Customer Reviews

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

If I had read this book six months ago, it would not have had the same impact. A recent crisis provided the opportunity to embrace Pema's voice. In our culture, we tend to focus on our own pain and issues. Tonglen, on the other hand, encourages using life's challenges as a way to spread kindness and compassion.

Admittedly, the initial concepts appeared bizarre to me. "Make friends with your demons" and "Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news" came across as masochistic. But when one has hit rock bottom, we tend to discover our humility, which allows us to be more open to new ideas. When I read the phrase "Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape," I found myself nodding in agreement. From that point on, I embraced each line-word for word.

The best gift one can give to themselves or others is a copy of "When Things Fall Apart." It is indeed a book that I found much hope and comfort in. I just ordered Pema's book collection and look forward to learning more about practicing tonglen from her.

Some of my other favorite passages from the book:

"...nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. It just keeps returning with new names, forms, and manifestations..."

"As long as we don't want to be honest and kind with ourselves, then we are always going to be infants. When we begin just to try to accept ourselves, the ancient burden of self-importance lightens up considerably. Finally there's room for genuine inquisitiveness, and we find we have an appetite for what's out there."

"...the person we set out to help may trigger unresolved issues in us. Even though we want to help, and maybe we do help for a few days or a month or two, sooner or later someone walks through that door and pushes all our buttons. We find ourselves hating those people or scared of them or feeling like we just can't handle them. This is true always, if we are sincere about wanting to benefit others. Sooner or later, all our own unresolved issues will come up; we'll be confronted with ourselves."

At the end of a six year relationship, I found Pema's words to be a great source of comfort. There is no magic wand or pill or distraction that will make our fear, pain and lonliness disappear.

Pema's advice for us to sit with our uncomfortable feelings, to face them, acknowledge them without judgement and to appreciate the sense of being groundless were the words that helped me accept my situation.

Life is about impermanence, change is inevitable. I am trying to find peace in the chaos that is life, to take things one day at a time and not create grand illusions of what my life will be like.

I guess most people who pick up this book will have some aspect of their lives that is falling apart at the time. I certainly did. The title really is very captivating. In fact it was so captivating for me that I didn't realise this book espoused Buddhist philosophy until I actually started reading it. In some ways I have never been comfortable with comforting texts, but I have always tried to keep an open mind about other people's cultures and traditions. Pema Chodron walks a fine line of encouraging and stimulating, for me anyway. But the book is by no means comforting with its messages of living with hopelessness, letting things go, refraining from doing things and so on. My perspective changed in many ways as I read - perhaps not fixedly, but nevertheless I greatly value the shifts that occurred and their impact will not disappear even if I continue much as I have in the past.

And, as I read, I realised that the past is the problem with its regrets but so is the future with its urges for satisfaction. The only real problem with the present is that it last for such a short time!

I grew up and was deeply involved in a moderate Baptist church. For much of my life I considered myself a "good" Christian who knew that Jesus died for my sins and therefore I also knew that I was bound for heaven. But it wasn't until I was 40 years old and had seen my life fall apart that I decided to let go of my life completely, and give it to God.

Interestingly, after this total commitment and release to God, I was immediately and strangely drawn to the biblical book of Ecclesiastes. Many wonder why this book was included in the bible because it seems to contain nothing but the pervading theme of hopelessness. Yet, its words seemed to give me comfort and a source of spiritual strength. It was difficult for me then to explain this to other Christians.

Pema's book is a kind of contemporary practical application of the teaching found in Ecclesiastes. Of course our lives and our world are utterly evanescent. Nothing lasts. Yet, most of us become quite delusional during our lives by effectively denying this fact. We grab hold of anything we can that can give us a sense of a sustainable and unique identity... including our religious tradition. But any or all of this can be taken away in an instant. Both Pema's and Ecclesiastes' teachings have the power to bring us home by helping us to discover our eternal identity in the unmanifest... in the mystery of Infinite Spirit. Once we find our home there, nothing can shake us. There is a power and a joy that is not fully describable with words... because its source lies beyond words, beyond creation.

In one of Jesus' prayers he asks God to bring all people into Oneness... "may they be One as we are One." Pure Oneness implies the loss (even death) of a separate identity, and the realization of a universal identity as One. Pema's use of the idea of hopelessness is really the movement through the death of our false and fleeting separate identities into the ultimate home of Oneness with each other and with God. I believe that Pema's teachings can aid any one that is ready, whose ego has been broken enough, to discover their eternal home even as they live in this manifested world. This can be a liberated life filled with the courage and fearlessness to bring Unconditional Love to the whole world, and especially to the seemingly unlovable.

My friend gave me this book when things weren't 'falling apart'. I thought that it was a rather bleak title for that time in my life. But when I finally picked it up, I understood the teachings as being relevant to anytime in one's life. You don't have to be a Buddhist to appreciate the simple facts that things change, and that for some people it helps to surrender to change, and to release our clenched grasp on the things we want, always in a state of desire or aversion. I've read some of the other reviews and see that this book isn't for everyone: it can come across as bleak if you aren't open to the concept of detachment or surrender. I loved Pema's statement that we often are all looking for that 'higher-force babysitter' to which we can beg to end our suffering for us and to give us what we want. Perhaps this may offend some with certain religious beliefs. However, I thought it was daringly honest and quite insightful, and in a sense encouraging for us to stop trying to plead with the universe that our circumstances will improve, and just learn how to handle life as it comes at us. I have lent this book to many people during hard times in their lives, including a friend sorting through childhood trauma, and they got a lot out of it. Key message: life can be difficult and is always unpredictable, learn to ride it out rather than run away from it.

This information is harmful to readers who are at a vulnerable place in their lives and are seriously looking for caring assistance. Rather than encouraging the reader that things will get better, the author tells them that they have no hope and to just deal with it. Terrible - I came away from it very angry.

This book arrived very quickly and with no problems. Would recommend it as well as other books by the same authour

What do you do when your world falls apart? Where do you turn first? What do you do in those first horrible moments when your universe turns upside down? Pema Chodron tells it like it is and simultaneously begins the healing process. (Alas, not "instantly," but with practice.) This isn't fun and games. Although her words are practical, comforting, supportive and helpful, she doesn't sugar-coat the harsh realities of threatening and painful situations. In short, this book/cassette/CD is an Emergency Kit when life smacks you in the face.

Pema Chodron is a beloved American Buddhist nun who trained under Chogyam Trungpa, the at times controversial Tibetan meditation master. Yet whatever qualms you may have in mind about him, please don't let that taint your perception of Pema. She is truly a shining, clear and loving teacher among us today.

In this book Pema draws from the traditional Buddhist wisdom in order to give us thorough and kindhearted advice on what to do when, as the title suggests, "things fall apart." There is only one approach that grants lasting benefit, Pema tells us here, and that entails approaching these situations with openness and inquisitiveness. Teaching us to embrace our painful emotions, she shows the way on how to gain both wisdom and compassion not just towards and for ourselves, but for all people.

"The Tibetan Buddhist equivalent of Harold Kushner's "When Bad Things Happen To Good People." - Publishers Weekly

"This is a book that could serve you for a lifetime." - Natural Health Magazine

This book asks the impossible of anyone who is clinically depressed: to find joy in despair. If you are a healthy, functioning adult, you may be able to "move into the fear" and "totally experience hopelessness, giving up all alternatives to the present moment," but if you are truly in despair, you may just take the final, obvious, inevitable step. I found this book self-satisfied, self-promoting, and pedantic.