Buddhist Studies Institute

Twelve hundred years ago, in the eighth century, a Tibetan royal lady named Yeshe Tsogyal had a series of secret visions.

She was already extraordinary. Padmasambhava’s principal disciple. His teaching partner. The scribe who preserved the treasure teachings that would shape the Nyingma tradition for the next thousand years. She had reached a threshold in her own practice where visions began to arrive of their own accord.

And what she saw was Vajrayogini.

Not as a distant deity. Not as an image to be worshiped. She saw Vajrayogini as the sacred feminine at the heart of the tantras, dancing in her red body, holding the curved knife and the skull cup, standing on her lotus in the midst of flames. The vision opened a lineage of practice that has been carried forward for over twelve hundred years.

This October, I am offering the Vajrayogini Empowerment Retreat and Program. It is the program I most want to bring you into if you are drawn to the tantric path.

The empowerment itself is offered by Drupon Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche, a senior lineage holder in the Tibetan tradition and a daily Vajrayogini practitioner for over three decades. Then I will lead the practice and given teachings on the second day. 

The program is complete in itself. It is open to newcomers as much as to experienced Vajrayana practitioners, for anyone to make a dharma connection with Vajrayogini. Rinpoche requires ngondro, the tantric preliminaries before engaging in the 100,000 accumulations of the Vajrayogini mantra, but anyone can come to the empowerment, receive the transmission and instructions and make the vital connection with Vajrayogini. Whether you are entering this material for the first time or returning to it after years of practice, the empowerment weekend and the four Monday evenings that follow are designed as a complete arc into Vajrayogini’s world.

If you have been called to this material, I hope you will come.

Learn more and register for the Vajrayogini Empowerment & Program —>

Best to you always,

Buddhist Studies Institute

Twelve hundred years ago, in the eighth century, a Tibetan royal lady named Yeshe Tsogyal had a series of secret visions.

She was already extraordinary. Padmasambhava’s principal disciple. His teaching partner. The scribe who preserved the treasure teachings that would shape the Nyingma tradition for the next thousand years. She had reached a threshold in her own practice where visions began to arrive of their own accord.

And what she saw was Vajrayogini.

Not as a distant deity. Not as an image to be worshiped. She saw Vajrayogini as the sacred feminine at the heart of the tantras, dancing in her red body, holding the curved knife and the skull cup, standing on her lotus in the midst of flames. The vision opened a lineage of practice that has been carried forward for over twelve hundred years.

This October, I am offering the Vajrayogini Empowerment Retreat and Program. It is the program I most want to bring you into if you are drawn to the tantric path.

The empowerment itself is offered by Drupon Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche, a senior lineage holder in the Tibetan tradition and a daily Vajrayogini practitioner for over three decades. Then I will lead the practice and given teachings on the second day. 

The program is complete in itself. It is open to newcomers as much as to experienced Vajrayana practitioners, for anyone to make a dharma connection with Vajrayogini. Rinpoche requires ngondro, the tantric preliminaries before engaging in the 100,000 accumulations of the Vajrayogini mantra, but anyone can come to the empowerment, receive the transmission and instructions and make the vital connection with Vajrayogini. Whether you are entering this material for the first time or returning to it after years of practice, the empowerment weekend and the four Monday evenings that follow are designed as a complete arc into Vajrayogini’s world.

If you have been called to this material, I hope you will come.

Learn more and register for the Vajrayogini Empowerment & Program —>

Best to you always,

Buddhist Studies Institute

Registration for the White Tara weekend closes tonight at midnight Pacific.

If you have been thinking about joining, this is the last moment.

The weekend begins Saturday morning Pacific time.

Register Now for The White Tara Retreat and Program →

If you have been on the fence, here are the questions people most often write to ask.

Do I need a background in Tibetan Buddhism? No. The material is presented for newcomers and longtime practitioners alike. If you are curious about this tradition, you are ready.

Will I be able to attend the Monday evenings if I am in a different timezone? Yes. All sessions are recorded and available for one year. Students from any timezone may participate fully through live sessions or recordings. Monday evenings are not required to be attended live.

What if I miss a weekend session? Recordings are available within 48 hours. You will have access to keep for one year.

Is the cost manageable? Reduced tuition is available. Full scholarships are available, please write to [email].

