With Pema Khandro, Father Francis Tiso, Lama Lhanang Rinpoche, Chagdud Khadro, Shugen Roshi, Julie Rogers, Jim Tucker, M.D., Koshin Paley Ellison and Dr. William McGrath
Open Dates
Teachings on Death and Dying Facing realities of dying, death, and grief are central to our human experience. This program offers practical instructions for helping others in the process of dying and an overview of essential knowledge on death, bardo, and rebirth. This includes self-paced lectures on dying, loss, grief, and illness from Lamas and scholars of Buddhist Studies. Support the Buddhist Studies Institute by donating for these precious teachings. Your contribution, big and small, helps makes in-depth Buddhist training and education more accessible for all. May the teachings spread and flourish!
With Dr. Nicole Willock, Julie Regan, Ph.D., Pema Khandro, Lama Willa Miller, Amy Langenberg , Dr. Ann Gleig, Dr. Nida Chenagtsang, Lama Rod Owens, Dr. Jim Hopper, Dr. Elizabeth Call and Damchö Diana Finnegan
Open Dates
Join Pema Khandro and a group of esteemed Buddhist Studies scholars for an exploration of the history of Buddhist Sexualities from celibacy, to sacred sexuality in Buddhist Tantra and a simple approach to embodied integration with nature in Dzogchen. Support the Buddhist Studies Institute by donating for these precious teachings. Your contribution, big and small, helps makes in-depth Buddhist training and education more accessible for all. May the teachings spread and flourish!
With Holly Gayley, Judith Simmer-Brown, Sarah Jacoby, Amy Langenberg , Damchö Diana Finnegan, Venerable Karma Lekshe Tsomo and Pema Khandro
Open Dates
This is the missing history of women in Tantric Buddhism. This course addresses the fascinating story of nuns, mothers, teachers, consorts, prophets, and disciples. Taught by scholar-practitioners whose groundbreaking research on women and Buddhism has changed the way we think of Buddhist history. This course will address the history of women in Buddhism, the history of yoginis and dakinis in India and Tibet, the stories of important Buddhist women, Buddhist philosophy on gender, sex, and sexuality, and the role of the consort in historical Tibet, and contemporary manifestations and so much more. Support the Buddhist Studies Institute by donating for…
Whenever I teach this material, I am asked some version of the same question.
“Why now? Why are these teachings from the sacred feminine coming forward at this moment?”
There are scholarly answers: manuscripts becoming available, archives opening, the work of Tibetan teachers and Western researchers converging.
But the deeper answer is harder to name.
Many practitioners have described a particular kind of longing when they come to Tibetan Buddhism. They love the teachings. They commit to the practices. They take up the lineage. And then, somewhere along the way, they find themselves wondering about the women, or even trying to understand the dakini.
These questions are part of how the dharma deepens in us. They are not a complaint against what we have received. They are a sign that we want to receive more, to know the fuller story, to meet the teachers whose realization helped shape the very lineage we have already entered.
The tradition has tremendous resources to meet these questions. Having spent a couple decades teaching and translating the texts, I have wanted for a long time to share these resources with you. The legends of the great yoginīs and their teachings are being studied in academic work, and I want to share the latest research and discoveries with you. And what had been preserved in particular monasteries, particular family lineages, particular oral traditions is now coming forward through this course. It seems particularly urgent for times that are so divided and depressed, when there is a crisis of meaning and the longing for connections with what is profound – precisely circumstances where Ḍākinī wisdom can guide us.
That is why this material matters now. That is why I keep returning to it in my own scholarship and practice. That is why I am offering The Yoginī’s Teachings this fall.
The White Tara weekend is our first weekend in the Yoginī’s Teachings. It is peaceful. accessible. Grounded in one of the oldest and most beloved practices in the whole tradition. From there, for those who feel called forward, the journey continues.
THE YOGINIS TEACHINGS – FALL 2026 White Tara Retreat & Program The Peaceful Sacred Feminine and the Women of the Great Vehicle Weekend Retreat: Sat–Sun, Sept 12–13, 2026 Monday Evening Sessions: Sept 14, 21, 28, Oct 5 with Tulku Pema Khandro
Vajrayogini Empowerment, Retreat & Program The Fierce Joyful Ḍākinī and the Yoginīs of Tibet Weekend Empowerment Retreat: Sat–Sun, October 10–11, 2026 Monday Evening Sessions: Oct 12, 19, 26, Nov 2 Vajrayogini Empowerment with Drupon Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche and Teachings with Tulku Pema Khandro
The Lion-Faced Ḍākinī Retreat and Program The Wrathful Sacred Feminine and the Great Perfection Weekend Transmission and Retreat: Sat–Sun, Nov 7–8, 2026 Monday Evening Sessions: Nov 9, 16, 23, 30 with Tulku Pema Khandro