Video: Divining the Feminine in Tibet: Saga & Sādhana of Yeshe Tsogyal

March 8, 2022
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A conversation with Anne Klein took place on Feb. 28.

Yeshe Tsogyal, the leading female presence of Tibet, appears in two distinct genres of literature, autobiographical and ritual practice texts (sādhana). Anne Carolyn Klein/Rigzin Drolma draws on a recent practice texts related writings to conclude that this sādhana is at core a conversation about one’s own relation to a divine feminine, which gradually reveals a wholistic divine, a non-binary writ large, that is nonetheless fully feminine in image and metaphor.

“Divining the Feminine in Tibet: Saga &  Sādhana of Yeshe Tsogyal” is part of the CSWR’s new initiative, “Transcendence and Transformation."

Anne Carolyn Klein/Rigzin Drolma, is Professor and former Chair of Religion at Rice University and co-founder of Dawn Mountain, a center for study and practice in Tibetan Buddhism www.dawnmountain.org. She is also a past Research Associate in Women's Studies and History of Religion at HDS. Her seven books of writings and translation include Meeting the Great Bliss Queen; Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self and Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse.


FULL TRANSCRIPT:

SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School

SPEAKER 2: Divining the Feminine in Tibet, Saga and Sadhana of Yeshe Tsogyal, February 28, 2022.

MIMI WINICK: Good afternoon and welcome. My name is Mimi Winick, and I am a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions here at Harvard Divinity School. Welcome to this afternoon's event, the fourth in a new series on The Divine Feminine and its Discontents and the first event in this series for spring of 2022.

This series is part of a wider initiative at the center, which has just launched on transcendence and transformation, or TNT for short. If you're interested in learning more about the initiative, please visit our website and sign up for our weekly newsletter. This particular series on the divine feminine considers the complicated history of that term as a scholarly and as a sacred category, asking whether and how it should still serve scholars and/or practitioners today.

Previous talks have considered these questions in the context of gender in modern Western esotericism, the divine Sophia in German idealism, and goddess worship in pre-Islamic Arabia. The videos of these events are now available on our website. Today's talk focuses on the figure of Yeshe Tsogyal, the leading female presence of Tibet.

She appears in two distinct genres of literature, autobiographical and ritual practice texts. Our speaker will draw on a recent practice texts to explore the practitioners' relationship to a divine feminine that may be better understood as a holistic divine, a non-binary writ large that is nonetheless feminine in image and metaphor.

Our guest for this evening is Professor Anne Carolyn Klein/Rigzin rigs and Drolma who is professor and former chair of religion at Rice University and co-founder of Dawn Mountain, a center for study and practice in Tibetan Buddhism. She's also a past research associate in the Women's Studies and History of Religions at HDS, now the Women's Studies and Religion Program.

Her seven books of writings and translation include "Meeting the Great Bliss Queen," "Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self," and "Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse." We are very happy that Professor Anne Klein has accepted our invitation to speak about this fascinating topic and look forward to her presentation.

We have an hour and a half together this evening until 5:30 PM Eastern time. I will soon disappear from the screen, and Ann will appear. She will speak for about 45 minutes and then I will reappear to facilitate the question and answer session, which will finish by 5:30 Eastern time. And right now, I'd like to invite our speaker, Professor Anne Klein to appear on screen.

ANNE CAROLYN KLEIN/RIGZIN DROLMA: Good evening and hello everyone wherever you are and thank you so much, Mimi, for that very gracious and succinctly applicable introduction. I'm very happy and very honored to be here at this time with you as part of the larger programs that maybe just described. I was, as she said, a research associate in the Women's Studies and Religion Program way back when.

That was where thanks to the shepherding of Founding Director Constance Buchanan, my colleagues, the faculty of the Divinity School at the time, began and wrote my book, "Meeting the Great Bliss Queen." And very happy to be invited back now. For the last 20 years or so, I have come back again recently to Yeshe Tsogyal. Just at that moment, I received this information looking at Yeshe Tsogyal in a different guise, in a different way for a little bit of different purpose.

And I'm delighted to share that with you now. I'm interested in how such a practice comes to be, how it functions. I'm also interested in what makes Yeshe Tsogyal feminine. What makes her divine. And what might this have to do with a thinning out of the apparent difference between the divine and the ordinary, which is actually a central theme of many practices in Tibet, and certainly this one. In the end, I'll suggest that her divinity is vibrantly connected with a state of all-inclusive wholeness, which she embodies and transmits.

