55 pages • 1 hour read
Pema ChödrönWhen Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1997A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Religious Context: Buddhism, Shambhala, and “Crazy Wisdom”
Content warning: This section of the guide briefly mentions allegations of sexual assault.
Author Pema Chödrön’s books teach people how to live with loving compassion in a world filled with suffering. Her ideas derive from Buddhism, an ancient religious tradition. Buddhism teaches that life is suffering, that suffering comes from desire, that desire can be transcended through “awakening,” and that awakening is possible by following certain practices, including Meditation.
The Buddha, or “awakened one,” began his life roughly 2,500 years ago as a prince named Siddhartha Gautama in what is today the country of India. Deeply troubled by the suffering in the world, Gautama walked away from his royal life and searched for many years for an answer. Finally, he experienced a transformation of perspective on the nature of reality and human misery. He developed a system to teach others how to achieve this insight. The method consists of eight practices—the Noble Eightfold Path—which includes meditation, mindfulness, restraint in conduct and speech, and other virtues.
The Buddha and his disciples taught and lectured in northern India. A new religion based on their principles emerged and spread throughout the region and, later, into eastern Asia. Today, Buddhism is practiced widely in Southeast Asia, Korea, Japan, Bhutan, Nepal, and Tibet. The doctrine also is undergoing a revival in China. More than 500 million people practice Buddhism worldwide.
Chödrön studied Tibetan Buddhism, part of the northern, or Mahayana (“Great Wheel”) variant of Buddhism. The southern, or Theravada, version is popular in southeast Asia. Theravada beliefs and practices differ somewhat from Mahayana techniques, but the basic doctrines of both are the same.
Chödrön learned a specific version of Buddhism, Shambhala, which developed in the 1960s. Its creator, a high-ranking Tibetan Buddhist priest named Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, was heir to the leadership of two of the four major spiritual lines within Tibetan Buddhism. As a young man in 1959, Trungpa Rinpoche escaped from Tibet when China conquered his homeland. He found his way to America, where in 1970 he began to teach his new, more secular version of Tibetan Buddhism, Shambhala. Chödrön became a principal leader and chief teacher in Shambhala.
Trungpa Rinpoche’s lessons stress that Buddhist techniques are for everyone, not just religious practitioners. His books, lectures, and teachings helped to popularize Tibetan Buddhism in the West. Some of Trungpa Rinpoche’s lessons were based on Tantric techniques, which go beyond meditation and other standard Buddhist practices to include mantra chants, yoga, mandala drawings, visualizations, and certain sexual practices. One of his ideas centers on the concept of “crazy wisdom,” behaviors that appear eccentric but are inspired by spiritual insight and thus contribute to others.
After Trungpa Rinpoche’s death, his son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, took over the duties but altered many of his father’s teachings, which caused dissent within the Shambhala community. In 2018, Mipham Rinpoche was accused of sexual assault; he apologized and resigned his leadership of the Shambhala community. The board of directors, however, later brought him back to lead a ceremony. Chödrön resigned in protest.
The controversy that has affected the Shambhala community doesn’t reflect on Chödrön’s writings, which speak to the essential insights of Buddhism and how people can apply them to daily lives to inspire greater serenity, joy, and compassion. For outsiders, the complex distinctions among the various versions of Buddhist practice can seem arcane or esoteric. What matters, though, are the essential Buddhist teachings—that, through insight, people can discover a sense of oneness with the universe, attain a deep feeling of connection to others, and transcend the traumas of everyday life. This was Trungpa Rinpoche’s goal when he presented his ideas to Western audiences; it remains Chödrön’s purpose as well.
Psychological Context: Mindfulness Meditation
Mindfulness meditation is a practice in which one focuses their attention on the present moment. Observing the present moment, including one’s body, mind, and surroundings, brings practitioners to full awareness of all their thoughts and feelings. During the practice, meditators aim to notice thoughts, feelings, and sensations, but also to let them go without judging them as positive or negative and without dwelling or ruminating on them. The ultimate aim is to accept one’s present state: Acceptance enables meditators to let go of hurt feelings, emotional defenses, and other attitudes that interfere with daily life and loving relationships.
Often touted as a means to reduce stress, anxiety, and overwhelm, mindfulness meditation has become popular in America and other Western societies for its ability to enhance serenity and encourage kindhearted cooperation. Mental health counselors, institutional heads, and business leaders have encouraged the practice among those with whom they work, and mindfulness practices have been adopted in schools, prisons, workplaces, and therapeutic modalities. Mobile apps and other platforms have made mindfulness meditation more accessible to new practitioners, offering myriad guided meditations led by experienced teachers.
When Things Fall Apart explains a basic version of mindfulness meditation. Chödrön explains how emotions are acknowledged and released during the exercise, as well as the psychological and spiritual benefits of the practice. The book, along with others by the author, influenced the rise of public awareness in the West about mindfulness practices. (See also “Meditation” in this guide’s Index of Terms.)
Genre Context: Buddhist Self-Help and Suggestions for Further Reading
Offered as a guide to help people improve their quality of life but situated within Buddhist teachings, When Things Fall Apart belongs to both the spiritual and self-help genres. While Chödrön’s work helped to popularize mindfulness meditation in the United States, she is not the first writer to introduce Buddhist practices to Western audience, nor the most recent.
Alan Watts’s The Way of Zen was originally published in 1957. As one of the first popular interpreters of Buddhism to the West, Watts penned many books on Buddhism and Taoism, both of which teach awareness of oneself and the world as a unified whole. Watts writes with humor on Zen Buddhism and how it uses meditation techniques to interrupt a person’s ego trance and open their mind to a much wider grasp of reality.
Published soon after Chödrön’s text, The Power of Now (1997) by Eckhart Tolle is a bestseller that has been translated into 30 languages. The book posits that the thinking, egotistical mind interferes with a person’s “true nature” and prevents people from living joyfully in the “Now.”
Similarly to Chödrön’s book, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha (2003) by Tara Brach, PhD, teaches readers how to transcend pain, struggle, and setbacks by accepting them. Author Brach cites her own and others’ experiences dealing with trauma, anxiety, and stress through meditation and Buddhist practices. Brach is a member of the Engaged Buddhism movement, which applies Buddhist practices to social and political activism.
