Compassion Becomes Real
Topic: Love, Compassion, & Kindness
In cultivating compassion we draw from the wholeness of our experience—our suffering, our empathy, as well as our cruelty and terror. It has to be this way. Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown on July 14, 1936, in New York City, grew up on a farm in New Jersey. She attended Miss Porter's School before earning a degree in English literature from Sarah Lawrence College and a master’s in elementary education from the University of California, Berkeley. She married at 21 and had two children before experiencing two divorces. Her spiritual journey led her to study Buddhism with Lama Chime Rinpoche in London and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in the United States. In 1974, she was ordained as a novice nun by the Sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, and in 1981, became the first American woman fully ordained in the Vajrayana tradition.
Chödrön played a key role in bringing Tibetan Buddhism to the West. In the early 1980s, Trungpa Rinpoche appointed her director of the Boulder Shambhala Center in Colorado. She later moved to Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in North America for Western students, becoming its director in 1986. Recognized as an acharya (senior teacher) in 1993, she continued teaching despite health challenges, including chronic fatigue syndrome. Her books, such as When Things Fall Apart (1996) and No Time to Lose (2005), explore resilience, mindfulness, and compassion, emphasizing shenpa, the habitual grasping that leads to suffering.
In 2020, Chödrön retired from her role as acharya within Shambhala International, citing concerns over the organization’s direction. She continues to teach, lead retreats, and study with her teacher, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. Recognized for her contributions to Buddhist practice, she received the Global Bhikkhuni Award in 2016. Though she stepped back from institutional leadership, she remains a guiding voice in contemporary Buddhism, emphasizing the power of mindfulness and compassion in daily life.
Chödrön, Pema. The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fear and Its Transformation. Shambhala Publications, 2001. P. 50. "Compassion."

Pema Chödrön
Theme: Compassion
About Pema Chödrön’s Quote [Commentary]
Pema Chödrön challenges the notion of compassion as an act of giving from one to another, instead defining it as “a relationship between equals.” She reminds us that true compassion is not about assuming the role of a healer but about recognizing our shared vulnerability. “Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others.” This understanding moves compassion beyond sentimentality—it requires us to acknowledge our own struggles, rather than distancing ourselves from the suffering of others.
Chödrön emphasizes that cultivating compassion means drawing from the entirety of our experience, including suffering, empathy, and even our own capacity for fear and cruelty. To truly meet others in their pain, we must first confront our own. This does not mean fixing or rescuing, but being fully present. Compassion is not about superiority or separateness; it arises when we see ourselves in one another, when we no longer divide the world into those who help and those who are helped.
“Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” It is not an abstract ideal but a lived reality, emerging from genuine connection. By accepting our own imperfections, we become more capable of holding space for others in theirs. In this way, compassion is not something we grant from a place of strength, but something we practice through understanding and presence—rooted in the truth that we are all in this together.
The Four Limitless Ones Chant
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