When Things Fall Apart
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times is Pema Chödrön's 1997 book of teachings on what she calls the bodhichitta path through suffering, drawn from talks she gave at Gampo Abbey, the small Tibetan Buddhist monastery on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia where she has served as abbess since 1986. Chödrön, an American woman ordained as a nun in the lineage of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, came to her teachers in the wake of her second divorce, when her own life had, in the book's plain phrase, fallen apart. The twenty-two short chapters that result work less as an argument than as a series of patient invitations: to sit with anxiety rather than reach for distraction, to soften toward the people who hurt us, to recognize groundlessness as the basic condition of being alive rather than as a personal failure. The book has become a quiet long-term bestseller, recommended by therapists and chaplains and read most often during exactly the seasons of life Chödrön describes.
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Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chodron gathers twenty-two short talks given at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia for students moving through divorce, illness, and grief.
She is an American Tibetan Buddhist nun and a leading teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition. When Things Fall Apart, published in 1996, is her most widely read work.
It is rooted in Tibetan Buddhism but written for a general audience. Readers of all faiths and no faith report it as a useful book during loss and uncertainty.
When Things Fall Apart was written by Pema Chödrön, published in 1997 by Thorsons.
When Things Fall Apart is 191 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, When Things Fall Apart takes most readers 3 to 4 hours to finish.
When Things Fall Apart is a standalone novel by Pema Chödrön, not part of a series.
When Things Fall Apart is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.