Is this just for women? No. The program is open to everyone.

Do I have to sign up for the whole Yoginis arc? No. The White Tara Program is complete in itself. The Vajrayogini Empowerment Retreat and Program (October 10 – November 2) and the Lion-Faced Ḍākinī Retreat and Program (November 7 – November 30) are separate offerings that you may register for individually, if you feel called forward.

Buddhist Studies Institute

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.

Learn More about The White Tara Retreat and Program →

My best to you Always,

Buddhist Studies Institute

Dear Friends,

The White Tara weekend begins this Saturday.

Something that stays with me when I teach on Tara is what her practice does for people. It is quiet. It does not announce itself. But those who take up her mantra and carry it in daily life find, over time, that their days become steadier. Their relationships become gentler. Their sense of the sacred becomes closer to the surface.

She is the peaceful sacred feminine. That is what she offers.

Registration closes Saturday morning. If you have been considering joining, please come.

Register for the White Tara Retreat and Program →

My best to you Always,

Buddhist Studies Institute

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.

Learn More about The White Tara Retreat and Program →

My best to you Always,

Buddhist Studies Institute

Dear Friends,

Sometimes enlightened wisdom appears in forms we least expect it. And in a sense, the entire journey of Vajrayana is a journey to realizing how it appears within us, just exactly as we are. It reminds me of the story in Tāranātha’s Origin of the Tārā Tantra, one of the most important scriptural sources for the Tara tradition, we are told that Tara was once a princess named Yeshe Dawa, Wisdom Moon. Yeshe Dawa had the wish to attain enlightenment for the sake of all beings. She had also reached the threshold, in the accounts we have, of full realization.

At that moment, a group of monks approached her with what they intended as encouragement. If you continue to practice with such devotion, they told her, you will surely be born as a man and attain enlightenment in a future life.

Her response is one of the most powerful statements in the entire history of Buddhism.

She refused. She said, in essence, that the idea that only a male body can attain enlightenment is a delusion, and that she would take rebirth as a woman for as long as beings needed liberation. She would return, life after life, in a female body, and she would attain enlightenment as she was.

And she did.

Tara, in all her forms, is the ongoing enactment of that vow. White Tara, Green Tara, the Twenty-One Taras, and every color and function and mood in which she appears, is the manifestation of Yeshe Dawa’s original refusal to conform to everyone’s picture of what enlightenment should look like. She chose to awaken as she was. That is the weight underneath every mantra we recite in her name.

This is the story we begin with in the White Tara weekend. Her origin, her lineage as it comes down through the Longchen Nyingthig, and the transmission of her practice.

Discover More about The White Tara Retreat and Program →

Best to you Always,

Buddhist Studies Institute

Dear Friends,

Sometimes enlightened wisdom appears in forms we least expect it. And in a sense, the entire journey of Vajrayana is a journey to realizing how it appears within us, just exactly as we are. It reminds me of the story in Tāranātha’s Origin of the Tārā Tantra, one of the most important scriptural sources for the Tara tradition, we are told that Tara was once a princess named Yeshe Dawa, Wisdom Moon. Yeshe Dawa had the wish to attain enlightenment for the sake of all beings. She had also reached the threshold, in the accounts we have, of full realization.

At that moment, a group of monks approached her with what they intended as encouragement. If you continue to practice with such devotion, they told her, you will surely be born as a man and attain enlightenment in a future life.

Her response is one of the most powerful statements in the entire history of Buddhism.

She refused. She said, in essence, that the idea that only a male body can attain enlightenment is a delusion, and that she would take rebirth as a woman for as long as beings needed liberation. She would return, life after life, in a female body, and she would attain enlightenment as she was.

And she did.

Tara, in all her forms, is the ongoing enactment of that vow. White Tara, Green Tara, the Twenty-One Taras, and every color and function and mood in which she appears, is the manifestation of Yeshe Dawa’s original refusal to conform to everyone’s picture of what enlightenment should look like. She chose to awaken as she was. That is the weight underneath every mantra we recite in her name.

This is the story we begin with in the White Tara weekend. Her origin, her lineage as it comes down through the Longchen Nyingthig, and the transmission of her practice.

