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,

Buddhist Studies Institute

Intrinsic Wisdom
Ngondro Module 4 starts Today

Online with Pema Khandro

August 10 – October 5, 2026

Mondays 5:00 – 6:30pm PT

Ngondro means ‘before going.’ In traditional Vajrayana practice, it represents the cognitive, physical, emotional and philosophical components which are keys to the practice of liberation. It is the basis for all Vajrayana practice and thus it is used as a the pre-requisite for the great practices of the Vajrayana tradition. However, ngondro itself is a beloved meditation series for its own sake. It is often practiced many times throughout a life cycle by great yogis of the Nyingma tradition such as Patrul Rinpoche (eighteenth century).

. This module focuses on the key theme of Vajrayana, which is empowerment, to experience the power of the indestructible buddhanature within oneself. It begins with Vajrayogini meditation and the seven line prayer, a prayer used widely in the Nyingma tradition to supplicate the awakened mind. This is followed by the guru yoga meditation and merging into Buddhahood.

Buddhist Studies Institute

Buddhist Fasting Retreat

Online with Pema Khandro, Derrick Pawo,
Aruna Rigdzin and Satya Shiva

August 8 – 9, 2026

9:00 – 1:00pm PT  |  12:00 – 4:00pm ET

Nyungne (smyung gnas) is one of the most revered and transformative practices in the Tibetan tradition, a profound cleansing in which body, speech, and mind are purified through devotion, silence, mantra, meditation, and fasting. As habitual patterns soften, practitioners reconnect with the innate clarity and compassion that Buddhism describes as their true nature.

This Buddhist fasting practice traces its origins to the eleventh-century Tibetan nun Gelongma Palmo, who turned to fasting as a path of liberation in the face of grave illness and through this practice realized awakening. Drawing on her lineage and on the Nyungne practice as preserved in the Longchen Nyingthig—the Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse revealed by Jigme Lingpa—this retreat will guide participants through the journey of Gelongma Palmo by way of the meditation of Chenrezig (Avalokiteshvara), the Buddha of Compassion.

Buddhist Studies Institute

Buddhist Fasting Retreat

Online with Pema Khandro, Derrick Pawo,
Aruna Rigdzin and Satya Shiva

August 8 – 9, 2026

9:00 – 1:00pm PT  |  12:00 – 4:00pm ET

Nyungne (smyung gnas) is one of the most revered and transformative practices in the Tibetan tradition, a profound cleansing in which body, speech, and mind are purified through devotion, silence, mantra, meditation, and fasting. As habitual patterns soften, practitioners reconnect with the innate clarity and compassion that Buddhism describes as their true nature.

This Buddhist fasting practice traces its origins to the eleventh-century Tibetan nun Gelongma Palmo, who turned to fasting as a path of liberation in the face of grave illness and through this practice realized awakening. Drawing on her lineage and on the Nyungne practice as preserved in the Longchen Nyingthig—the Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse revealed by Jigme Lingpa—this retreat will guide participants through the journey of Gelongma Palmo by way of the meditation of Chenrezig (Avalokiteshvara), the Buddha of Compassion.

Buddhist Studies Institute

Buddhist Fasting Retreat

Online with Pema Khandro, Derrick Pawo,
Aruna Rigdzin and Satya Shiva

August 8 – 9, 2026

9:00 – 1:00pm PT  |  12:00 – 4:00pm ET

Nyungne (smyung gnas) is one of the most revered and transformative practices in the Tibetan tradition, a profound cleansing in which body, speech, and mind are purified through devotion, silence, mantra, meditation, and fasting. As habitual patterns soften, practitioners reconnect with the innate clarity and compassion that Buddhism describes as their true nature.

This Buddhist fasting practice traces its origins to the eleventh-century Tibetan nun Gelongma Palmo, who turned to fasting as a path of liberation in the face of grave illness and through this practice realized awakening. Drawing on her lineage and on the Nyungne practice as preserved in the Longchen Nyingthig—the Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse revealed by Jigme Lingpa—this retreat will guide participants through the journey of Gelongma Palmo by way of the meditation of Chenrezig (Avalokiteshvara), the Buddha of Compassion.

Buddhist Studies Institute

Buddhist Studies Institute

Finding Wisdom Awareness

Longchenpa’s Treasury of Words and Meanings

Tsig Don Dzod

April 17–19, 2026

Live Online (recordings included with 1-year access)

9am–12pm PST  |  12–3pm EST  |  5–8pm London

We invite you to join a live online immersion exploring the Dzogchen view of Finding Wisdom Awareness through the profound philosophical and contemplative language of Longchenpa, and focusing on how awareness itself becomes obscured, and how it may be recognized directly. These teachings present one of the most refined accounts of mind and reality within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Join three Dzogchen scholars on exploring the Treasury of Words and Meanings along with a vibrant community online.

Guided by: David Germano, Ph.D., Khenpo Yeshi Rinpoche, and Tulku Pema Khandro, Ph.D. Each brings a distinct integration of lineage training, scholarship, and contemplative depth—offering a rare convergence of academic precision and direct experiential guidance.

This is a course for those who want to understand—not conceptually alone, but structurally and experientially—how awareness functions, how confusion arises, and how recognition becomes possible.