Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living (Shambhala Classics)

Working with numerous lojong "slogans," this book is about awakening one's heart through tonglen meditation practice. Chodron writes in the Preface of her book, "if you have ever wondered how to awaken your genuine compassionate heart, this book will serve as a guide" (p. ix). We learn that through tonglen practice, "everything we meet has the potential to help us cultivate compassion and reconnect with the spacious, open quality of our minds" (p. 81).

Life is full of "raw material for waking up" (p. 64). However, it's also up to each of us to wake up, Chodron observes (p. 69). Starting wherever we are in life, Chodron's instructive teachings encourage us to "lighten up" (p. 17; Chapter 15) and allow the world to speak for itself (pp. 25; 29-30). Chodron challenges us to contemplate lojong slogans including: "Always maintain a joyful mind" (p. 92). "Be grateful to everyone" (pp. 8, 56). "Drive all blames into one" (p. 50).

Reading this insightful book is like having a heartfelt conversation with a wise friend. For me, this is what makes reading Pema Chodron such a rewarding experience. If you like the engagement this book offers, I also recommend Jack Kornfield's A PATH WITH HEART and AFTER THE ECSTASY, THE LAUNDRY.

G. Merritt


Wondrous simplicity and clarity   July 31, 1999
35 out of 36 found this review helpful

Pema Chodron is a wonderful teacher, who shares time honored techniques of breathing in suffering and anger and breathing out compassion and love in a way that is so guileless and disarming that it is almost guaranteed to touch your heart.

This book works on many levels... I am not a 'serious practitioner,' by any means, but someone who goes to work every day and has to deal with many frustrations and stresses, but this book offers practical methods that help you deal with just these impediments in your life, so that you can be happier, and give more happiness to others.

I also sense that for someone who is more dedicated to making their life centered on spiritual practice, this book is a foundation for such a disciplined path as well.


Start Where You Are Was my Bible   March 4, 2002
32 out of 32 found this review helpful

I highly recommend Start Where You Are for anyone who is serious about meditation practice and wants an earthy, no frills, no pretentions guide to compassionate living. Pema Chodron stresses that in order to act with compassion toward others, one must start with themselves, openning up that can of worms full of all the messy stuff that we would all rather not fess up to.

At a very difficult time in my life, I just kept starting at the beginning every time I finished reading it. I felt as if I knew Pema Chodron personally by reading her books. And having read everything of Chogyam Trungpa's that I could find prior, I had a strong grasp of the foundation from which she learned, but that is certainly not a prerequisite to benefiting from her teachings.

I would also strongly recommend her earlier book: The Wisdom of No Escape.


start where you are...but bring a pen and a notebook   July 22, 2001
29 out of 40 found this review helpful

i've had this book for over a year now, and periodically peruse it whenever i feel spiritually listless (which is often). now some might argue that if i say that this book hasn't really helped me much, i'm missing the point. start where you are! stay with the discomfort! open your eyes and see! well, yeah, but i can't help but feel that in the end, all the listing of the numerous compassions and the tibetan terms and listing and labeling this and that gets so confusing that it won't be of much help unless you write it down and study 'em with the devotion of a true believer. it's just too much: different kinds of emotions, different kinds of reaction, in her other book, she lists 6 different kinds of loneliness. ach, my head hurts!

i'm not so wary of chodron as i am of other westerners who have joined the mystic east bandwagon in search of spiritual enlightenment, because she does seem to be practical. but still, for me the question is HOW to practice, not a bunch of half-obvious truths that i can agree with but can't apply.

i think we just need to sit and stop reading. i mean, how can you go through a day if you're thinking about labeling something as boddicitta or prajna or some other strange term??? might as well go back to the Catholic catechism and start memorizing the saints again. so i'm happy for all those who find it inspiring and helpful. i, too, turn to it every now and then to reaffirm that all is not lost. but still, i can't say that it is very helpful in the long-term.