When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön

 

In February 2023, we read Pema Chödrön's When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. Chödrön is a Buddhist teacher who gave a series of lectures between 1987 and 1994, forming the basis of the book. Each chapter focuses on a Buddhist teaching that we can all apply to life whether on the Buddhist path or not. For example, one teaching was about the concept of tonglen, meaning sending and receiving, which is a practice of first accepting pain instead of our instinct of resisting and rejecting it and then sending out love and compassion.

In the preface, there was some mention of an editor deciding that there was enough material from lecture tapes to create a book, and some questioned the judgment of this editor because some concepts were repeated and there could have been a stronger arc across all the lectures. We liked the concrete stories, for example, one was about a man and a snake and another about a girl's nightmares, and we craved more of these, but all in all, each of us got something meaningful out of the lectures.

The book inspired heart-felt discussions about the impermanence of life, knowing how you want to behave but then falling short in the moment, the art of doing the opposite of what you habitually do, the art of remaining calm, treasured material things and much more. We also deviated from the book and talked about electric cars, discussed how we would live life differently if we knew we only had 10 more years, had a push-up competition, and celebrated Amy's birthday!

We enjoyed delicious dim sum, fresh-baked bread, birthday cake, and a Turkish dessert delicacy called pismaniye.