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…
For those who have never met her, the Lion-Faced Ḍākinī (Siṃhamukhā, Senge Dongma) can at first startle. She has the body of a dancing yoginī and the face of a roaring lion. She is dark blue or black, blazing within a halo of wisdom fire. In her right hand she holds a hooked knife, in her left a skull cup. She tramples the obstacles that keep practitioners from awakening.
She is a wrathful emanation of Vajravārāhī, which is to say she is Vajrayoginī herself, appearing in the form that the obstacles of our time require. Her lineage within the Nyingma school passes through Padmasambhava, through Yeshe Tsogyal, through the great treasure revealers and into our own practice today. She is traditionally invoked for protection from obstacles: the obstacles that come from without, the obstacles we generate from within, and the obstacles the tradition names as “magical,” meaning the subtle energetic interferences, slander, and projection that any serious practitioner eventually faces. And even more radically, she is invoked to stop evil.
Her practice is the practice we turn to when the obstacles are real. She is not a decorative yidam. She is the specific medicine for the specific illness of a mind under siege.
In the coming days I will say more about her compassion, which is not what most people expect, and about the retreat and Monday series that will open her teachings for us this fall.
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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