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The Truth of Our Existence
- Four Teachings from the Buddha to Illuminate Your Life
- Narrated by: Pema Chödrön
- Length: 3 hrs and 58 mins
- Categories: Religion & Spirituality, Buddhism
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It's one thing to hear a life-changing truth or to have a conceptual grasp on spiritual wisdom. But it’s another thing to "walk the walk" - or to put into practice the good advice we've been given. What does it mean to walk the walk in our everyday lives? According to Pema Chödrön, it means being down-to-earth, genuine, and perhaps most importantly, it means engaging in the teachings in order to actively confront anything and everything we’ve heretofore rejected in our attempts to find happiness.
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Easy to listen too, great learning,
- By Ms. J. Richardson on 24-07-15
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Embracing the Unknown
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Pema Chödrön presents her first live talk on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. With Embracing the Unknown, she reveals how one of Buddhism’s most revered texts contains essential guidance not only for understanding the mysteries of life, death, and rebirth - but also profound wisdom for living fearlessly in “the bardo of this life”. Experience one of today’s most beloved spiritual teachers at her best as she helps us navigate fear, doubt, and uncertainty with a compassionate and open heart.
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Beloved Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön has a unique gift for helping those of all faiths to work with their most difficult inner and outer challenges. In this supportive series of talks, listeners will join her at her best - showing us the way back to our wisest and most heartful selves. Here, Pema shares three simple, time-honored steps to practice when we are in pain or crisis.
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Life changing
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Have you ever found yourself thinking your way into a tangle of fret, frustration, or gloom? And then something small - a few kind words, the sun glancing through the clouds, a warm cup of tea - gave you a welcome pause from all your inner chatter? With Making Friends with Your Mind, that's what Pema Chödrön helps us to do, not by chance but with our full intention: to stop fighting with our thoughts and reopen ourselves to wonder as naturally as we breathe.
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Another fantastic book /teaching
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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.
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So happy to have it in my library!
- By Marija on 02-04-18
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When Pain is the Doorway
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What if the full sense of our aliveness were only to be found amidst our most challenging times and difficult experiences? In pain and crisis, teaches Pema Chödrön, there lies a hidden doorway to freedom that appears to us only when we're sure that there is no way out. In these intimate audio learning sessions, Pema Chödrön helps us distinguish the triggers or external events that we blame for our suffering from the deeper habitual patterns that feed our anger, fear, or sadness.
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Interesting work let down by production quality.
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Walking the Walk
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It's one thing to hear a life-changing truth or to have a conceptual grasp on spiritual wisdom. But it’s another thing to "walk the walk" - or to put into practice the good advice we've been given. What does it mean to walk the walk in our everyday lives? According to Pema Chödrön, it means being down-to-earth, genuine, and perhaps most importantly, it means engaging in the teachings in order to actively confront anything and everything we’ve heretofore rejected in our attempts to find happiness.
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Easy to listen too, great learning,
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Embracing the Unknown
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Overall
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Pema Chödrön presents her first live talk on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. With Embracing the Unknown, she reveals how one of Buddhism’s most revered texts contains essential guidance not only for understanding the mysteries of life, death, and rebirth - but also profound wisdom for living fearlessly in “the bardo of this life”. Experience one of today’s most beloved spiritual teachers at her best as she helps us navigate fear, doubt, and uncertainty with a compassionate and open heart.
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Beloved Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön has a unique gift for helping those of all faiths to work with their most difficult inner and outer challenges. In this supportive series of talks, listeners will join her at her best - showing us the way back to our wisest and most heartful selves. Here, Pema shares three simple, time-honored steps to practice when we are in pain or crisis.
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Another fantastic book /teaching
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Don't Bite the Hook
- Finding Freedom from Anger, Resentment, and Other Destructive Emotions
- By: Pema Chödrön
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So happy to have it in my library!
