Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

We all want to be fearless, joyful, and fully alive, but the truth is that it’s not so easy. But Pema Chodron shows you how to transform your pains and difficulties into opportunities for personal growth.

Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living is the perennially helpful guide from the beloved Buddhist nun and author of When Things Fall Apart that transforms our painful experiences into opportunities for genuine joy and growth. Using modern Western idiom and lyrical language, this poetic tapestry invites the reader onto a path of compassionate living that’s both new and familiar—a perfect book for anyone who wants to make peace with themselves and others.

Start Where You Are is filled with a number of practices that awaken compassion and soften the heart. These include shamatha-vipashyana, or tranquility meditation; tonglen, or insight meditation; and lojong, which involves working with slogans. Each of these is an important step on the spiritual journey and will help you achieve nirvana, or liberation, as well as bodhicitta, or the awakened heart. Whether you’re an angry manager who hasn’t been able to shake off your anger issues, or a 38-year-old father with trouble dealing with his kids, Start Where You Are will provide you with a path that’s just right for you.