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One of the most inspiring spiritual teachers of our time offers simple, practical advice for living with less fear, less anxiety and a more open heart. Bought in a hotly contested auction, The Places That Scare You is now available in massmarket, taking Pema Chodron 's spiritual teachings to a wider audience. We always have a choice, Pema Chodron teaches: we can either let the circumstances of our lives harden us and make us increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kind. This unique book shows us how to awaken our basic goodness and connect to others. In her lively, contemporary voice, Chodron translates the wisdom of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for the layperson. Her wisdom cuts across all traditions and religions -- appealing to everyone from the Dalai Lama's followers to ordinary people trying to make sense of their lives. This title has gone straight onto the bestseller lists in the USA, where it has just been published. Recently profiled in Oprah's O magazine, Pema Chodron is a spiritual teacher for anyone -- whether they have a spiritual path or not. Her heartfelt advice and wisdom (developed in her 20 years of practice as a Tibetan Buddhist nun as well as her years previously as a normal 'housewife and mother') give her a wide appeal. Particularly in these difficult times, this advice strikes just the right note, offering us comfort and challenging us to live deeply and contribute to creating a more loving world.

Pema Chödrön may have more good one-liners than a Groucho Marx retrospective, but this nun's stingers go straight to the heart: "The essence of bravery is being without self-deception"; "When we practice generosity, we become intimate with our grasping"; "Difficult people are the greatest teachers." These are the punctuations to specific teachings of fearlessness. In The Places That Scare You, Chödrön introduces a host of the compassionate warriors' tools and concepts for transforming anxieties and negative emotions into positive living. Rather than steeling ourselves against hardship, she suggests we open ourselves to vulnerability; from this comes the loving kindness and compassion that are the wellsprings of joy. How do we achieve it? Through meditation, mindfulness, slogans, aspiration, and several other practices, such as tonglen, which is taking in the pain and suffering of others while sending out happiness to all--emphasis on the all. Chödrön introduces each of these practices in turn, backing them up with succinct practical reasoning and a framework of ideas that offers fresh interpretations of familiar words like strength, laziness, and groundlessness. Chödrön is the type of person you'd like to have with you in an emergency, and to deal with the extremes of daily life. In her absence, The Places That Scare You will do nicely. --Brian Bruya