My training is primarily in the Buddhisms of Tibet and India. And my education, in addition to the Academy, includes decades of close study and conversation in their language with Tibetan scholars, meditation masters, revealers of texts, such as the one who revealed the text I will be talking about here. These traditions, these Tibetan traditions have deep roots in India and offer a variety of ways to engage with the feminine.

Recognizing this, I am inspired to understand what implications Tibetan expressions of a feminine divine have for contemporary interests, even as I explicitly reckon with Tibet's own highly articulate and ancient perspectives. In particular today, one potential conundrum, the overall orientation of Mahayana and particularly its more esoteric expressions, such as a practice of Yeshe Tsogyal non-dualistic, is un-binary, is transcendent of the usual polarities that we organize our lives around.

And at the same time, it emphasizes female imaging and also valorizes the fluidity between male and female. All of these things are going on, I hope to show you. In the Sadhana. Yeshe Tsogyal, as Mimi said, is the most famous female Buddha of the Tibetan landscape. Her autobiographies tell the story of a woman caught in painfully familiar ways between marriage, and parental mandate, and a culture that wants her to do-- have a life that's fundamentally not the life she wants.

She is also the central figure in the Sadhana, or practice texts that we will be looking at, a liturgy which does not give her an explicitly human narrative. So Saga and Sadhana look at different aspects of Yeshe Tsogyal. And I'm also interested, briefly at least, to put these in conversation with each other. Because they each offer a different lens on the feminine.

And they also-- this conversation between Saga and Sadhana, as well as within the Sadhana itself highlights, I think. The porous nature of many of the boundaries that we live by between ordinary and divine, subject and object, and the duality imposed on understandings of gender itself.

Again, Yeshe Tsogyal's autobiographies tell an idealized woman's life-- idealized woman, but a difficult life, and the very human suffering she encounters precisely because she is spiritually talented, beautiful, high-born, widely desired.

The meditative ritual, the Sadhana centered on her, on the other hand, focuses on the practitioner's relationship with her, which is to say, the practitioner's relationship with her own divine nature, his, or her, or trans, wherever one is on the gender spectrum-- the Sadhana is about one's relationship with one's own divine nature. So it celebrates a female divine while also revealing that the divine is by no means limited to the female or the feminine.

A Sadhana, what is a Sadhana? It's a poetic song or chant that guides one through what [INAUDIBLE] would call spiritual exercises. Tibetan Sadhana is a genre that captures with utmost economy essential Buddhist logos and mythos, philosophy and poetics, sound and silence. One phrase of a Sadhana can synthesize centuries of Indian and Tibetan reflection, making its rhythmic lines an echo chamber for millennia of inspired textual traditions.

The term Sadhana comes from the Sanskrit root, sadhu, meaning go straight to the goal And Indian Sadhana, as in Tibet, is understood as a direct means for awakening-- a means that involves both repetition-- one does it over, and over, and over again, each time anew, and also it involves a certain precision of attention.

Sadhana speech, eloquent as it is, encompasses more than cognitive discourse. And this, in fact, is crucial to how it addresses the mistaken privileging or really addiction to dualistic perspectives. Sadhana speaks in the language of bodily energies as well as in words-- energies which transcend and also support speech.

In the 18th century, [INAUDIBLE], a lineage forebear of the text I will share with you, emphatically states, the essence of speech is wind, not words, but wind-- energy. The energies of breath and speech are ritually purified before, during, and after the Sadhana proper by reciting the vowels and consonants of the Sanskrit alphabet, the sound and form of which the Tibetan alphabet closely resembles.

The 7th century Buddhist Yogi Kanha famously said, "The path is held by vowels and consonants." What he meant was that through this recitation of the vowels and consonants-- [MAKES FAST CONSONANT SOUNDS] this does something to the energy in the body, gathering the energies into the center of the belly, actually, which is a place, according to Tibetan embryology and physiology, not just Tibetan, also Indian, in the center of the deep belly, this is where one can have an energetic support for wisdom.

When the revealer of the text I'm introducing discussed it a few years ago, he said that when recited well, the reciting these vowels and consonants, it unties the knots in the channels that exist throughout the body. In this way, this [INAUDIBLE] master born in 1971 is echoing Kanha, the Indian Yogi from 14th centuries ago.

