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…
The Lion-Faced Ḍākinī has traditionally been invoked at specific moments: when a lineage is under attack, when a practitioner is under siege, when the ordinary methods have proved insufficient, when gentleness has had its full chance and the fire has still not gone out. She is the practice that the tradition reserves for exactly those moments.
I do not need to tell you what season we are in. You feel it. The texture of this year has been one of accumulated obstacle, political turbulence, personal exhaustion, griefs that did not resolve, and a widespread sense that the gentler medicines are no longer landing the way they used to.
This is the season her practice was given for.
She protects three ways. First, from the obstacles that come from outside, the slander and attack and projection that any public life now routinely attracts. Second, from the obstacles we generate from within, the self deception that no amount of good intention has yet dissolved. Third, from the subtle energetic interferences the tradition names as “magical,” which modern readers may translate however they wish but which the practice assumes are real and treats as such.
Entering her retreat is a commitment to tap into the specific protection she offers, which is to raise our own awareness, to magnify our own clarity, and to carry that protection into the practice life ahead. The lineage holders have held her blessing precisely so that practitioners in future generations, which is us, would have her to turn to when the time came.
The time has come. Her practice is ready.
My very best to you always,
Lion Faced Dakini Transmission, Retreat and Program
Retreat Weekend Saturday and Sunday, November 7 & 8, 2026 9am – 1pm PT
Monday Evenings 5-6:30pm PT November 9, 16, 23, 30 Bonus class: Wed, Nov 18
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
SAVE THE DATE – Buddhism After #MeToo Open to Participants in the Yogini’s Programs & Members of BSI Wednesday, November 18th, 5-6:30pm PT with Pema Khandro, PhD
SAVE THE DATE – Dzogchen and the Body Longchenpa’s Treasury of Words and Meanings Sat & Sun December 5-6, 9am-1pm PT with David Germano, PhD and Pema Khandro, PhD
Copyright (C) *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*. All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|**|LIST:DESCRIPTION|**|END:IF|*
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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…
The Lion-Faced Ḍākinī retreat opens Saturday at 9am pacific. Onlone Registration remains open until we begin. I will teach the Lion Faced Dakini across the retreat; the four Monday nights follow, beginning November 9.
If you have been reading these letters and feeling the pull, trust it. We all will at some point in our lives need the balancing force of fierce compassion. And if that speaks to you, come find your community.
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
SAVE THE DATE – Buddhism After #MeToo Open to Participants in the Yogini’s Programs & Members of BSI Wednesday, November 18th, 5-6:30pm PT with Pema Khandro, PhD
SAVE THE DATE – Dzogchen and the Body Longchenpa’s Treasury of Words and Meanings Sat & Sun December 5-6, 9am-1pm PT with David Germano, PhD and Pema Khandro, PhD
Copyright (C) *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*. All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|**|LIST:DESCRIPTION|**|END:IF|*
Our mailing address is: *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|**|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|**|END:IF|*
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…
A brief teaching this evening on what the Lion-Faced Ḍākinī holds, and what each implement means. This is the kind of iconographic reading we will go deeper into at the retreat, but even a glimpse of it changes how one meets her.
In her right hand: the hooked knife (kartṛkā, gri gug).
The hooked knife is not a weapon. It is a cutting instrument shaped to catch and release what it severs. In her hand it cuts the eight worldly concerns: hope and fear of gain and loss, hope and fear of pleasure and pain, hope and fear of praise and blame, hope and fear of fame and disgrace. These eight are the invisible rope that keeps the ordinary mind pulled in every direction at once. Her knife is shaped to catch each strand of that rope and cut it. The hook on the blade is mercy: without the hook, what is cut would scatter and reattach. With the hook, the cutting holds.
In her left hand: the skull cup (kapāla, thod pa).
The skull cup does not hold blood. It holds the nectar of pure awareness, the amṛta that is the taste of mind when self-grasping has been cut away. She drinks from the cup because the result of her own cutting is this nectar. The skull itself is the trace of the fictive self whose cutting released it. She holds in her hand, as her cup, the hollow of what has been emptied.
Together: she cuts, and she drinks. She cuts the ordinary mind and she drinks the awareness that was always underneath it. These are not two actions. They are one action with two aspects.
