PDF Summary:When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chödrön

In When Things Fall Apart, Buddhist nun and teacher Pema Chödrön provides guidance on how to find courage and compassion amid pain, loss, and uncertainty. She writes that pain and suffering are inevitable parts of life but that these experiences can also be opportunities for growth and transformation. Drawing on ancient Buddhist wisdom and practices, Chödrön shows us how to cultivate self-awareness and acceptance and face life's challenges with grace and resilience.

In this guide, we explore Chödrön’s views on why we suffer—what causes emotional pain and perpetuates it during challenging times—and outline what you can do to turn these experiences into opportunities for growth and healing. We also compare Chödrön’s teachings to insights from other Buddhist teachers and mental health experts and provide additional context about Buddhism so you can better understand and apply these concepts to real-world challenges.

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How to Meditate

Chödrön teaches a form of meditation called Shamatha-vipashyana and outlines the basic steps:

1. Find a flat, level seat and sit with your torso upright, legs crossed comfortably in front of you or with your feet on the floor. With your eyes open, gaze softly at the floor ahead of you and relax your jaw.
2. Lightly focus your attention on your exhaled breath without trying to change it.
3. Relax and accept whatever arises in your mind and body, even unpleasant thoughts and feelings. As thoughts come up, gently label them as “thoughts” with an attitude of kindness and understanding toward yourself.
4. When you feel distracted, come back to the sensation of your breath and scan your physical posture to reconnect with your body.
5. Keep trying to notice your thoughts, label them “thoughts,” let them pass, and focus your attention on your breath.

(Shortform note: Shamatha-vipashyana is one type of meditation among many. Some types involve sitting still, as described above, but others, like the Zen Buddhist tradition of walking meditation or the Chinese martial art of Tai Chi, involve moving your body. These movement meditation practices have the same goal (developing mindfulness) as sitting meditation. Like Shamatha-vipashyana, these forms of meditation include focusing your attention on the present moment and on your breath and noticing your thoughts and sensations without judgment. Tai chi, however, adds choreographed movements while walking meditation allows you to walk freely outside.)

Cultivate Compassion For Yourself and Others

Chödrön teaches that one of the most powerful ways to stay afloat during difficult times and transform your pain into a positive force is to cultivate compassion for yourself and others. In Tibetan Buddhism, the path of cultivating compassion for yourself is called maitri, which translates from Sanskrit to loving-kindness. By practicing maitri, you can make friends with yourself—trust and lean on yourself—and feel more connection to and belonging with others.

(Shortform note: Maitri is one of four key qualities, The Four Sublime States—or Brahmavihāra in Sanskrit, cultivated in Buddhist meditation. The other three qualities are compassion (Karuna), the practice of wishing to relieve the suffering of all beings, empathetic joy (Mudita), the practice of rejoicing in the happiness and success of others, and equanimity (Upekkha), the practice of developing a balanced and impartial state of mind toward all beings. According to Buddhist teachings, this set of practices can help you develop a more peaceful and harmonious relationship with the world around you.)

Self-Compassion

The first step in learning Maitri is to develop compassion for yourself. For many people, it’s easier to feel loving-kindness toward others—they instead feel hostility, hatred, and shame toward themselves. But Chödrön asserts that it's never too late to start practicing self-compassion and become your own friend.

(Shortform note: In Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach discusses the power of compassion and defines it as “to feel with.” She further explains that feeling with yourself—acknowledging your suffering with loving-kindness—is difficult for many people because they don’t feel they deserve care and compassion. Fortunately, feelings of unworthiness are among the painful emotions that radical acceptance and self-compassion can heal.)

Not to be confused with self-improvement or building confidence, self-compassion is about learning to accept yourself unconditionally, not fixing or changing yourself. The first step toward self-compassion is understanding that your thoughts, emotions, and memories are all impermanent and not representations of who you really are. You can think of yourself as the sky and your thoughts, emotions, and memories as different kinds of weather passing through—we don’t look up and think the clouds are the sky. We understand that the sky is much bigger than all the weather it holds. In the same way, you are much more than the emotions and thoughts you experience, and remembering this can help you be more patient and kind to yourself.

(Shortform note: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a widely used, evidence-based counseling approach that can teach people that our thoughts, emotions, and memories are not who we are. In The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris explains that in ACT, we separate ourselves from our thoughts and emotions in a process called defusion. Through defusion, we learn to observe and distance ourselves from unhelpful thoughts, beliefs, and emotions rather than getting entangled in them or trying to suppress them. ACT has been shown to help people develop a more flexible and mindful relationship with their internal experiences, which can lead to greater psychological well-being and a more fulfilling life.)