So Sadhana are spoken, chanted, sung. But their language is not words alone. Therefore, in addition to this text, literary dimension, I also want to bring forward a bit how it understands body, speech, and mind to integrate together in the very process of singing the Sadhana, whose essence is energy after all.

In this way, one moves, ideally, behind a binary way of living into a more holistic sensibility. Which raises the question, is wholeness gendered? Wholeness is inclusive in a way that ordinary gender discourse is not. Especially so in [INAUDIBLE], literally the great completeness tradition, of which this text is a part.

Yeshe Tsogyal in her biographical narrative in the symbolism and processes associated with her in the Sadhana is definitely gendered. At the same time, the wholeness toward which the whole practice is oriented will not be buying into ultimately binary presentations of gender-- so feminine and part of a larger wholeness and showing the way to that without eliding or losing any of the distinctiveness of feminine presence.

In the Tibetan and also Indian context, this all-inclusiveness is central to reckoning with the vastness of divinity. It's a property of divinity. This is key to the Sadhana's main purpose, which is thinning out, and finally really resolving the apparent divide between being human and a Buddha too. And all other over reified divides as well. It's a wholeness, again, in which everything is included.

And that is such a significant principle that the name of the particular tradition itself repeats that point again. So [NON-ENGLISH], great completeness, often translated as great perfection, could be translated as great wholeness. Because the perspective of wholeness highlights the pernicious of separation, the undue sense of alienation and separation, undue and dangerous, that arises among people, cultures, gender descriptions, always rendered on unstable premises.

This [NON-ENGLISH] inflected Sadhana highlights the perniciousness of these divides. For one thing, binaries are based on generalities, abstractions, those bad X people over there, abstractions of thought. Wholeness includes an infinity of precisely figured phenomena.

Distinctiveness doesn't fade through recognition of wholeness. It comes to the-- the revealer of this text, in fact, has a lifelong-- who is male-- a lifelong and lives-long relationship with Yeshe Tsogyal. We can have that slide.

This is Adzom Paylo Rinpoche, and he is regarded as an incarnation of the king, [NON-ENGLISH], 8th century Tibetan king, who immensely furthered Buddhism in the 8th century in Tibet, and in fact who according to one of Yeshe Tsogyal's narratives, married her and paved the way for her connection with [NON-ENGLISH], ultimately her teacher, consort, and awakened equal.

In this current life, when Adzom Paylo Rinpoche was about eight years old, seated at the front of the main assembly hall at [NON-ENGLISH], which is now in what is now Sichuan, where he was raised, Yeshe Tsogyal appeared to him and gave him one of his [NON-ENGLISH] or treasure revelation names, [NON-ENGLISH]. So at eight, he receives a name from her.

And later in life, in the early 2000s, as far as I know, the Sadhana has a [NON-ENGLISH], which describes his meeting Yeshe Tsogyal at her sole lake, the small lake that arose when she was born, that is her heart, her soul, and still remains all this century centuries later. And it was there, it seems, that the revelation dawned for him.

It's called the treasure or [NON-ENGLISH], because it is understood that it was placed in his mind long ago in the 8th century by Yeshe Tsogyal herself as a messenger for [NON-ENGLISH] Rinpoche, who initiates the whole tantric swath of traditions in Tibet according to Tibet's own view of this, at least partly mythical history. [NON-ENGLISH] is a central figure, and she is his equal consort and messenger.

Perhaps the most dramatic expression of his fused identity with Yeshe Tsogyal, and at the same time a demonstration of gender fluidity occurred in his life as [NON-ENGLISH], who lived roughly during the mid-19th century. While still a young child in that lifetime, he announced, [NON-ENGLISH].

And he is said to have been male until age 20. From 21 to 30, he was female. And this shift itself is considered to be a sign of the [NON-ENGLISH], a sign Yeshe Tsogyal is a [NON-ENGLISH], a sky-going wisdom woman, and also an indication that he himself was a reincarnation of Yeshe Tsogyal. He is understandably famous for this and also famous for being a highly accomplished practitioner.

Late in life, that is this life in the mid-19th century, he told his student [NON-ENGLISH], when I die, you will see rainbows and many different kinds of birds. Then he shut himself in his room, [NON-ENGLISH] uninvited and indeed forbidden peered through a hole in the door.

And he saw that the lama was two or three feet above the cushion. And he was covered with feathers and planning to fly. [NON-ENGLISH] the student opens the door and begs him not to leave, and in this way prevented him from following the hallowed rainbow path of [NON-ENGLISH].

