Thursdays: Nov 7, 14, 21 / Dec 5

from 7:00-9:00 p.m. ET and

Yeshe Tsogyal’s legacy looms large in Tibetan Buddhism, and her life story has inspired generations of practitioners following the path of dharma under challenging circumstances. In youth, her family attempted to force her into marriage, but she escaped to become one of Tibet’s preeminent yogini. While practicing in solitude, she faced numerous hardships and persevered through austerities. Exemplifying devotion, she served as student, consort, adept, and tantric master, achieving realization on par with Padmasambhava, the eighth-century Indian tantric master who served as her teacher and a founding figure for Buddhism in Tibet. Her ongoing presence continues through ritual, visionary experience, pilgrimage, treasure revelations, and living emanations. 

Through practice, talks and dialogues, this course explores what we can learn from Yeshe Tsogyal’s life to inspire our own practice and path. Following the trajectory of her life story, we examine themes of devotion as a longing to awaken, taking adversity as path, and the dakini as a vibrant manifestation of enlightenment.

Course Overview

Explore the remarkable life story of Yeshe Tsogyal and how it can inspire our own path in this four session course.  Through talks, dialogue, and practice, we will reflect on how to work with challenges along the path and invoke the dakini within. 

Participants will have the option of attending an additional session (at no extra cost) to receive the lung (reading transmission) for the Yeshe Tsogyal sadhana by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche during the final session. The lung will be given by Sean Price.

Lung Sadhana-Must register separately! Register Here

Saturday, November 16 from 11:00am-1:00pm ET – Additional two-hour session where participants will receive the Yeshe Tsogyal Sadhana Lung and have a chance to participate in a guided practice session. 

A “lung” is the oral transmission of a practice from an authorized person. Essentially, the practice text is read out to people who wish to receive it and this empowers them to engage in the practice. Lungs have been a traditional way of passing on practices in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for hundreds of years. 

The lung for the Yeshe Tsogyal sadhana, “The Brilliant Light of the Blessings of Great Bliss: A Guru Yoga based on Khandro Yeshe Tsogyal” by Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche will be given by Sean Price, translator for Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche.

The Lung Sadhana requires a separate registration. Please register here. 

About Yeshe Tsogyal

Yeshe Tsogyal is the preeminent lady of Tibetan Buddhism. While most—if not all—of what we know about her life is highly mythologized, she is revered by Tibetans as a foremost disciple and consort of Padmasambhava, the eighth-century tantric master credited with a seminal role in establishing Buddhism in Tibet. Yeshe Tsogyal is also celebrated for transcribing Padmasambhava’s teachings and concealing them as treasures across the Tibetan and Himalayan landscape, to be revealed by successive tertöns, or “treasure revealers,” during times of strife.

In her well-known namthar, or story of “complete liberation,” which was revealed by the seventeenth-century tertön Taksham Nuden Dorje (available in English translations by Keith Dowman and the Padmakara Translation Group), Yeshe Tsogyal is portrayed as a gutsy woman striving for enlightenment. She faces various trials while practicing meditation in mountain solitudes: scorn from villagers, torment by demons, starvation, and even assault. Through these trials, she is shown transforming adversity into fuel for her practice and gaining realization. Moreover, in her namthar, one finds the striking statement by Padmasambhava that a woman with strong determination has a greater potential for attaining enlightenment than a man. In this way, Yeshe Tsogyal serves as an important example of a woman who traversed the Buddhist path.

Read more: www.lionsroar.com/the-many-lives-of-yeshe-tsogyal

Prerequisites

Open to anyone with a strong foundation in the Mahayana path.

About the Teachers

Holly Gayley is a scholar and translator of Buddhist literature in contemporary Tibet and associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research explores gender and sexuality in Buddhist tantra, literature by and about Tibetan and Himalayan women, ethical reform in contemporary Tibet, and theorizing translation, both literary and cultural, in the transmission of Buddhist teachings to North America. Holly is author of Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern Tibet (2016) and editor of Voices from Larung Gar: Shaping Tibetan Buddhism for the Twenty-First Century (2021). Her most recent book is Longing to Awaken: Buddhist Devotion in Tibetan Poetry and Song (2024), co-edited with Dominique Townsend. For more than two decades, she has regularly led meditation workshops and retreats. 

Sean Price is a master translator and director of Tibetan publications for Tsadra Foundation. He has lived in Asia for more than thirty years, and has been a monk since 1994, residing at Shechen Monastery in Nepal since 1999. Under the guidance of Kyabje Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche, Sean locates and preserves rare Tibetan books and translates liturgical texts. As director of Tibetan publications for Tsadra Foundation, he has helped to produce thousands of Tibetan texts and e-books. Among his numerous translations, he has published The Supreme Siddhi of Mahamudra: Teachings, Poems, and Songs of the Drukpa Kagyu Lineage (2017); The Emanated Scripture of Manjushri: Shabkar’s Essential Meditation Instructions (2019); and The Collected Minor Writings of Khenpo Gangshar (2021).