a book

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

Name: When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
Rating: 5 (11 reviews)
Author: Pema Chodron
ISBN: 9781611803433

Pema Chodron · 2000 · 154 pages

Pema Chödrön's perennially best-selling classic on overcoming life's difficulties cuts to the heart of spirituality and personal growth--now in a newly designed 20th-anniversary edition with a new afterword by Pema--makes for a perfect gift and addition to one's spiritual library.

How can we live our lives when everything seems to fall apart—when we are continually overcome by fear, anxiety, and pain? The answer, Pema Chödrön suggests, might be just the opposite of what you expect. Here, in her most beloved and acclaimed work, Pema shows that moving toward painful situations and becoming intimate with them can open up our hearts in ways we never before imagined. Drawing from traditional Buddhist wisdom, she offers life-changing tools for transforming suffering and negative patterns into habitual ease and boundless joy.

recommended by 11 people

sourced from public statements

Noah Kagan
“1/ When Things Fall Apart (Pema Chödrön) This book taught me to use pain as fuel for courage. Key takeaway: When life is falling apart, it’s really just falling into place. The rough patches in life shape us. When we come out of them, we can emerge stronger than ever.”↗
Tara Brach
“Wonderful.”↗
Jerry Colonna
“The first laying out of Buddhist dharma as a path.”↗
Liz Lambert
“Has been important to me, and I’ve given to people in my life because it had an impact on me.”↗
Matt Haig
“I read this book during the first lockdown, and it was the perfect read for uncertain times. Chödrön is a Buddhist, but the advice and philosophy in these relatively few pages speaks universally. It’s a great book about embracing life in its totality, about seeing hope and suffering as part of a whole.”↗
Krista Tippett
“Kind of a sacred text that I carry around with me at all times because things are always falling apart.”↗
Devendra Banhart
“This is one of those books I like to stock up on, have a few copies ready to give a friend, it’s just so helpful. Wisdom and compassion right there in each page. My current copy is heavily bookmarked and just feels like those ‘in case of emergency break glass’ boxes.”↗
Marianne Faithfull
“I get a lot of help from Pema Chodron. She is the student of Chögyam Trungpa, who was Allen Ginsberg’s guru, and it was Allen who taught me to meditate, along with many other lessons from Buddhism.”↗
Sarah Silverman
“@ggreenwald This book saved me ten years ago. I still go back to it”↗
Derek Sivers
Nathaniel Drew