Do you want to be a more compassionate person, confident and unafraid to love yourself and the world around you unconditionally, but aren't sure how? We often look far and wide for guidance to become better people, as though the answers were somewhere out there. But Pema Chodron suggests that the best and most direct teacher for awakening loving-kindness is in fact your very own life.

Based on talks given during a one-month meditation retreat at Gampo Abbey, where Pema lives and teaches, her teachings here focus on learning how to see the events of our lives as the perfect material for learning to love ourselves and our world playfully and wholeheartedly--and to live in our skin fearlessly, without aggression, harshness, or shame. This is instruction for embarking on the greatest adventure of all, to come alive to your inherent human kindness.
Awakening Loving-Kindness, Pema Chodron, Shambhala Publications,192 Pages, Pocket, $12.95

Ani Pema Chodron was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in 1936, in New York City. She attended Miss Porter's School in Connecticut and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. She taught as an elementary school teacher for many years in both New Mexico and California. Pema has two children and three grandchildren. While in her mid-thirties, Ani Pema traveled to the French Alps and encountered Lama Chime Rinpoche, with whom she studied for several years. She became a novice nun in 1974 while studying with Lama Chime in London. His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa came to Scotland at that time, and Ani Pema received her ordination from him. Pema first met her root guru, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in 1972. Lama Chime encouraged her to work with Rinpoche, and it was with him that she ultimately made her most profound connection, studying with him from 1974 until his death in 1987. At the request of the Sixteenth Karmapa, she received the full bikshuni ordination in the Chinese lineage of Buddhism in 1981 in Hong Kong.

Ani Pema served as the director of Karma Dzong in Boulder, Colorado until moving in 1984 to rural Cape Breton, Nova Scotia to be the director of Gampo Abbey. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche gave her explicit instructions on establishing this monastery for western monks and nuns. Ani Pema currently teaches in the United States and Canada and plans for an increased amount of time in solitary retreat under the guidance of Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. She is also a student of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, the oldest son and lineage holder of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Ani Pema is interested in helping establish Tibetan Buddhist monasticism in the West, as well as continuing her work with western Buddhists of all traditions, sharing ideas and teachings. Her non-profit, The Pema Chodron Foundation, was set up to assist in this purpose.

She has written several books: The Wisdom of No Escape, Start Where You Are,When Things Fall Apart, The Places that Scare You, No Time To Lose, Practicing Peace in Times of War, How to Meditate, and Living Beautifully.

CONTENTS: Awakening Loving-Kindness
	Preface	ix
1.	Loving-Kindness	1
2.	Satisfaction	7
3.	Finding Our Own True Nature	11
4.	Precision, Gentleness, and Letting Go	21
5.	The Wisdom of No Escape	39
6.	Joy	45
7.	Taking a Bigger Perspective	51
8.	No Such Thing as a True Story	63
9.	Weather and the Four Noble Truths	73
10.	Not Too Tight, Not Too Loose	83
11.	Renunciation	101
12.	Sending and Taking	113
13.	Taking Refuge	131
14.	The Four Reminders	149
	Bibliography	173
	Resources	174