In this life, Adzom Paylo Rinpoche was known to describe birds as [NON-ENGLISH], these wisdom women, and especially vultures, crows, ravens, he considered emanations of Yeshe Tsogyal. And this-- next slide, please-- oh was a perception perhaps returned by the birds, as you'll see when this slide comes on, another echo of Yeshe Tsogyal in his life.

As for the Sadhana itself, it's a two-part treasure. It consists of a [NON-ENGLISH] foundational practice, or [NON-ENGLISH], and then a very short even shorter what's called a practice for becoming Yeshe Tsogyal, oneself in conclusion of the dual part [NON-ENGLISH] becomes Yeshe Tsogyal.

Well, [NON-ENGLISH] inform, the next slide, please, the practice thoroughly is thoroughly imbued with [NON-ENGLISH] orientation. The Sadhana's opening homage skillfully evokes the wholeness central to [NON-ENGLISH] and to this specific practice of Yeshe Tsogyal. It is a salutation in Sanskrit, next slide, please, [NON-ENGLISH], homage to the Dakini, who is everything.

Now because of Sanskrit's fluidity of interpretation in its famous compounds, we can understand this in different ways. Pithily, we understand that right from the beginning of the Sadhana, from this very first moment, she is present.

And one understands that she is everywhere and in everything, expressing the holistic reality toward which the whole practice is oriented right from the beginning. We can understand this phrase in a variety of ways, as you see here.

She who is everything and who is the Dakini, the Dakini of everything, and perhaps most significant, serviceman daki, the Dakini within everything. Because sarva, which means all, is also related to sara, meaning essence. So and this contributes the final and perhaps ultimate way of reading this compound-- homage to the Dakini who is one moving gently within everything.

Yeshe Tsogyal, the next slide, please, is not just an esoteric figure beyond our human reach and understanding. No, quite the contrary, she is-- yeah, before that one, yeah. That one. The blue one here. Thank you. Yes. She moves already now in us. That means, before the start of the practice, we're already not separate from her.

This being the case, who is singing the Sadhana? Is it your voice? Is it Yeshe Tsogyal's voice? Is it a duet? Is it an unaccompanied solo voicing? This is a question that itself starts to undo the untoward binary or sense of separation between one's ordinary self and the awakened being one is meant to become.

In touching into this, [NON-ENGLISH] commenting on this text-- the next slide-- used a phrase I want to bring to your attention, [NON-ENGLISH], the literally, the me which is not me. Before. Yeah, OK. The me which is not me. The self which is not self. Literally the I which is not I. [NON-ENGLISH].

And in a very compelling way, Yeshe still though is herself, the me which is not me. Because she is me. But of course, not the ordinary me. So who is seeing? The ordinary me? The awakened me? Do these come together? Ultimately, they do.

Ultimately over time, months, years, lifetimes, the ordinary singing me really becomes indistinguishable from the awakened Yeshe. So yeah, that is to say resonates with, reckons with one's own actual nature-- all-inclusive nature as [NON-ENGLISH] understands it.

So before returning to the Sadhana, I want to take a few moments to consider how the saga of Yeshe Tsogyal informs the practitioner's relationship to the practice. A good story, like a good practice, starts with a plight and works toward unwinding it. Yeshe Tsogyal of her biographies, as we've already heard, needs to free herself from the worst kind of worldly plight, a dangerous flock of admirers, parents deaf to her pleas, obstructions to her own life vision.

The Sadhana is about gaining nonconceptual wisdom. The human story brings all our human emotions into the arena of the Sadhana, because everyone practicing this Sadhana even in modern West, certainly in Tibet, would know something about the autobiography. And it would be present in some way.

So this given that nonconceptual and wordless wisdom is at the heart of wisdom itself, one could ask, as many students do, what do the words of the Sadhana-- why do I have to chant words at all? Why not just sit in some kind of open state?

Indeed, the famous first line of [NON-ENGLISH] praise of the lady perfection of wisdom, of which Yeshe Tsogyal is considered an emanation, says, [NON-ENGLISH], wisdom beyond speech, thought, or description. Wisdom can't be thought, talked, or described. Wisdom is characterized as female.

And it is not generic. It is an actual state, which has precise sensibilities associated with it, sensibilities of wonder, sensibilities of expansiveness, sensibilities of compassion. And as such, cannot be captured in all its specificity by words and thoughts.

