Embracing the Unknown with Pema Chödrön — A Free Sounds True Teaching

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.Pema Chödrön is one of the most widely read and most deeply loved teachers in the Western contemplative tradition — an American Buddhist nun, author, and teacher whose work on uncertainty, groundlessness, and the art of meeting difficulty with openness has touched millions of readers across the world. Her free teaching through Sounds True — Embracing the Unknown — offers one of the most honest and most immediately relieving perspectives on uncertainty available in the entire contemporary contemplative literature, drawing on the ancient wisdom of the Tibetan Book of the Dead to illuminate the extraordinary potential hidden in life’s most uncertain moments.

Who Is Pema Chödrön?

Pema Chödrön was born in New York City in 1936 and came to Buddhist practice in her late thirties following a period of significant personal difficulty. She studied with the Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and later with Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche — becoming one of the first American women to be ordained as a Buddhist nun in the Tibetan tradition. She is the resident teacher at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia — the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in North America established for Westerners.

Pema Chödrön is the author of more than twenty books including When Things Fall Apart, The Places That Scare You, Start Where You Are, and Living Beautifully — works that have introduced the principles of Buddhist contemplative practice to millions of readers who might never have encountered them through more traditional channels. Her gift is her ability to speak directly and honestly about the most difficult dimensions of human experience — uncertainty, loss, fear, and the instinct to escape from what is uncomfortable — in a way that feels neither preachy nor distant but genuinely warm and genuinely useful.

What distinguishes Pema Chödrön from many teachers in the personal development space is her refusal to offer false comfort or easy resolution. She does not promise that practice will make life easier or that uncertainty will eventually give way to solid ground. She teaches instead a genuine and practical relationship with uncertainty itself — a way of meeting what is unknown and uncomfortable that gradually transforms the relationship with difficulty rather than eliminating it.

What Embracing the Unknown Actually Means

Embracing the unknown in Pema Chödrön’s teaching is not a motivational aspiration or a positive reframe of difficult circumstances. It is a specific and practical orientation toward the groundlessness that she identifies as the fundamental nature of experience — the recognition that the solid stable certainty the mind constantly seeks is not actually available and that the attempt to find it is itself the source of much of the difficulty people experience.

Pema Chödrön draws on the Buddhist concept of impermanence — the understanding that nothing in experience is fixed, solid, or permanent — to illuminate why uncertainty feels so uncomfortable and why embracing the unknown rather than resisting it produces a genuinely different quality of inner experience. The discomfort of uncertainty is not primarily about the specific unknown situation. It is about the gap between what the mind expects — stability, control, resolution — and what is actually available — change, movement, groundlessness.

Embracing the unknown in her teaching means learning to meet that gap with openness rather than resistance — to allow the experience of not knowing to be present without immediately trying to escape, resolve, or numb it. That willingness to remain present with uncertainty is not passivity. It is one of the most active and most demanding inner practices available — and one of the most genuinely transformative when engaged with consistently and honestly.

The Bardo — Finding Potential in the In-Between

At the heart of the Embracing the Unknown teaching is a concept from Tibetan Buddhist wisdom that Pema Chödrön has made accessible to Western audiences across decades of teaching — the bardo. The bardo is the in-between space — the gap between what has ended and what has not yet begun. In traditional Tibetan Buddhist understanding the bardo refers to the state between death and rebirth. But as Pema Chödrön consistently teaches the bardo is not something that waits for us at some unknown moment in the future. It is already here, woven throughout the liminal spaces of daily life.

Every moment of genuine uncertainty is a bardo. Every transition — the end of a relationship, the loss of a familiar role, the space between one chapter of life and the next — is a bardo. The moment between one breath and the next is a bardo. These in-between spaces tend to feel uncomfortable precisely because the familiar has gone and the new has not yet arrived. The mind wants to go back to the known or rush forward to the next certainty. What Pema Chödrön’s teaching invites is something different — the willingness to remain genuinely present in the gap itself.

