Buddhist Studies Institute

Buddhist Studies Institute

I want to write to you personally, because these letters are, in a way, personal.

The empowerment weekend begins tomorrow.

I have been thinking, as this weekend approaches, about the students who have been receiving these emails for the past four weeks and have not yet decided. Some of you are longtime practitioners of the Nyingma tradition who already know you want this transmission and are simply choosing the moment. Some of you are practitioners of other traditions considering whether to take up something new. Some of you are newer to Buddhism and are asking whether this is the right entry point.

To each of you, differently, I want to say the same thing.

Vajrayogini has been carried in this lineage for over twelve hundred years. She was received by Yeshe Tsogyal in the eighth century. She was preserved by generations of yoginīs and treasure revealers across the centuries. This practice has come, through many hands, into the ones that will offer her to you this weekend.

The tradition holds that when a practitioner is drawn to a specific deity, that drawing is itself a sign. The deity is calling. The connection is old. What is being asked is only that the practitioner say yes.

For anyone who is asking whether this is the right entry point: yes, it is. This program is designed as a complete arc from the moment of empowerment through the four Monday evenings that ground the practice. Newcomers walk in beside longtime practitioners, and both are received, held and connected with one another.

If you have been drawn to this material, I hope you will say yes. If it is not the right moment, it is not the right moment, and there will be other openings. But if you have been circling this and waiting for permission, this is your permission!

The doors are open until the morning of the empowerment.

Register Now for Vajrayogini Empowerment —>

My best to you always,

Buddhist Studies Institute

I want to write to you about what an empowerment actually is, because it is one of the most misunderstood aspects of Vajrayana practice, and because the tradition itself is precise about it in ways that make the question interesting rather than mystifying.

An empowerment, in Tibetan wang (dbang), literally means “power” or “authorization.” What it does is bring the practitioner into a specific lineage stream of a specific practice, so that the practice she then undertakes is not a private psychological exercise but a participation in something transmitted from teacher to student across the generations.

Without empowerment, one can read the texts of a deity practice. One can visualize the deity in a general way. One can recite the mantra. But the tradition holds that the specific transformative power of the practice, its capacity to bring about the awakening it describes, arrives through empowerment. The lineage stream itself is what carries the awakening. Empowerment is how a practitioner enters that stream.

For Vajrayogini, this matters especially, because her practice is one of the most powerful in the tantric tradition. And it is not a practice one enters through the printed word alone. Instead one enters into the relational stream of wisdom holders, whispered transmissions (lung), and rites of empowerment (wang).

The empowerment I am co-hosting with Drupon Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche on October 10 and 11 is such an entry point.

Drupon Rinpoche has practiced Vajrayogini daily for decades. He was ordained by His Holiness Drikung Kyabgön Chetsang Rinpoche in 1995. He completed two traditional three-year retreats, one at Almora and one at Lapchi, the sacred cave where Milarepa practiced. He has been teaching at BSI annually since 2020. When he transmits the Vajrayogini empowerment, he is transmitting a lineage of Vajrayogini that he embodies.

Following the empowerment weekend, there are four Monday evening sessions with me. I will teach on the historical foundations of the yoginī tradition. The teachings of the Black Ḍākinī. The love and treasure-revealer yoginīs. The consorts of the esoteric Buddhist tradition. Everything I have been studying and receiving throughout my life poured into four evenings for anyone drawn to join.

You do not need to have practiced Vajrayana before to receive this empowerment. The empowerment itself creates the ground and we provide ample ngondro resources for those who want to follow with serious practice. What is asked of you is presence and intention, and the willingness to enter a lineage. Many of the practitioners who will be with us this October are entering Vajrayogini for the first time, others are on the journey to receiving the empowerment twenty-one times. All are welcome.

Learn more about Vajrayogini —>

My best to you always,

Buddhist Studies Institute

This weekend, we begin.

For anyone still considering whether to join us, here is a closer look at what we will do together in the empowerment weekend and the four Monday evenings that follow.

