When Things Fall Apart Book Review

Lama Pema Chödrön’s classic provides a clear-sighted, buddhist approach to personal crisis. Her essential revelation, which she relates from personal experience, is the potential to develop curiosity towards suffering as one is experiencing it. She offers her own divorce as the book’s central example. As she has with her own pain, Chödrön teaches that someone suffering has the ability to acknowledge their condition with friendliness. By doing so we can recognize our essential groundlessness and the potential for change and growth.