growth.
About the Book: In How We Live Is How We Die, Pema Chödrön invites readers to explore the Tibetan Buddhist teachings on the bardo, the transitional state between death and rebirth. As a side note, Buddhism embraces the concept of reincarnation. These teachings highlight how the impermanent nature of life mirrors the bardo experience and how the way we live daily reflects how we will face life's ultimate transition—death. In essence, she’s saying that the gap between birth and death is what we call life. She contends that by cultivating mindfulness, compassion, and acceptance of birth, life and death, we can navigate the uncertainties of life and death with a calm state of grace and wisdom. My personal take on this topic? I think it's important in some way to acknowledge and accept the reality of death in order to live your life fully in preparation for it. Make Sense?
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