Pema Chödrön

Pema Chödrön
At the Omega Institute, May 2007.
Religion	Vajrayana Buddhism
Lineage	Shambhala Buddhism
Education	University of California, Berkeley
Personal
Born	Deirdre Blomfield-Brown (1936-07-14) July 14, 1936 (age 80) New York City, New York, United States
Senior posting
Title	Bhikkhuni
Religious career
Teacher	Chögyam Trungpa Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
Website	pemachodronfoundation.org

Pema Chödrön (born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown July 14, 1936) is an American Tibetan Buddhist. She is an ordained nun, acharya and disciple of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Chodron has written several books and is the director of the Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Chödrön was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in 1936 in New York City. She attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut and grew up on a New Jersey farm with an older brother and sister. She obtained a bachelor's degree in English literature and a master’s in elementary education from the University of California, Berkeley.

Chödrön began studying with Lama Chime Rinpoche during frequent trips to London over a period of several years. While in the US she studied with Trungpa Rinpoche in San Francisco. In 1974, she became a novice Buddhist nun under Rangjung Rigpe Dorje the sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa. In Hong Kong in 1981 she became the first American in the Vajrayana tradition to become a fully ordained nun or bhikṣuṇī.

Trungpa appointed Chödrön director of the Boulder Shambhala Center (Boulder Dharmadhatu) in Colorado in the early 1980s. Chödrön moved to Gampo Abbey in 1984, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in North America for Western men and women, and became its first director in 1986. Chodron's first book, The Wisdom of No Escape, was published in 1991. Then, In 1993, she was given the title of acharya when Trungpa's son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, assumed leadership of his father's Shambhala lineage.