This willingness is not only possible but profoundly valuable in her framework. The bardo — the in-between space that most people spend their energy trying to escape — contains what she describes as the most potential for genuine awakening and genuine change. When the gap is met with openness rather than resistance it reveals qualities of awareness and possibility that the rush from one certainty to the next consistently obscures.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead as a Map for Daily Life

The free Sounds True teaching draws on the wisdom of the Tibetan Book of the Dead — one of the most significant texts in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition — not as a guide to what happens after death but as a profound source of wisdom for navigating the uncertainty we face each day in what Pema Chödrön calls the bardo of this life. This reframing of one of Buddhism’s most ancient texts as a practical guide to daily uncertainty is one of the most distinctive and most valuable elements of her Embracing the Unknown teaching.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes the states of consciousness that arise in the bardo between death and rebirth — the impulses to flee from what is unfamiliar, the tendency to grasp at what is familiar even when it is no longer available, and the possibility of genuine awakening available to those who can remain present with the groundlessness rather than being driven by these impulses. Pema Chödrön’s insight is that these same dynamics operate in the bardos of daily life — the in-between spaces of ordinary uncertainty where the same impulses arise and the same possibility of awakening is available.

Death as a Teacher

One of the most distinctive and most courageous elements of the Embracing the Unknown teaching is Pema Chödrön’s direct engagement with death as a teacher for daily life. She suggests that the fear of death — universal to the human experience — is one of the most powerful and most accessible crucibles for understanding the groundlessness that characterizes all of life. By contemplating the ultimate uncertainty rather than avoiding it something genuinely useful becomes available — a clarity about what actually matters and a freedom from the smaller certainties the mind clings to that dissolves in the face of the larger truth.

This is not a morbid or depressing teaching in Pema Chödrön’s hands. It is a liberating one. When death is genuinely contemplated rather than avoided the impermanence of everything else becomes more visible — and with that visibility comes a quality of appreciation and presence that the avoidance of death consistently prevents. Every moment becomes more vivid when it is genuinely understood to be passing. The ordinary becomes extraordinary when its impermanence is genuinely felt rather than theoretically acknowledged.

Groundlessness as the Natural State

Pema Chödrön’s concept of groundlessness is one of the most distinctive and most practically useful elements of her entire teaching. Groundlessness is her term for the fundamental nature of experience — the recognition that the solid stable ground the mind constantly seeks is not actually the nature of reality. Things change. Situations shift. The certainties of one moment become the uncertainties of the next. This is not a problem with the way life is going. It is simply how life is.

The teaching of groundlessness is not designed to be depressing. It is designed to be liberating. When the pursuit of solid ground that is not available is recognized as the source of much unnecessary suffering the alternative — learning to be genuinely at home in the groundlessness itself — becomes not only possible but genuinely appealing. Embracing the unknown in this sense is embracing reality as it actually is rather than as the mind insists it should be.

This perspective connects naturally to Michael A. Singer’s teaching on surrender — the understanding that ease develops not through the achievement of control but through the genuine release of the demand for it. For more on how surrender supports inner steadiness read our post on Living from a Place of Surrender with Michael A. Singer.

The Moments Between Moments

One of the most accessible and most immediately useful framings in Pema Chödrön’s Embracing the Unknown teaching is her description of uncertainty as residing in the moments between moments — the gaps, pauses, and in-between spaces of ordinary daily experience that most people rush through in the effort to get from one point of certainty to the next. These moments between moments are where the bardo lives in daily life — and where the most potential for genuine awakening and genuine change resides.

Learning to notice and remain present in these small daily bardos is the practical foundation of the Embracing the Unknown teaching. Not the dramatic bardos of major life transition — though those too — but the small ordinary ones. The pause between finishing one task and starting the next. The moment of not knowing what to say in a conversation. The space between waking and rising in the morning. These ordinary in-between moments are the primary territory of practice in Pema Chödrön’s framework — and they are available to everyone regardless of circumstances or prior contemplative experience.

This quality of present-moment awareness in the gaps of ordinary experience connects naturally to the contemplative practice that Thich Nhat Hanh points toward. For more on how genuine present-moment awareness supports the quality of openness that Pema Chödrön describes read our post on Body and Mind Are One with Thich Nhat Hanh.

