Pema Chödrön

Pema Chödrön (born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown; 1936) is an American Tibetan Buddhist bhikṣuṇī , author, and teacher who has popularized practical applications of meditation and compassion practices in the West. Ordained as a novice nun in 1974 and receiving full bhikṣuṇī ordination in 1981 under the Sixteenth Karmapa in Hong Kong , she became one of the first Western women fully ordained in the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition. Since 1984, she has directed Gampo Abbey , the first North American monastery in the Shambhala lineage of Tibetan Buddhism , serving as its principal teacher and, as of 2025, abbess.

Chödrön's teachings, rooted in her studies with root guru Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, emphasize lojong —a Tibetan mind-training system for cultivating compassion by embracing suffering and uncertainty rather than escaping it. Her bestselling books, such as When Things Fall Apart (1996) and Start Where You Are (1994), draw on these principles to address emotional turmoil, making Buddhist insights accessible to lay audiences facing personal and societal challenges.

While celebrated for advancing Western monasticism and lay practice, Chödrön's long association with Shambhala International drew scrutiny during 2018–2020 revelations of sexual misconduct and abuse of power by its leader, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche ; she publicly apologized for initially dismissing related allegations and resigned as a senior teacher in 2020, highlighting tensions between personal ethical training and institutional reform in modern Buddhist organizations.

Deirdre Blomfield-Brown, who later became known as Pema Chödrön, was born on July 14, 1936, in New York City to parents Reginald and Virginia Blomfield-Brown. She grew up in a Catholic family with one brother and one sister. Chödrön has described her early years as pleasant, shaped by the stability of her family's religious environment in urban New York. Limited public details exist about specific childhood experiences or family dynamics beyond this upbringing, as her biographical accounts emphasize later life transitions over formative years.

Deirdre Blomfield-Brown, later known as Pema Chödrön, was born on July 14, 1936, in New York City to a Catholic family, where she grew up with her brother and sister. She attended Miss Porter's School , a preparatory institution in Farmington, Connecticut , and also studied at Sarah Lawrence College before graduating from the University of California, Berkeley , where she earned a master's degree in education.

Following her education , Blomfield-Brown pursued a career as an elementary school teacher. She married at age 21 and raised two children during this period, maintaining a conventional family life centered in the United States . In the late 1960s , she briefly resided in Ajijic , Mexico , from 1968 to 1969, though details of her professional activities there remain limited. Her pre-Buddhist professional focus remained on education , reflecting a stable yet unremarkable trajectory typical of mid-20th-century American middle-class women prior to her later spiritual pursuits.

In her mid-thirties, following the dissolution of her second marriage amid personal turmoil, Deirdre Blomfield-Brown encountered Buddhist teachings through an article by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche on working with emotions and negativity, published in a spiritual magazine , which provided a framework for transforming suffering that profoundly resonated with her experiences of groundlessness and depression. This reading marked her initial serious engagement with Buddhist ideas , shifting her from a conventional American life—marked by elementary school teaching, two marriages, and raising children—to a deliberate spiritual quest, though she initially did not distinguish Buddhism sharply from other contemplative traditions like Sufism .