Perspective

Pema Chodron is a woman of some age and she often relates the material as an elder teacher would relate to a student. But her manner of writing is warm and at times personal, which tends to diffuse the awkwardness that her pedagogical style can sometimes generate. She sticks mostly to conceptual teaching, and when she highlights her instruction with personal stories she is quite brief, usually relating a practical moment that occurred in her own life or the life of a student in one or two paragraphs.

This style keeps the book from being anecdotal, as does her tendency to create lists. The book is filled with enumerated concepts, and while this systemization can be off-putting it helps to ground the material, which is often broad and conceptual. The spiritual concepts in the book are broad and not limiting. There is very little material that Chodron presents...