Here is a treasury of 108 short selections from the best-selling books of Pema Chödrön, the beloved Buddhist nun. Designed for on-the-go inspiration, this collection offers teachings on: In this book Pema Chödrön presents the traditional Buddhist teachings that guide her own life: those of The Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicharyavatara), a text written by the eighth-century sage Shantideva. This treasured Buddhist work is remarkably relevant for our times, describing the steps we can take to cultivate courage, caring, and joy—the keys to healing ourselves and our troubled world. Difficulty is inevitable. We cannot escape the reality of death, and there are also the realities of “aging, of illness, of not getting what we want, and of getting what we don’t want”. Life is both glorious and wretched. Wretchedness softens us up considerably. "Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.”

In cultivating loving-kindness, we train first to be honest, loving and compassionate toward ourselves.” Pema seems very focused on suffering and becoming okay with it. In many ways, there's a lot of great advice. I just personally felt she focused a bit too much on getting your mental state right with suffering, as opposed to actually working towards fixing the aspects of your life that cause you to suffer. I think there's a push and pull. On the one hand, you need mental resilience and acceptance to live through the pain life puts your through, but on the other hand, I think it's incredibly important to take life by the reins and change the things that make you unhappy. Pema seems much more focused on the first, and not at all focused on the second. She is a very privileged woman who's been able to travel the world and study with monks around the globe. There isn't anything wrong with that, but sometimes I feel like she doesn't really get what life is like for a lot of people. This book—Ani Pema's first—is about saying yes to life in all of its manifestations and embracing the potent mixture of joy, suffering, brilliance, and confusion that characterizes the human experience. Loving-kindness, or maitri, doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. “The point is not to try to change ourselves. --- it’s about befriending who we are already.”

The root of aggression and suffering is ignorance. We ignore our kinship with others. “One reason we train as warrior-bodhisattvas is to recognize our interconnectedness – to grow in understanding that when we harm another, we are harming ourselves.”

This book was interesting and I did learn a lot from it. I really wasn't familiar with Buddhism and I think this was a good way to dip a toe. A portable collection of short inspirational readings by “one of the world’s wisest women”—the American Buddhist teacher and author of When Things Fall Apart ( O, the Oprah Magazine)We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs - or we don't. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality- or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha's opinion, to train in staying open and curious - to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs - is the best use of our human lives.” Pema first met her root guru, the teacher with whom she had the most profound connection, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in 1972, and she studied closely with him until his death in 1987.