- By Marija on 02-04-18
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Pema Works With You
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Welcoming the Unwelcome
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In her first new book of spiritual teachings in over seven years, Pema Chödrön offers a combination of wisdom, heartfelt reflections, and the signature mix of humor and insight that have made her a beloved figure to turn to during times of change. In an increasingly polarized world, Pema shows us how to strengthen our abilities to find common ground, even when we disagree, and influence our environment in positive ways.
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A gem of an audiobook
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Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better
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When her granddaughter was accepted to Naropa University, the celebrated author Pema Chödrön promised that she'd speak at the commencement ceremony. Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better contains the wisdom shared on that day. "What do we do when life doesn't go the way we hoped?" begins Pema. "We say 'I'm a failure.'" But what if failing wasn't just "okay"... but the most direct way to becoming a more complete, loving, and fulfilled human being?
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Down to earth brilliance.
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Noble Heart
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You can't get away from suffering. That's the good news, teaches Pema Chodron. For at the core of your most painful experiences, you will find the seeds of your awakening. On Noble Heart, this best-selling author and Tibetan Buddhist nun shows you how vulnerability is our greatest spiritual resource amid life's difficulties. Using special meditations and teachings, she shows how to cultivate your own noble heart, one that sheds its armor, and opens fearlessly to both heartache and delight.
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Excellent clarification on Buddha Nature
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Where will we look when we are afraid? How do we find strength? In what can we place our trust? According to Tibetan Buddhism, there are four noble aspirations, known as the Four Great Catalysts of Awakening, which we can call on to cultivate strength and openness in any situation. From Fear to Fearlessnessbrings us into the company of beloved teacher Pema Chödrön to discover and cultivate these four immeasurables: maitri (loving-kindness), compassion, joy, and equanimity.
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Transformational
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Getting Unstuck
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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.
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Gentle and effective
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When Things Fall Apart
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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.
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Brilliant book, narrated badly.
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The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation
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ChgyamTrungpa's unique ability to express the essence of Buddhist teachings in the language and imagery of modern American culture makes his books among the most accessible works of Buddhist philosophy. Here Trungpa explores the true meaning of freedom, showing us how our preconceptions, attitudes, and even our spiritual practices can become chains that bind us to repetitive patterns of frustration and despair.
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brilliant!!
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In Love with the World
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- Narrated by: Feodor Chin
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- Unabridged
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Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s experience begins the night he has chosen to embark on a four-year wandering retreat, slipping past the monastery gates. Alone for the first time in his life, he sets out into the unknown. His initial motivation is to step away from his life of privilege and to explore the deepest, most hidden aspects of his being, but what he discovers throughout his retreat - about himself and about the world around us - comes to define his meditation practice and teaching.
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Extraordinary work with a lot of information.
- By Mary on 24-01-20
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Perfect Just as You Are
- Buddhist Practices on the Four Limitless Ones: Loving-Kindness, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity
- By: Pema Chödrön
- Narrated by: Pema Chödrön
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Be Grateful to Everyone
- An In-Depth Guide to the Practice of Lojong
- By: Pema Chödrön
- Narrated by: Pema Chödrön
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Original Recording
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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.
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MY RESPONSE TO :BE GRATEFUL TO EVERYONE
- By Anonymous User on 16-09-18
Summary
What would happen if we looked with fresh eyes at the struggles and "impossible situations" that we face every day - and found there four gifts that changed everything?
For decades, Pema Chödrön has brought clarity and heart to the core teachings of the Buddha, helping to make them relevant and useful in our everyday lives. With The Truth of Our Existence, she immerses us in one of Buddhism’s essential distillations of written wisdom known as The Four Marks of Existence.
These marks that shape all of us, teaches Pema Chödrön, are like forgotten gifts waiting to be found. And while they may ring familiar to some, they hold vast layers of often unrealized understanding to both new and seasoned ears alike. In this four-session learning program, Pema Chödrön illuminates for us:
- The truth of impermanence and its power to give us strength and courage
- The truth of egolessness - how it connects us with others and transforms fear and anger into clarity of vision
- The truth about suffering, how we create it, and what to do when it seems unbearable
- The truth of peace - that liberation or nirvana is real
- How to use the wisdom of this profound sutra to touch the open and abundant expanse in which we truly dwell
With The Truth of Our Existence, Pema Chödrön invites us to see that there is, in reality, "no score to settle", and that we can step out of confusion, frustration, and fear - and into the space of heartful awareness.