When you encounter instability, uncertainty, and fear in your life, self-compassion and mindfulness can help you slow down and experience your feelings with kindness and care. Chödrön teaches that it's important to be kind to yourself during difficult times because this helps you develop a trusting relationship with yourself that you can lean on. Additionally, when you develop self-compassion, you’ll be able to have compassion for others and you’ll discover that you are just one small part of a greater whole.

A Practice for Self-Compassion

Although Chödrön presents meditation and mindfulness as tools to cultivate self-compassion, Tara Brach teaches an additional useful practice called RAIN, which can help you develop loving-kindness for yourself. An acronym that outlines each step of the process, RAIN can and should be practiced whenever and wherever you find yourself overwhelmed with harsh thoughts toward yourself or any painful emotion. Brach recommends pausing, placing a hand on your heart, and doing the following:

R: Recognize and name the emotion or feeling you’re having.

A: Allow and accept how you feel without judgment.

I: Investigate what your feelings may be trying to tell you or what might be causing them.

N: Nurture yourself with a kind thought like, “I care about this pain, and I am here for you.”

Compassion for Others

When we suffer, we can get stuck in only caring about protecting ourselves, which leads to isolation and more suffering. But if we can connect our struggles and pain to the struggles and pain of others, we can transform negative experiences into an experience of open-hearted connection and kinship with all life on this planet. Chödrön explains that when our suffering is at its peak, if we deliberately try to feel tenderness for the suffering of other living beings, we can break through our self-absorbed isolation. In this way, compassion can heal us.

(Shortform note: Tara Brach also touches on the common experience of feeling isolated and absorbed in our own concerns when we are suffering and adds an explanation for why this happens. She says when we suffer and are engrossed in our pain, we start to see everyone else as a separate “other.” We do this because painful experiences make us feel unsafe, and it’s our hardwired biological response to look for safety in those most familiar and similar to us while rejecting everyone else. We invent imaginary differences between ourselves and others, labeling them and putting them into boxes, which, in turn, shuts down our ability to feel compassion for their suffering.)

Chödrön teaches that the most powerful way to experience peace and joy is to connect with others in mutual suffering and pain. You can do this through a meditative practice called Tonglen, which means “giving and taking.” In Tonglen, your personal suffering can become a path to compassion.

To practice Tonglen, breathe in and imagine you’re inhaling the suffering of others. Then, breathe out the wish that all beings experience freedom from suffering. You can also practice this by noticing and naming the negative feeling you’re having as you breathe in and breathing out compassion for everyone who’s currently experiencing the same emotion or feeling. For example, if you feel lonely, first acknowledge the feeling to yourself and as you inhale and imagine breathing in the feeling of loneliness. Then as you exhale, breathe out kind and loving thoughts to everyone in the world who also feels lonely in that moment.

(Shortform note: Practicing Tonglen is one way to tap into the compassion for others that Chödrön describes, and Tara Brach offers several other practices to open your heart. She says one useful way of cultivating compassion for others (and ourselves) is simply asking, “what do they need?” Being curious and open to other people’s needs can dissolve feelings of isolation and help you be more loving toward others. You can also practice imagining yourself in other people’s situations to feel how it might feel to be in their situations, which is the essence of compassion. These techniques may be more straightforward ways of being compassionate if the visualization in Tonglen doesn't work for you.)

Turn Toward Fear and Let Go of Hope

Chödrön writes that it’s impossible to be liberated from fear without turning toward it, experiencing it fully, and letting go of hope for an ideal life. Avoiding or covering up any negative emotion, including fear, only strengthens it. And grasping onto hope for something better only makes us resist reality.

As you grapple with difficulty and uncertainty, you will inevitably experience longing for things to improve and fear that things will not improve or even worsen. One way to have a relationship with fear is to pause before you distract yourself from it or try to fix it. Instead, become familiar with how fear feels and don’t try to change it. Letting yourself feel your fear is an opportunity to learn more about yourself, become your own friend, be humble, and tap into your courage.

(Shortform note: Emotions, including uncomfortable ones like fear, are a natural and necessary part of the human experience. When we try to suppress or distract ourselves from them, we create a sense of inner conflict that can cause physical and mental health problems. Many psychology experts agree that avoiding or suppressing emotions is unhealthy because when we don’t process and release them in a healthy way, they can cause chronic and toxic stress responses in our bodies. Conversely, acknowledging and accepting our emotions can help to reduce stress, promote emotional well-being, and improve overall health.)

