It's true, as they say, that we can only love others when we first love ourselves, and we can only experience real joy when we stop running from pain. The key to understanding these truisms lies in remaining open to life in all circumstances, and here Pema Chödrön shows us how. When we embrace the happiness and suffering, intelligence and confusion that are a natural part of life, we can begin to discover a wellspring of courageous love within our hearts.

Pema Chödrön's perennially best-selling classic on overcoming life's difficulties cuts to the heart of spirituality and personal growth, and makes for a perfect addition to one's spiritual library. Drawing from traditional Buddhist wisdom, she offers life-changing tools for transforming suffering and negative patterns into habitual ease and boundless joy.

Here Pema provides the tools to deal with the problems and difficulties that life throws our way. This wisdom is always available to us, she teaches, but we usually block it with habitual patterns rooted in fear. Beyond that fear lies a state of openheartedness and tenderness. This audiobook teaches us how to awaken our basic goodness and connect with others, to accept ourselves and others complete with faults and imperfections, and to stay in the present moment by seeing through the strategies of ego that cause us to resist life as it is.

Life has a way of provoking us with traffic jams and computer malfunctions, with emotionally distant partners and crying children - and before we know it, we're upset. We feel terrible, and then we end up saying and doing things that only make matters worse. But it doesn't have to be that way, says Pema Chödrön. It is possible to relate constructively to the inevitable shocks, losses, and frustrations of life so that we can find true happiness. The key, Pema explains, is not biting the "hook" of our habitual responses.

In this recorded retreat, based on the program Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change held at Omega Institute, Pema Chödrön and her teaching assistant, Meg Wheatley, provide a wealth of wisdom for learning to step right into the river: to be completely, fearlessly present even in the hardest times, the most difficult situations. It's the secret of being fully alive.

This audiobook by Pema Chödrön, the renowned American Buddhist nun, offers short, stand-alone sections designed to help us cultivate compassion and awareness amid the challenges of daily living. More than a collection of thoughts for the day, Comfortable with Uncertainty offers a progressive program of spiritual study, leading the listener through essential concepts, themes, and practices on the Buddhist path.

Spiritual practice, Pema Chödrön teaches, has nothing to do with self-improvement, since, as the course's title claims, you're already perfect right now. The limitless qualities of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity are your deep-down, ultimate reality, and those are qualities that can't be improved upon. If you're not feeling particularly kind, compassionate, joyful, or equanimous at the moment, take heart: the Four Limitless Ones are there like seeds, waiting to be cultivated through practice.

Learn how to use the gift of pain with Pema Chödrön, a Buddhist nun in the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition. She teaches that it is in suffering where you will find the seeds of your awakening and that vulnerability is actually your greatest spiritual resource. You'll learn how to create your own spiritual retreat, the key teachings necessary for cultivating your own "soft spot" - the gateway to your own noble heart, the promise of the Four Limitless Ones, and the teachings on the Six Paramitas: the Buddha's own map of the journey to enlightenment. This program was recorded within the peaceful shrine room of Gampo Abbey, Chödrön's home on the cliffs of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.

One of the best ways to bring meditation off the cushion and into everyday life is to practice lojong (or mind training). For centuries, Tibetans have used 59 powerful mind-training slogans as a way to transform life's ordinary situations into opportunities for awakening. In this audiobook program, Pema Chödrön presents her definitive teachings on lojong. She offers an overview of the practice and goes on to provide inspiring commentary on the slogans while paying special attention to how to apply them on the spot in our daily lives.

Fear and guilt are two of the greatest challenges we face on the spiritual path - but there is a way to transform these painful feelings into courageous self-acceptance. Here Pema Chödrön presents the five aphorisms for developing fearlessness that were given to Machig Lapdronma, one of Tibetan Buddhism's greatest female teachers. Pema comments on these aphorisms, holds question-and-answer sessions, and leads guided meditations.

We all have fears, but when we look closely at them, we discover that behind each fear resides a basic fear of ourselves. We're afraid to look at our habitual styles of thinking and behaving because we might not always like what we see. Ironically it is this fear of honest self-reflection that keeps us trapped in patterns of stress and discontentment. Here is a vision for moving beyond this most basic fear to discover the innate bravery, trust, and joy that reside at the core of our being.

On Getting Unstuck, Pema Chodron introduces a rare Tibetan teaching she received from her teacher, Dzigar Kontrul Rinpoche, and one that has become critical to her practice. Here, she unveils the mystery of an ineffable quality; a "pre-emotional" feeling that arises in us, brings us discomfort, and causes us to react by escaping the discomfort, often with harmful habits. With Getting Unstuck, she offers us a first look at "both the itch and the scratch": what Tibetan Buddhists call shenpa.

In How to Meditate with Pema Chodron, the American-born Tibetan Buddhist nun and best-selling author presents her first complete spoken-word course for those new to meditation. Through traditional insights and her personal guidance in 12 sitting sessions, Pema Chodron will help you honestly meet with, and compassionately relate to, your mind.

The 59 provocative slogans presented here - each with a commentary by the Tibetan meditation master Chgyam Trungpa - have been used by Tibetan Buddhists for eight centuries to help meditation students remember and focus on important principles and practices of mind training. They emphasize meeting the ordinary situations of life with intelligence and compassion under all circumstances. Slogans include, "Don't be swayed by external circumstances," "Be grateful to everyone," and "Always maintain only a joyful mind."

In challenging times, why do so many of us turn to Pema Chödrön for guidance? Many say that it’s her honest and caring way of communicating the core teachings of Buddhism - not just conceptually, but directly from her heart to ours. In these inspiring sessions, she teaches us how to give that compassion to the person we neglect most often - ourselves.