Join Pema Chödrön in an inspiring home retreat as she guides you through Langri Tangpa’s Eight Verses on Training the Mind, offering practical techniques and profound insights to help you navigate difficult emotions with kindness and compassion, ultimately leading to a renewed sense of well-being and connection.
For more than forty years, Pema Chödrön has illustrated how Buddhist teachings can help us navigate our lives, our relationships, and the complexities of the modern world. In this brand-new home retreat, she draws on Langri Tangpa’s Eight Verses on Training the Mind to show us how to identify the deep patterns that keep us stuck and how we can transform them through the simple yet profound practices of kindness and compassion.
In these talks, recorded in the intimate setting of Gampo Abbey, Nova Scotia, Pema shares stories, insights, and techniques aimed at helping us stay with difficult emotions as we learn to let go of the storylines that energize them. Drawing on a rich lineage of mind training techniques, she illustrates how we can skillfully work with all of our suffering, from the smallest annoyances to the greatest upheavals. By learning to dwell in vulnerability, we might learn to see our most stubborn obstacles as our most powerful teachers.
With her signature wit, humor, and kindness, Pema makes these powerful verses uniquely approachable and relevant. Whether you’re new to meditation or have decades of practice experience, this retreat will help you break free of your limitations and reconnect to an expansive sense of well-being that benefits you and those around you.
For more than forty years, Pema Chödrön has illustrated how Buddhist teachings can help us navigate our lives, our relationships, and the complexities of the modern world. In this brand-new home retreat, she draws on Langri Tangpa’s Eight Verses on Training the Mind to show us how to identify the deep patterns that keep us stuck and how we can transform them through the simple yet profound practices of kindness and compassion.
In these talks, recorded in the intimate setting of Gampo Abbey, Nova Scotia, Pema shares stories, insights, and techniques aimed at helping us stay with difficult emotions as we learn to let go of the storylines that energize them. Drawing on a rich lineage of mind training techniques, she illustrates how we can skillfully work with all of our suffering, from the smallest annoyances to the greatest upheavals. By learning to dwell in vulnerability, we might learn to see our most stubborn obstacles as our most powerful teachers.
With her signature wit, humor, and kindness, Pema makes these powerful verses uniquely approachable and relevant. Whether you’re new to meditation or have decades of practice experience, this retreat will help you break free of your limitations and reconnect to an expansive sense of well-being that benefits you and those around you.
Meet difficulty with courage and confidence
Become a source of joy for yourself and others
Learn to see your biggest challenges as potent teachers
Discover the well-being that comes from embracing vulnerability
Cherish all beings, even persistent troublemakers
Free yourself from cycles of aggression, retaliation, and hurt
Experience this intimate set of teachings, newly recorded with Pema at her home monastery of Gampo Abbey
Join two live Q&A calls in which Pema will take your questions from the online retreat (Saturday, October 19, and Saturday, November 9, at 2:00 p.m. EDT/EST)
Sit with others in the retreat community during twice-weekly live meditations with our course facilitators on Zoom (Sundays and Wednesdays, October 20–November 27, 2:00–2:30 p.m. EDT/EST)
Connect with other students and receive guidance from senior practitioners on our facilitated discussion boards
Bring the teachings alive with guided meditation practices and contemplation prompts themed to each lesson
Take these profound teachings with you wherever you are—in the car, on a walk, or over the kitchen sink
Review the lectures at your own pace, highlight, and take notes with downloadable PDF transcripts
A list of readings and books recommended for deepening your study and practice
Access the course on your device or computer again and again as new insights emerge on your own path
Share the gift of these transformative teachings! As a special bonus for this course, you’ll have the option to gift a second enrollment to a friend, loved one, or anyone else at no additional cost right when you sign up.
Working with our mind and becoming comfortable with vulnerability can be demanding tasks. To help support you in this journey, we offer this 17-minute bonus audio teaching from Pema on The Four Reminders, which are described as the “preliminaries” for mind training.
Total Retail Value: $144 | You Save: $72
Expand your library and deepen your study with 50% off titles on the recommended reading list for this retreat when you order at Shambhala.com.
Experience this intimate set of teachings, newly recorded with Pema at her home monastery of Gampo Abbey
Join two live Q&A calls in which Pema will take your questions from the online retreat (Saturday, October 19, and Saturday, November 9, at 2:00 p.m. EDT/EST)
Sit with others in the retreat community during twice-weekly live meditations with our course facilitators on Zoom (Sundays and Wednesdays, October 20–November 27, 2:00–2:30 p.m. EDT/EST)
Connect with other students and receive guidance from senior practitioners on our facilitated discussion boards
Bring the teachings alive with guided meditation practices and contemplation prompts themed to each lesson
Take these profound teachings with you wherever you are—in the car, on a walk, or over the kitchen sink
Review the lectures at your own pace, highlight, and take notes with downloadable PDF transcripts
A list of readings and books recommended for deepening your study and practice
Access the course on your device or computer again and again as new insights emerge on your own path
Share the gift of these transformative teachings! As a special bonus for this course, you’ll have the option to gift a second enrollment to a friend, loved one, or anyone else at no additional cost right when you sign up.
Working with our mind and becoming comfortable with vulnerability can be demanding tasks. To help support you in this journey, we offer this 17-minute bonus audio teaching from Pema on The Four Reminders, which are described as the “preliminaries” for mind training.