Saturday morning: The Empowerment. Drupon Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche opens the retreat with the Vajrayogini empowerment itself, transmitted in the traditional form. He will guide the participants through the visualization, the samaya commitments, and the entry into the lineage stream. This is the ritual heart of the retreat, and it is what the entire program is built around. The day will end with an hour long mantra accumulation led by Buddhist Studies Institute Umdze’s, the group practice leaders.

Sunday morning: Yeshe Tsogyal’s Opening of the Vajrayogini Lineage. This is a class with me. We turn from the empowerment itself to the eighth-century woman whose visions opened this lineage into the Tibetan tradition. Her biography. Her secret visions. The transmission she carried, and how that transmission comes down through the lineage into what we are receiving now. 

Sunday afternoon: Vajrayogini as the Sacred Feminine. This is also a class with me. A guide to the practice led by me as well as a practice session from beginning to end in English. We will study why the tantras describe Vajrayogini as both wrathful and joyful. What Vajrayogini specifically offers that other yidams do not.

The Four Monday Evenings. Also led by me. Foundations of the yoginī tradition in Tibetan Buddhism (October 12). The teachings of the Black Ḍākinī and the Chöd lineage of Machig Labdrön (October 19). Love and the treasure-revealer yoginīs (October 26). Consorts in esoteric Buddhism (November 2).

You will receive, over the arc of these four weeks: the empowerment itself; the lineage story from Yeshe Tsogyal forward; the theological foundations of the sacred feminine in Vajrayana; access to over eighteen self-paced video teachings on the Vajrayogini practice from my previous transmissions; a full year of recordings you can return to at your own pace; and a community of practitioners walking this path with you.

The program is open to everyone and complete in itself. No prior background in Tibetan Buddhism is required, though anyone who has practiced Vajrayana before will find this a natural deepening. The material is presented with full context and accessibility for newcomers alongside depth for longtime practitioners. Those who wish to take on Vajrayogini as a daily practice and to accumulate the 100,000 mantras will be advised to do ngondro first and we will offer that course again for you next year. Wherever you are entering from, this program is designed to meet you there and carry you forward.

Register for Vajrayogini —>

My best to you always,

Buddhist Studies Institute

I want to write to you about what an empowerment actually is, because it is one of the most misunderstood aspects of Vajrayana practice, and because the tradition itself is precise about it in ways that make the question interesting rather than mystifying.

An empowerment, in Tibetan wang (dbang), literally means “power” or “authorization.” What it does is bring the practitioner into a specific lineage stream of a specific practice, so that the practice she then undertakes is not a private psychological exercise but a participation in something transmitted from teacher to student across the generations.

Without empowerment, one can read the texts of a deity practice. One can visualize the deity in a general way. One can recite the mantra. But the tradition holds that the specific transformative power of the practice, its capacity to bring about the awakening it describes, arrives through empowerment. The lineage stream itself is what carries the awakening. Empowerment is how a practitioner enters that stream.

For Vajrayogini, this matters especially, because her practice is one of the most powerful in the tantric tradition. And it is not a practice one enters through the printed word alone. Instead one enters into the relational stream of wisdom holders, whispered transmissions (lung), and rites of empowerment (wang).

The empowerment I am co-hosting with Drupon Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche on October 10 and 11 is such an entry point.

Drupon Rinpoche has practiced Vajrayogini daily for decades. He was ordained by His Holiness Drikung Kyabgön Chetsang Rinpoche in 1995. He completed two traditional three-year retreats, one at Almora and one at Lapchi, the sacred cave where Milarepa practiced. He has been teaching at BSI annually since 2020. When he transmits the Vajrayogini empowerment, he is transmitting a lineage of Vajrayogini that he embodies.

Following the empowerment weekend, there are four Monday evening sessions with me. I will teach on the historical foundations of the yoginī tradition. The teachings of the Black Ḍākinī. The love and treasure-revealer yoginīs. The consorts of the esoteric Buddhist tradition. Everything I have been studying and receiving throughout my life poured into four evenings for anyone drawn to join.

