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…
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.
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
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