Discover More about The White Tara Retreat and Program →

Best to you Always,

Buddhist Studies Institute

The White Tara Retreat & Program

Part 1 of The Yoginis Teachings – Online with Pema Khandro

Weekend Retreat
9am-1pm Sat–Sun
September 12–13, 2026

4 Monday Evenings
5-6:30pm PT
Sept 14, 21, 28, and Oct 5

Dear Dharma Friends, 

For more than a thousand years, White Tara has been beloved across the Himalayas. Her mantra is recited in monasteries and homes from Tibet to Bhutan. Her image, seated in the diamond posture with seven eyes of wisdom looking in all directions, is one of the most enduring representations of the sacred feminine in the entire Buddhist tradition.

This fall, I am offering a weekend retreat with the transmission of the White Tara practice from the Longchen Nyingthig lineage, followed by four Monday evening sessions on the teachings of the great women of Indian Buddhism. It is the opening program of The Yoginī’s Teachings, a fall program theme on the three forms of the sacred feminine and the most important teachings given by yoginīs and dakinis for twenty five hundred years of the tradition.

I have been studying the women of Tibetan Buddhism for most of my life. First as a Buddhist yoginī myself, then as a doctoral researcher, as a professor who teaches this history, and as someone who carries the lineage of a Tibetan yoginī who taught a hundred years ago.

White Tara is where I want to begin. She is peaceful. She is accessible. Her practice is for long life and healing and the wisdom that sustains all other practice. And her origin story carries one of the most important theological statements in the entire Great Vehicle: her vow, made in a previous life as Princess Wisdom Moon, to always take rebirth in a woman’s body until all beings are freed. When a monk told her she should pray to be reborn as a man to make faster progress, she refused. She chose femaleness as the vehicle of enlightenment rather than the obstacle to it.

The weekend is where we receive her transmission and enter her practice. The four Monday evenings following take us into the sutra-level foundations of the Yoginī’s teachings: the ancestral sangha of Buddhist women, Prajñāpāramitā as the Mother of All Buddhas, the great women teachers of the Great Vehicle (Mahayana) sutras, and closing with the Tara family as the full spectrum of the sacred feminine.

If the mother buddha has been calling you, I hope you will come.

Best to you Always,

Buddhist Studies Institute

The White Tara Retreat & Program

Part 1 of The Yoginis Teachings – Online with Pema Khandro

Weekend Retreat
9am-1pm Sat–Sun
September 12–13, 2026

4 Monday Evenings
5-6:30pm PT
Sept 14, 21, 28, and Oct 5

Dear Dharma Friends, 

For more than a thousand years, White Tara has been beloved across the Himalayas. Her mantra is recited in monasteries and homes from Tibet to Bhutan. Her image, seated in the diamond posture with seven eyes of wisdom looking in all directions, is one of the most enduring representations of the sacred feminine in the entire Buddhist tradition.

This fall, I am offering a weekend retreat with the transmission of the White Tara practice from the Longchen Nyingthig lineage, followed by four Monday evening sessions on the teachings of the great women of Indian Buddhism. It is the opening program of The Yoginī’s Teachings, a fall program theme on the three forms of the sacred feminine and the most important teachings given by yoginīs and dakinis for twenty five hundred years of the tradition.

I have been studying the women of Tibetan Buddhism for most of my life. First as a Buddhist yoginī myself, then as a doctoral researcher, as a professor who teaches this history, and as someone who carries the lineage of a Tibetan yoginī who taught a hundred years ago.

White Tara is where I want to begin. She is peaceful. She is accessible. Her practice is for long life and healing and the wisdom that sustains all other practice. And her origin story carries one of the most important theological statements in the entire Great Vehicle: her vow, made in a previous life as Princess Wisdom Moon, to always take rebirth in a woman’s body until all beings are freed. When a monk told her she should pray to be reborn as a man to make faster progress, she refused. She chose femaleness as the vehicle of enlightenment rather than the obstacle to it.

The weekend is where we receive her transmission and enter her practice. The four Monday evenings following take us into the sutra-level foundations of the Yoginī’s teachings: the ancestral sangha of Buddhist women, Prajñāpāramitā as the Mother of All Buddhas, the great women teachers of the Great Vehicle (Mahayana) sutras, and closing with the Tara family as the full spectrum of the sacred feminine.

If the mother buddha has been calling you, I hope you will come.

Best to you Always,