Total Retail Value: $144 | You Save: $72
Expand your library and deepen your study with 50% off titles on the recommended reading list for this retreat when you order at Shambhala.com.
Retail Price: $598
Special Price: $299 USD
Fellowships for people of color are available for this course. Apply here.
We all know the pain of stuck patterns. Whether these patterns are small, like a difficult relationship with a coworker, or large, like a decades-long cycle of oppression, war, and violence, they all have the same root: a false sense of separation between self and other.
Almost a thousand years ago, the Tibetan master Geshe Langri Tangpa wrote a crisp, potent text on dissolving this fundamental separation. In this first talk, Pema Chödrön shares the curious history of The Mind Training in Eight Verses and how it became the basis of a powerful set of practices to cultivate an altruistic, awakening mind. She also discusses the first of the eight verses and how we might use it to begin opening up the space of our heart, with the aspiration of treating every being as our treasured guest.
The Mind Training in Eight Verses offers radical challenges to our ego. Is it truly possible to wholeheartedly cherish all beings, considering ourselves least important among them? Can we catch and soothe all of our difficult emotions before they emerge as hurtful words or actions?
In this lesson, Pema guides us in meeting these profound tasks without falling into the trap of low self-esteem—which is really just another form of ego. By feeling our feelings fully, while dropping the storylines that often come with them, we might discover a new level of openness and confidence. In addition to her commentary on Verses Two and Three, she gives an introduction to the practice of Compassionate Abiding, which can aid us in staying present with strong emotions.
There is no shortage of suffering in the world. Even those of us who are relatively fortunate can expect to experience our share of pain, heartbreak, and difficult relationships—to say nothing of the wars, disasters, and systemic oppression that countless people face every day. How can training the mind help us face this agony?
In this lesson, Pema invites us to continue to open and soften, even as we confront the deepest sorrows in our life and in the world. She provides insightful commentary on Verses Four and Five of the Eight Verses, drawing traditional teachings on karma, or cause and effect, as well as the personal stories of people who have faced immense hardship with joy and equanimity.
Our closest relationships contain the seeds of our greatest joy—as well as the potential for deep hurt. When someone we love and care for abuses our trust, how can we deal with the feelings of betrayal that arise?
In this lesson, Pema guides us through the difficult territory of emotional entanglement. In her commentary on Verses Six and Seven, she shares wisdom that can help us de-escalate intense conflict and break cycles of hurt for ourselves and others. Finally, she introduces the practice of tonglen, or sending and taking, one of the most powerful techniques for dissolving ego-clinging and developing courageous compassion.
The practice of tonglen, introduced in the previous lesson, is central to the discipline of mind training. Countless sages over the centuries have praised its power to help us ventilate our ego and grow in wisdom and compassion by reversing our habitual instinct to hoard happiness and push away suffering.
Now that we have had a chance to practice this potent technique, Pema invites us to go deeper by investigating the “outer, inner, and secret” levels of tonglen. These deep teachings can help us bridge the gap between relative bodhicitta—the wish to relieve the suffering of all beings—and ultimate bodhicitta—the pinnacle of clear seeing that understands all phenomena as illusory. With this vast view, we can begin to free ourselves from the “eight ordinary concerns,” which trap sentient beings in craving, hatred, and delusion.
In just 32 lines, The Mind Training in Eight Verses summarizes some of the most profound and enduring Buddhist teachings on awakening our innate wisdom and compassion. Due to the density and richness of this text, their full benefit can only be realized with continued contemplation, practice, and analysis.
In this last talk, Pema takes us through all eight verses again, encouraging the retreatants to offer their reflections on each one. What do these words really mean for our lives? How can we use them to navigate the complexities of our lives and to be a source of strength for others? How might they help us keep bringing down the barriers so that nothing stands between the world and our awakened hearts?
Excerpt 1:
Dealing with Difficult People
Excerpt 2:
Handshake Practice
Excerpt 3:
Vulnerability
Excerpt 1:
Dealing with Difficult People
Excerpt 2:
Handshake Practice
Excerpt 3:
Vulnerability
This course was designed with your needs in mind and contains all of the following:
Buy One, Gift One
Share the gift of transformation and insight
Audio Teaching from Pema
Training in the Preliminaries (Excerpted from Change Your Mind, Open Your Heart: An Immersive Online Retreat to Awaken Compassion and Find Freedom through Mind Training)
50% Off Select Books
Receive half off all books from Shambhala Publications on the course reading list.
Buy One, Gift One
Share the gift of transformation and insight
Audio Teaching from Pema
Training in the Preliminaries (Excerpted from Change Your Mind, Open Your Heart: An Immersive Online Retreat to Awaken Compassion and Find Freedom through Mind Training)
50% Off Select Books
Receive half off all books from Shambhala Publications on the course reading list.
Retail Price: $598
Special Price: $299 USD
Fellowships for people of color are available for this course. Apply here.
Beloved Buddhist teacher, author, nun and mother, Pema Chödrön has inspired millions of people from around the world who have been touched by her example and message of practicing peace in these turbulent times.
She has been teaching and writing extensively for many years, including authoring the best-selling books When Things Fall Apart and The Places That Scare You.
Pema first met her root teacher, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in 1972. Lama Chime encouraged her to work with Rinpoche, and it was with him that she ultimately made her most profound connection. At the request of the Sixteenth Karmapa, she received the full monastic ordination in the Tibetan lineage of Buddhism in 1981 in Hong Kong. She is resident teacher at Gampo Abbey in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery for westerners in North America.