When we receive her transmission at the retreat, meeting her implements is a way to unlock her deeper meaning. Learn more about Lion Faced Dakini —>
My very best to you always,
Lion Faced Dakini Transmission, Retreat and Program
Retreat Weekend Saturday and Sunday, November 7 & 8, 2026 9am – 1pm PT
Monday Evenings 5-6:30pm PT November 9, 16, 23, 30 Bonus class: Wed, Nov 18
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
SAVE THE DATE – Buddhism After #MeToo Open to Participants in the Yogini’s Programs & Members of BSI Wednesday, November 18th, 5-6:30pm PT with Pema Khandro, PhD
SAVE THE DATE – Dzogchen and the Body Longchenpa’s Treasury of Words and Meanings Sat & Sun December 5-6, 9am-1pm PT with David Germano, PhD and Pema Khandro, PhD
Copyright (C) *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*. All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|**|LIST:DESCRIPTION|**|END:IF|*
Our mailing address is: *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|**|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|**|END:IF|*
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…
The Lion-Faced Ḍākinī has traditionally been invoked at specific moments: when a lineage is under attack, when a practitioner is under siege, when the ordinary methods have proved insufficient, when gentleness has had its full chance and the fire has still not gone out. She is the practice that the tradition reserves for exactly those moments.
I do not need to tell you what season we are in. You feel it. The texture of this year has been one of accumulated obstacle, political turbulence, personal exhaustion, griefs that did not resolve, and a widespread sense that the gentler medicines are no longer landing the way they used to.
This is the season her practice was given for.
She protects three ways. First, from the obstacles that come from outside, the slander and attack and projection that any public life now routinely attracts. Second, from the obstacles we generate from within, the self deception that no amount of good intention has yet dissolved. Third, from the subtle energetic interferences the tradition names as “magical,” which modern readers may translate however they wish but which the practice assumes are real and treats as such.
Entering her retreat is a commitment to tap into the specific protection she offers, which is to raise our own awareness, to magnify our own clarity, and to carry that protection into the practice life ahead. The lineage holders have held her blessing precisely so that practitioners in future generations, which is us, would have her to turn to when the time came.
The time has come. Her practice is ready.
My very best to you always,
Lion Faced Dakini Transmission, Retreat and Program
Retreat Weekend Saturday and Sunday, November 7 & 8, 2026 9am – 1pm PT
Monday Evenings 5-6:30pm PT November 9, 16, 23, 30 Bonus class: Wed, Nov 18
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
SAVE THE DATE – Buddhism After #MeToo Open to Participants in the Yogini’s Programs & Members of BSI Wednesday, November 18th, 5-6:30pm PT with Pema Khandro, PhD
SAVE THE DATE – Dzogchen and the Body Longchenpa’s Treasury of Words and Meanings Sat & Sun December 5-6, 9am-1pm PT with David Germano, PhD and Pema Khandro, PhD
Copyright (C) *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*. All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|**|LIST:DESCRIPTION|**|END:IF|*
Our mailing address is: *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|**|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|**|END:IF|*
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…
For those joining the Lion-Faced Ḍākinī retreat, and for those who want to continue going deeper, the four Monday nights of November are offered as the sustaining arc.
The retreat opens the direct transmission. The Monday nights hold it in context. Each session takes up one essential figure or theme in the lineage that carries her teaching across the centuries.
November 9: She Was a Radiant Lotus. We follow the life story of Lhacham Pemasal, Padmasambhava’s eighth-century disciple and the daughter of King Trisong Detsen. Her death became the seed from which the Khandro Nyingthig lineage grew. One of the most moving episodes in the whole history of the Nyingma lineage inheritance.
November 16: The Ḍākinī’s Guide to Dzogchen. A close reading of the dialogue between Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyal on the Great Perfection view, in which Yeshe Tsogyal is the one asking the probing questions. One of the oldest and most unmistakable records of a yoginī teaching inside the inner tantric transmission and her debate with Padmasambhava on the role of the female consort.
November 18: Buddhism After #Metoo This added evening session addresses Buddhist sexualities, sexual violence, and abuse in Buddhist contexts, bringing together scholarly perspectives, a facilitated listening and discussion circle, and practice drawn from the tradition’s ethical refutations that denouce abuse.
November 23: Jetsun Lochen Chönyi and the Lineage of Lion-Faced Ḍākinī. We meet Jetsun Lochen Chönyi Zangmo (1865 to 1951), twentieth-century yoginī and abbess of Shukseb Nunnery, who held the Siṃhamukhā practice lineage within living memory. For many of you this will be the first time encountering her.
November 30: The Yoginī’s Teaching and the Nyingma Path. The closing synthesis brings together the peaceful, semi-wrathful, and wrathful faces of the sacred feminine. Reflection, discussion, dedication.
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
SAVE THE DATE – Buddhism After #MeToo Open to Participants in the Yogini’s Programs & Members of BSI Wednesday, November 18th, 5-6:30pm PT with Pema Khandro, PhD
SAVE THE DATE – Dzogchen and the Body Longchenpa’s Treasury of Words and Meanings Sat & Sun December 5-6, 9am-1pm PT with David Germano, PhD and Pema Khandro, PhD
Copyright (C) *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*. All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|**|LIST:DESCRIPTION|**|END:IF|*
Our mailing address is: *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|**|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|**|END:IF|*
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…
There is a teaching that readers of modern dharma books rarely encounter in its full form, and the Lion-Faced Ḍākinī is one of its clearest expressions – that of fierce compassion.
