Saturday, November 16

11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. ET

This session is included in the course Yeshe Tsogyal: Illuminating the Path of Awakening, but can also be taken on its own–only if you have experience with other sadhana practices. 

Anyone with a strong Mahayana foundation and inspiration to connect to Yeshe Tsogyal can attend the lung, as long as they register for and participate in the “Yeshe Tsogyal: Illuminating the Path of Awakening” course to receive the relevant background knowledge and context.

Session Overview

Join us to practice a special sadhana (liturgy) invoking Yeshe Tsogyal, the foremost Tibetan yogini and female master who played a founding role for Buddhism in Tibet. This is a special offering for Vajrayana students to receive the lung, or reading transmission, for the practice, “The Brilliant Light of the Blessings of Great Bliss: A Guru Yoga based on Khandro Yeshe Tsogyal” by Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

The lung, or reading transmission, for the practice will be given by Sean Price, translator for Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche. This will be followed by a practice session guided by Holly Gayley. We will go through the practice section by section with brief explanations of the visualization, terminology, and phases of the sadhana.

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.

Once you receive the lung, you will be authorized to practice the text going forward. We will screen share the liturgy for practice together in English. Participants will later receive the materials to be able to do the practice on their own.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

This session is included in the course Yeshe Tsogyal: Illuminating the Path of Awakening, but can also be taken on its own–only if you have experience with other sadhana practices. 

Anyone with a strong Mahayana foundation and inspiration to connect to Yeshe Tsogyal can attend the lung, as long as they register for and participate in the “Yeshe Tsogyal: Illuminating the Path of Awakening” course to receive the relevant background knowledge and context.

Prerequisites

Vajrayana practitioner and experience with other sadhana practices.

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).