Who This Teaching Is For

The Pema Chödrön free teaching is particularly well suited to people who are navigating a period of genuine uncertainty — a transition, a loss, a decision without a clear answer, or simply the ongoing low-level uncertainty that characterizes most human lives most of the time. If you are looking for reassurance or resolution this teaching will not provide it. If you are looking for a more honest and ultimately more useful relationship with uncertainty itself it offers exactly that.

It resonates with people who value depth and honesty over comfort and reassurance — who sense that the conventional responses to uncertainty are not actually helping and who are genuinely curious about what a different relationship with the unknown might feel like. For more on how Pema Chödrön’s teaching on freedom and choice connects to the embracing the unknown perspective read our post on The Freedom to Choose Something Different with Pema Chödrön.

How to Access the Free Teaching

The Pema Chödrön free teaching on Embracing the Unknown is available through Sounds True at no cost. It provides a genuine and substantive introduction to her perspective — a real teaching that gives participants direct access to the quality of honest contemplative reflection that characterizes everything Pema Chödrön teaches including her exploration of the bardo, impermanence, and the extraordinary potential available in life’s in-between moments.

Final Thoughts

Pema Chödrön offers something genuinely rare in the contemporary conversation about uncertainty and inner steadiness — a perspective that is both completely honest about the difficulty of not knowing and completely free of the false comfort that most approaches to uncertainty provide. Her free Sounds True teaching on Embracing the Unknown is an excellent introduction to that perspective and to the broader body of work she has developed across decades of genuine contemplative practice and teaching.

For anyone who has been struggling with uncertainty and finding that conventional responses are not helping this teaching offers a different and ultimately more freeing relationship with the unknown — one grounded in the ancient wisdom of the bardo teaching and one that does not require certainty to arrive before genuine inner steadiness becomes available.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Pema Chödrön?

Pema Chödrön is an American Buddhist nun, author, and teacher born in 1936 who is widely regarded as one of the most accessible and most beloved teachers in the Western contemplative tradition. She is the author of more than twenty books including When Things Fall Apart and The Places That Scare You and is the resident teacher at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia. Her free teaching through Sounds True introduces her perspective on uncertainty, groundlessness, and the bardo wisdom of the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a guide for navigating daily life.

What is the bardo in Pema Chödrön’s teaching?

The bardo is the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the in-between space — the gap between what has ended and what has not yet begun. In traditional understanding it refers to the state between death and rebirth. Pema Chödrön teaches that the bardo is not something that waits for us in the future but is already woven throughout the in-between spaces of daily life — every moment of genuine uncertainty, every transition, every gap between one familiar state and the next. Her teaching invites genuine presence in these in-between spaces rather than the rush to escape them.

What is the Tibetan Book of the Dead and why does Pema Chödrön teach from it?

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is one of the most significant texts in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition — traditionally a guide to the states of consciousness that arise between death and rebirth. Pema Chödrön draws on it not as a literal guide to what happens after death but as a profound source of wisdom for navigating the uncertainty of daily life. The dynamics it describes — the impulse to flee from what is unfamiliar, the tendency to grasp at what is familiar even when it is no longer available — operate in the bardos of ordinary daily experience as much as in the bardo between lives.

What does groundlessness mean in Pema Chödrön’s teaching?

Groundlessness is Pema Chödrön’s term for the fundamental nature of experience — the recognition that the solid stable certainty the mind constantly seeks is not actually the nature of reality. Things change, situations shift, and the certainties of one moment become the uncertainties of the next. Rather than treating this as a problem to be solved her teaching invites a genuine willingness to be at home in groundlessness itself — which she identifies as the foundation of a more honest and more sustainable form of inner steadiness.

What is Sounds True?

Sounds True is an independent multimedia publishing company specializing in transformational and spiritual content. It offers books, audio programs, and free teachings from leading teachers across a wide range of contemplative and personal development traditions — including the Pema Chödrön free teaching on Embracing the Unknown covered in this post.