Compassion is not always gentle.
In the Vajrayāna, enlightened activity is traditionally divided into four modes: pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and wrathful. Pacifying activity is what most practitioners imagine when they hear the word compassion: calming, soothing, a soft reassurance. It is one of the four, and only one. Enriching activity gives abundance. Magnetizing activity draws beings in, enchants and seduces. Wrathful activity cuts.
The Lion-Faced Ḍākinī is a wrathful ḍākinī. Her compassion is the compassion of the surgeon, not the compassion of the comforting friend. When the illness in a mind is aggression and harm-doing, flattery will not touch it, patience will not touch it, more time will not touch it. Only direct cutting will touch it, and only a form of the Buddha with the ferocity to cut through will be of use.
This is why her face is a lion’s face and not a human face. The lion looks nothing like our ordinary demeanor. She is not asking us to conform to ordinary expectations. She is asking for the harm to stop, the aggression to end, for evil to be cut off, and her cutting is her mercy.
For a practitioner living through a difficult season, this teaching strikes directly to the point. The wish for a gentler teaching is understandable and often inappropriate. Indeed pacifying, magnetizing and enriching energy should work ninety-nine percent of the time. However, there are states of mind, and there are moments in a life, and there are obstacles in the world, that only her kind of compassion can meet, when only the loudest most embodied lions roar of a NO will do.
But she is not punishing. She is not angry. She is a mother who will not let her child remain in the fire, and she will do what has to be done to pull them out.
When we meditate on the Lion Faced Ḍākinī, it is to call forth our strength and power to do what must be done to prevent harm, to stop harm, to protect what should be protected.
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
SAVE THE DATE – Buddhism After #MeToo Open to Participants in the Yogini’s Programs & Members of BSI Wednesday, November 18th, 5-6:30pm PT with Pema Khandro, PhD
SAVE THE DATE – Dzogchen and the Body Longchenpa’s Treasury of Words and Meanings Sat & Sun December 5-6, 9am-1pm PT with David Germano, PhD and Pema Khandro, PhD
Copyright (C) *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*. All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|**|LIST:DESCRIPTION|**|END:IF|*
Our mailing address is: *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|**|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|**|END:IF|*
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…
For those joining the Lion-Faced Ḍākinī retreat, and for those who want to continue going deeper, the four Monday nights of November are offered as the sustaining arc.
The retreat opens the direct transmission. The Monday nights hold it in context. Each session takes up one essential figure or theme in the lineage that carries her teaching across the centuries.
November 9: She Was a Radiant Lotus. We follow the life story of Lhacham Pemasal, Padmasambhava’s eighth-century disciple and the daughter of King Trisong Detsen. Her death became the seed from which the Khandro Nyingthig lineage grew. One of the most moving episodes in the whole history of the Nyingma lineage inheritance.
November 16: The Ḍākinī’s Guide to Dzogchen. A close reading of the dialogue between Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyal on the Great Perfection view, in which Yeshe Tsogyal is the one asking the probing questions. One of the oldest and most unmistakable records of a yoginī teaching inside the inner tantric transmission and her debate with Padmasambhava on the role of the female consort.
November 18: Buddhism After #Metoo This added evening session addresses Buddhist sexualities, sexual violence, and abuse in Buddhist contexts, bringing together scholarly perspectives, a facilitated listening and discussion circle, and practice drawn from the tradition’s ethical refutations that denouce abuse.
November 23: Jetsun Lochen Chönyi and the Lineage of Lion-Faced Ḍākinī. We meet Jetsun Lochen Chönyi Zangmo (1865 to 1951), twentieth-century yoginī and abbess of Shukseb Nunnery, who held the Siṃhamukhā practice lineage within living memory. For many of you this will be the first time encountering her.
November 30: The Yoginī’s Teaching and the Nyingma Path. The closing synthesis brings together the peaceful, semi-wrathful, and wrathful faces of the sacred feminine. Reflection, discussion, dedication.
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
SAVE THE DATE – Buddhism After #MeToo Open to Participants in the Yogini’s Programs & Members of BSI Wednesday, November 18th, 5-6:30pm PT with Pema Khandro, PhD
SAVE THE DATE – Dzogchen and the Body Longchenpa’s Treasury of Words and Meanings Sat & Sun December 5-6, 9am-1pm PT with David Germano, PhD and Pema Khandro, PhD
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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…
There is a teaching that readers of modern dharma books rarely encounter in its full form, and the Lion-Faced Ḍākinī is one of its clearest expressions – that of fierce compassion.