You do not need to have practiced Vajrayana before to receive this empowerment. The empowerment itself creates the ground and we provide ample ngondro resources for those who want to follow with serious practice. What is asked of you is presence and intention, and the willingness to enter a lineage. Many of the practitioners who will be with us this October are entering Vajrayogini for the first time, others are on the journey to receiving the empowerment twenty-one times. All are welcome.

Learn more about Vajrayogini —>

My best to you always,

Buddhist Studies Institute

When students first meet Vajrayogini in iconography, they often ask me the same question.

Why is she holding those objects?

She stands on a red lotus in the midst of a ring of flames. Her body is red, translucent, radiant. She dances in the posture of a yoginī, one leg lifted, one foot planted. In her right hand she holds a curved knife. In her left hand, a skull cup filled with amrita. A khaṭvāṅga staff rests in the crook of her elbow.

The tradition’s answer is precise, and it is not what most people expect.

The curved knife is not a weapon. It is the instrument the tradition uses to cut through what she is here to cut through: dualistic perception, the ordinary mind’s habit of seeing subject and object as separate. She holds it because she is the one who awakens the seeing beyond duality that allows this cut to happen, not as a matter of rupture, but as a matter of liberation.

The skull cup is not macabre. It is the vessel that holds the amrita of great bliss, the wisdom nectar that arises when grasping to the fictive self has been cut. She holds it because she is the one who offers what remains when the cutting is complete.

She dances rather than sits because her wisdom is active, dynamic, and agile. She is red because her practice awakens the subtle body’s inner fire. She stands in flames because the flames are the altruistic wisdom that burns through obscuration.

Every element of her iconography is a teaching. When you receive her empowerment, you receive her as this specific configuration of enlightened activity: the wisdom that cuts, the bliss that arises, the fire that transforms, the dance of wisdom that never stops.

This is why she is called sarva-buddha-ḍākinī, the ḍākinī of all buddhas. She is not one deity among many. She is the energetic sambhogakāya form of enlightened activity itself, appearing in female form because the tantras understand this quality of active wisdom as feminine at its source.

To take up her practice is to be brought into this lineage, this specific configuration of wisdom and activity, this ancient dance of profound care for appearance and emptiness.

The Vajrayogini Empowerment Retreat and Program —>

My best to you always,

Buddhist Studies Institute

When students first meet Vajrayogini in iconography, they often ask me the same question.

Why is she holding those objects?

She stands on a red lotus in the midst of a ring of flames. Her body is red, translucent, radiant. She dances in the posture of a yoginī, one leg lifted, one foot planted. In her right hand she holds a curved knife. In her left hand, a skull cup filled with amrita. A khaṭvāṅga staff rests in the crook of her elbow.

The tradition’s answer is precise, and it is not what most people expect.

The curved knife is not a weapon. It is the instrument the tradition uses to cut through what she is here to cut through: dualistic perception, the ordinary mind’s habit of seeing subject and object as separate. She holds it because she is the one who awakens the seeing beyond duality that allows this cut to happen, not as a matter of rupture, but as a matter of liberation.

The skull cup is not macabre. It is the vessel that holds the amrita of great bliss, the wisdom nectar that arises when grasping to the fictive self has been cut. She holds it because she is the one who offers what remains when the cutting is complete.

She dances rather than sits because her wisdom is active, dynamic, and agile. She is red because her practice awakens the subtle body’s inner fire. She stands in flames because the flames are the altruistic wisdom that burns through obscuration.

Every element of her iconography is a teaching. When you receive her empowerment, you receive her as this specific configuration of enlightened activity: the wisdom that cuts, the bliss that arises, the fire that transforms, the dance of wisdom that never stops.

This is why she is called sarva-buddha-ḍākinī, the ḍākinī of all buddhas. She is not one deity among many. She is the energetic sambhogakāya form of enlightened activity itself, appearing in female form because the tantras understand this quality of active wisdom as feminine at its source.

To take up her practice is to be brought into this lineage, this specific configuration of wisdom and activity, this ancient dance of profound care for appearance and emptiness.

The Vajrayogini Empowerment Retreat and Program —>

My 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

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.