According to Chödrön, turning toward fear is helpful but not enough. To find true freedom from fear, you must rethink hope and let it go. She explains that hope—carrying a desire and vision for something better—can be just as detrimental to peace as fear because it keeps you from accepting reality and living in the present moment, where you can find all your wisdom and strength. Holding onto hope sets you up for disappointment and more suffering. However, when you release hope that pain and insecurity can be eliminated from your life, you’ll stop trying to achieve lasting security and comfort (which is unattainable) and gain the confidence to relax and accept uncertainty.

We tend to see hope as the antidote to fear. But Chödrön explains the people of Tibet see fear and hope as two sides of the same coin: They understand that the fear of loss and pain comes from having hope that circumstances can be ideal. The root of hope and fear are the false beliefs we have about reality—we feel we lack something, things are going wrong, suffering is unacceptable, and someone or something is to blame.

Cultivating mindfulness and compassion can help you turn toward fear and release hope. To build compassion for yourself and better understand your emotional responses, accept that fear and hope are natural responses to suffering. When we go through hard times, Chödrön believes there is an enormous possibility for renewal and positive change, but we overlook the potential in hardship because we are too attached to our false beliefs about suffering. Cultivate mindfulness and compassion and you will gain confidence in your ability to embrace reality with acceptance.

Reframing Hope: Understanding the Buddhist Perspective on Letting Go of Desire

For many, giving up hope to cope with difficult experiences will likely seem counterintuitive and counterproductive. This may be especially true if you are from a predominantly Christian country like the United States, as hope is one of the most cherished Christian values, along with love and virtue.

Mental health research also shows the many benefits of having a hopeful and optimistic outlook, including living longer and avoiding many chronic health conditions. From this Western perspective, giving up hope in the face of adversity is a sign that you aren’t coping well and may need help. Therefore, the language that Chödrön and other Buddhist teachers use to discuss the benefits of giving up hope could be confusing.

It may be helpful to think of the hope Chödrön talks about as desire—the desire for things to be different than they actually are—which is born out of our fear of suffering. Chödrön encourages us to let go of this form of desire (hope) which causes more suffering. Tara Brach approaches desire differently: She explains that the best way to relate to desire of any kind, including the desire for something to be different and better, is to be mindful of how desire feels, have compassion for our feelings, and radically accept them.

Accept Reality as It Is

Chödrön’s final recommendation for coping more gracefully with difficulty is to accept reality as it is. When you stop resisting reality, you can relax and accept whatever is happening in your life and experience more peace, even if your circumstances are painful and stressful.

(Shortform note: Accepting reality as it is doesn’t mean that you resign to or approve of the way things are. Like giving up hope, accepting reality may seem like a counterproductive approach to achieving peace if your reality is difficult, overwhelming, and unjust. However, many leaders in psychology assert that if you don’t accept reality, you waste a lot of mental and emotional effort on resisting it—feeling angry and cheated, for example—that could be used toward cultivating compassion and making positive changes. A common saying in the mental health field is “what you resist persists.”)

Chödrön says to accept reality, you must acknowledge the limited knowledge and control you have in life. In doing so, you can accept the present moment as it is without trying to predict or control the future. Our minds confidently develop inaccurate ideas about ourselves and reality all the time, and we tend to cling to our ideas, even when they’re negative, because they provide us with a sense of familiarity and security. However, this sense of security is false, as everything, including ourselves, is in a constant state of change. Chödrön explains that when you accept how little you know about the present and future, you open more to the possibility that your challenging circumstances may have a positive outcome that you can’t yet imagine.

Develop a regular meditation practice and practice mindfulness in your daily life to learn how to stop resisting reality and fighting with yourself and your circumstances. Every time you acknowledge your thoughts, let them go, and return your attention to your breath, you’re strengthening your ability to compassionately accept yourself and reality. Chödrön argues that there is nothing so big or overwhelming that mindfulness and compassion can’t help.

The Wisdom of Surrender in Spiritual and Mental Health Contexts

Another way that spiritual traditions and mental health programs talk about letting go of our ideas about the world and acknowledging the little control we have over our lives is in the practice of surrender.

In Hinduism, the term ishvara pranidhana refers to the practice of letting go of the ego's need for control and recognizing that there is a greater power at work in the universe. It’s a way of acknowledging and surrendering to divine will rather than trying to impose your own will on the world. Ishvara pranidhana is a powerful approach for cultivating acceptance, inner peace, and connection to the present moment and can be achieved through prayer, meditation, and yoga.

In a mental health context, 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) often encourage surrender as a part of recovery. One of the first steps in AA states that you should surrender your will and life to the care of a higher power. This step is seen as a key component of recovery from addiction, as it involves recognizing the limits of your control over your life and seeking guidance and support from something greater than you.