Compassion is not always gentle.
In the Vajrayāna, enlightened activity is traditionally divided into four modes: pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and wrathful. Pacifying activity is what most practitioners imagine when they hear the word compassion: calming, soothing, a soft reassurance. It is one of the four, and only one. Enriching activity gives abundance. Magnetizing activity draws beings in, enchants and seduces. Wrathful activity cuts.
The Lion-Faced Ḍākinī is a wrathful ḍākinī. Her compassion is the compassion of the surgeon, not the compassion of the comforting friend. When the illness in a mind is aggression and harm-doing, flattery will not touch it, patience will not touch it, more time will not touch it. Only direct cutting will touch it, and only a form of the Buddha with the ferocity to cut through will be of use.
This is why her face is a lion’s face and not a human face. The lion looks nothing like our ordinary demeanor. She is not asking us to conform to ordinary expectations. She is asking for the harm to stop, the aggression to end, for evil to be cut off, and her cutting is her mercy.
For a practitioner living through a difficult season, this teaching strikes directly to the point. The wish for a gentler teaching is understandable and often inappropriate. Indeed pacifying, magnetizing and enriching energy should work ninety-nine percent of the time. However, there are states of mind, and there are moments in a life, and there are obstacles in the world, that only her kind of compassion can meet, when only the loudest most embodied lions roar of a NO will do.
But she is not punishing. She is not angry. She is a mother who will not let her child remain in the fire, and she will do what has to be done to pull them out.
When we meditate on the Lion Faced Ḍākinī, it is to call forth our strength and power to do what must be done to prevent harm, to stop harm, to protect what should be protected.
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
SAVE THE DATE – Buddhism After #MeToo Open to Participants in the Yogini’s Programs & Members of BSI Wednesday, November 18th, 5-6:30pm PT with Pema Khandro, PhD
SAVE THE DATE – Dzogchen and the Body Longchenpa’s Treasury of Words and Meanings Sat & Sun December 5-6, 9am-1pm PT with David Germano, PhD and Pema Khandro, PhD
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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…
For those who have never met her, the Lion-Faced Ḍākinī (Siṃhamukhā, Senge Dongma) can at first startle. She has the body of a dancing yoginī and the face of a roaring lion. She is dark blue or black, blazing within a halo of wisdom fire. In her right hand she holds a hooked knife, in her left a skull cup. She tramples the obstacles that keep practitioners from awakening.
She is a wrathful emanation of Vajravārāhī, which is to say she is Vajrayoginī herself, appearing in the form that the obstacles of our time require. Her lineage within the Nyingma school passes through Padmasambhava, through Yeshe Tsogyal, through the great treasure revealers and into our own practice today. She is traditionally invoked for protection from obstacles: the obstacles that come from without, the obstacles we generate from within, and the obstacles the tradition names as “magical,” meaning the subtle energetic interferences, slander, and projection that any serious practitioner eventually faces. And even more radically, she is invoked to stop evil.
Her practice is the practice we turn to when the obstacles are real. She is not a decorative yidam. She is the specific medicine for the specific illness of a mind under siege.
In the coming days I will say more about her compassion, which is not what most people expect, and about the retreat and Monday series that will open her teachings for us this fall.
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
SAVE THE DATE – Dzogchen and the Body Longchenpa’s Treasury of Words and Meanings Sat & Sun December 5-6, 9am-1pm PT with David Germano, PhD and Pema Khandro, PhD
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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…
Something is beginning this fall at BSI that I want you to know about from the start. For the next six weeks, we are entering a sustained immersion in the ḍākinī teachings, moving from the Lion-Faced Ḍākinī retreat weekend into four Monday nights that follow its arc all the way through the end of November.
The online retreat opens on Nov 7-8. The four Monday nights that follow trace the lives, texts, and lineages that make Siṃhamukhā’s practice intelligible: an eighth-century princess whose death opened the Khandro Nyingthig lineage, Yeshe Tsogyal’s own questions to Padmasambhava, a twentieth-century yoginī who held this very practice, and a closing synthesis of the three faces of the sacred feminine.
We will meet weekly because in Vajrayāna we return to the same practice over sustained time precisely because her blessing enters by accumulation, not by a single sitting. This course is designed as such an accumulation.
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
SAVE THE DATE – Dzogchen and the Body Longchenpa’s Treasury of Words and Meanings Sat & Sun December 5-6, 9am-1pm PT with David Germano, PhD and Pema Khandro, PhD
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Our mailing address is: *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|**|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|**|END:IF|*