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What listeners say about The Truth of Our Existence
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Annette
- 19-08-14
Pema at her best
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
yes
Any additional comments?
Clear, concise, helpful, relevant - the expected Pema toolbox with plenty of humour and kindness
3 people found this helpful
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- Farfallina
- 26-03-16
The Truth of our Existence
Always such sage advice from Ani Pema. Her knowledge, humour and teachings are invaluable. Thank you to all for making her teachings available _/|\_
1 person found this helpful
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- Brother Yonten
- 19-02-20
Simply wonderful
Another no nonsense classic Dharma teaching from Ven. Pema where she opens up the Buddha's teachings & draws upon her insights to explain.
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- Margaret O'Connor
- 02-01-16
Authentic
No posturing or glib rote, just pure, spontaneous wisdom from the heart. Makes you feel whole, warts and all.
6 people found this helpful
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- Bearinthehouse
- 21-03-15
Excellent, as always
Very comforting and expansive to listen to this new recording by Pema. The subjects, the questions, the answers, suggestions -- are hard, filled with ways to try to release control in response to deep losses and sadness. Many painful situations with challenging ways to move forward. And as always, amazingly, humor and laughter woven throughout.
6 people found this helpful
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- GARY EMES
- 15-01-15
Which is Best..who knows anymore
Where does The Truth of Our Existence rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Just when I think I found the best Pema audible ....another pops up....and THIS ONE...may be ( again ) my favorite
What about Pema Chödrön’s performance did you like?
WItty. enlightened..what more could someone want in a seminar
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
YES
Any additional comments?
Listen ....listen in bed...listen while making supper...listen instead of the TV....it will touch You
9 people found this helpful
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- Courtney H.
- 15-07-15
Lovely
Lasy chapter especially wowed me. Thank you Pema. Your honesty, candor, and wisdom is remarkable.
2 people found this helpful
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- Linda SK
- 17-06-15
Wonderful
Pema Chödrön brings humor and gentleness to the difficult places in life. This was my first exposure to Chödrön but won't be the last. Buddhist philosophy that is accessible to anyone with any background.
2 people found this helpful
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- jenn
- 25-07-15
One of her best
I love anything Pema! This has become my favorite audio of hers as I think with her usual humor, wisdom and relatable style she encapsulates many core teachings. A must listen.
1 person found this helpful
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- Anne D
- 03-05-20
Excellent follow-up to her other works
This audiobook includes recordings of several live presentations during a retreat. Very good, but I wouldn’t recommend this for a person’s first introduction to Pema Chödrön’s work. The content is somewhat more casual, light and entertaining, and seems to build on a foundation of previous understanding of Buddhist principles. One of the great features, as always, is Pema Chodron’s voice and her clear style of speaking. Very engaging and worthwhile.
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- Linda Day-Emerson
- 28-03-20
Shouting from the rooftop!
Pema Chodron is a fabulous teacher. She speaks so gently and simply yet never speaks down to anyone. I always feel like I am in the room with her when she speaks. Thank you Pema!
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- MF
- 29-08-19
Excellent
Pema never disappoints. Her teachings here refer to impermanence & death, egolessness, suffering and peace, and with her usual kindness and humor she leads us to understand how to bring these teachings into our every day life. Excellent!
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- Stefanie C. Barthmare
- 28-10-18
Another star in Pema’s galaxy
During this audio a retreat participant thanked her for bringing in the”other side of spirituality,” and Pema replied with humility and humor, “the dark side.” And it’s that dark side, our humanity that Pema speaks to with relatable stories of life as a fellow traveler.