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…
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.
Vajrayogini Empowerment, Retreat & Program The Fierce Joyful Ḍākinī and the Yoginīs of Tibet Weekend Empowerment Retreat: Sat–Sun, October 10–11, 2026 Monday Evening Sessions: Oct 12, 19, 26, Nov 2 Vajrayogini Empowerment with Drupon Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche and Teachings with Tulku Pema Khandro
The Lion-Faced Ḍākinī Retreat and Program The Wrathful Sacred Feminine and the Great Perfection Weekend Transmission and Retreat: Sat–Sun, Nov 7–8, 2026 Monday Evening Sessions: Nov 9, 16, 23, 30 with Tulku Pema Khandro
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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