Especially it can't be captured because the energy of wisdom, as suggested by the quote earlier, about speech being the actual having energy as its essence, the essence of speech therefore means that talking about wisdom, if we're talking about it with what Buddhism calls the karmic energies that are dispersed throughout the body, rather than based on energies from the center of the body, that speech can't possibly describe wisdom.

Energy or wind, prana, as it can also be translated, air, is an element. It's one of the five elements. All movement involves wind, including the movement from ignorance to wisdom is one of the five elements.

There is also these elements themselves are Dakinis, because an element is literally that which has arisen. That's what the Sanskrit, [NON-ENGLISH] and the Tibetan [NON-ENGLISH] means that which has arisen. It just arises.

And at its most subtle, even the element Earth is actually sound and light. And embodied in the presence of the Earth, the Dakini, all of the elements are Dakinis. And here you see an imaging of the five Earth elements as Dakinis, female wisdom figures who constantly move, who fly through the vast expanse, the empty source realm, the [NON-ENGLISH], the world womb that is their own wisdom nature.

So a few vignettes from Yeshe Tsogyal's liberation story as we approach more closely to the Sadhana. As I said, a good story starts with a plight. We've seen, there are many plights central to the two Yeshe Tsogyal autobiographies that have been translated into English. One from the-- revealed in the 17th century translated by Keith Dowman as Sky Dancer.

And the other more recent translation based on a manuscript, actually that Harvard's own Professor Janet Gyatso discovered in Tibet in 1996, give a human touch to the aspirant's recognition of what is involved in becoming Yeshe Tsogyal. The Yeshe Tsogyal of her autobiographies needs to free herself from the worst kind of plights. And it's not easy.

One Prince and then another sends hundreds of elephants loaded with caskets of jewels to woo her. She responds by reading aloud a letter to their envoys addressed to the Prince saying, I, the princess, aspire only to do spiritual practice. So I'm returning each and every container of jewels.

This gains her her father the King's ire, even though he loves her. He must uphold the law of the land. So he sends her into exile, which eventually culminates in her meeting with, again, Guru Rinpoche, and in fact beginning her spiritual journey.

Wisdom seems to the practitioner often, and perhaps also to the general reader of these sorts of stories, something quite transcendent and beyond, not so easily available. We see people and objects as external to us. We see states of wisdom that we don't currently feel we have access to as distant in time, place. We feel perennially implicated in [INAUDIBLE]. From [NON-ENGLISH] perspective, this means we have forgotten the wholeness that we are and that we can learn to see.

The Yeshe Tsogyal of the Sadhana as I mentioned, has no human story. From the first, she possesses the full three dimensions of awakening known as the Buddha bodies-- emptiness, luminosity, and responsiveness-- compassionate responsiveness to the world. She doesn't look like her human form emanation-- next slide, please, slide 11-- described in her autobiography.

You'll see what that looks like in a minute. Slide 11? This is the slide of her and [NON-ENGLISH]. Yes, this one. Thank you. She's often depicted like this, more or less the Yeshe Tsogyal of her autobiographies.

The plight or challenge animating the Sadhanas is the practitioners, to recognize everything whatsoever, however appalling or appealing to the senses, that it recognizing that it emerges from and dissolves into the source realm, the ultimate world womb, the [NON-ENGLISH] of which Yeshe Tsogyal is also an expression. This is also understood as one's own Buddha nature. It is the groundless ground of everything and also really not anything but makes everything possible.

In the Sadhana-- next fight, with the white and the red figures-- Yeshe Tsogyal herself is again, an expression of this [NON-ENGLISH], this reality. In her appearance as Yeshe Tsogyal, the great bliss queen, which is what I focused on when I was back in the day in the center and in the women's studies program. She is red. Her title-- her name is Yeshe Tsogyal. Her title is the great bliss queen, passionately compassionate to serve the world.

In the current Sadhana and in many Yeshe Tsogyal Sadhana, really the Yeshe Tsogyal, the great [NON-ENGLISH] Sadhana is a bit of an exception. In many to my knowledge, Yeshe Tsogyal Sadhanas, she is white, as she is in this one.

The practice itself is a ritualized and potentially deeply felt conversation with Yeshe Tsogyal, who is at once a divine feminine ideal, also part of oneself, and an expression of and actually the path to recognizing the all-inclusive reality. Which according to [NON-ENGLISH] and the lineage forebears of this tradition is one's nature. One has never been separate.

So in the Sadhana, in effect, one is singing two or as Yeshe Tsogyal, or to the part of oneself that yearns to recognize that one is what she is, a woman of the world. This kind of conversation is in fact an epic dimension in ancient and contemporary apparitions of Yeshe Tsogyal.

The great 20th century scholar practitioner Sera Khandro was regarded as a Dakini, and she was considered in her lifetime an incarnation of Yeshe Tsogyal. And in her own autobiography, illuminously introduced to us by Sarah Jacoby in Love and Liberation, she writes of her numerous visions of and conversations with Yeshe Tsogyal, asking and receiving advice.

So are these encounters between two people? Is this a conversation between two parts of the same person? And/or as believers in reincarnation would have it, between beings who actually exist along the same continuum?

We can ask the same about the Sadhana practitioner's interaction with Yeshe Tsogyal. Both participate in the song that is the Sadhana. And they are joined by other voices of [NON-ENGLISH] from an earlier time. From the Tibetan perspective, this is as it should be, the lineage connecting each practitioner with the ultimate source of [NON-ENGLISH], the reality of their own mind is shining through.

Engagement with Yeshe Tsogyal practices thrives on conviction in Buddha nature in the fact from the perspective of the tradition that one already has the capacity to be awakened, and that there is awakening gently moving through the whole of one's experience even right now.

[NON-ENGLISH] 14th century most brilliant architect and [NON-ENGLISH] in Tibet quotes a [NON-ENGLISH] 5th century India who says, if you didn't have this crucial Buddha element, you wouldn't be sufficiently dissatisfied with the suffering of this world or sufficiently inspired to engage in a Sadhana like a Yeshe Tsogyal practice.

If you didn't know, if you didn't somehow recognize, if you weren't told that this actually is already here, you would just feel, well, you have to put up with the world the way it is. You would feel, I can't possibly do this.

So here we have the practitioner who regardless of location on the gender spectrum seeks to recognize this inclusive inclusivity, this [NON-ENGLISH], source realm, spacious arena as their own nature. Always united with wisdom, this nature is an intimate link to Yeshe Tsogyal.

The [NON-ENGLISH] as [NON-ENGLISH] describes it in his exquisite verse, spacious realm by nature simply there. No in or out. Includes everywhere. Limitless, no bounds of high or low. Not broad, narrow. Here seer, purest space. This is meant to describe what one is currently obscured from recognizing in oneself.

[NON-ENGLISH] emphasizes that wisdom is everywhere. And specifically that nothing ever-- and wisdom, and [NON-ENGLISH] wisdom suffuses the world womb, the [NON-ENGLISH], and nothing ever departs that realm. Everything, writes [NON-ENGLISH], the entirety of samsara and nirvana dawn there in the world womb, the [NON-ENGLISH] of their own accord, and never depart this, which is their very source.

With this in mind, let us look at the formal opening homage of the practice, the Sadhana itself, [NON-ENGLISH]. [NON-ENGLISH], word of homage, unborn wisdom. Unborn wisdom is the very form of the Dakini. Self-sprung Tsogyal, Heruka, she is unborn, and at the same time, springs forth of her own accord. This is a description of reality from the [NON-ENGLISH] perspective.

Following [NON-ENGLISH] and throughout this Sadhana, unborn is a wisdom of the world womb. And in fact is the nature, the wisdom nature, of everything that exists. What just like the essence of any reflection in water, the nature of it is water, reflection in a mirror, its nature what it is is mirror. So everything that we know, and see, and are, is actually in its real nature its [NON-ENGLISH], it's [NON-ENGLISH], is actually wisdom. What can this possibly mean?

The fact, one thing it means, is the fact that she is unborn in no way stops the action. There is unborn status and also unceasing arising-- ceaseless arising, such that how marvelous and superb [NON-ENGLISH] writes, the secret of all the perfect Buddhas is that all things are born within what is unborn. Yet in very act of there being born, there is no birth.

So that leaves a one perhaps with a certain, what, [LAUGHS] response, which we could also call a sense of wonder, which invites already a kind of open gaze not so caught up in the logic that in fact the practice invites, such as [NON-ENGLISH] poetry.

So she is modeling how everything unceasingly arises by being unborn and unceasing is a famous epithet of the perfection of wisdom and often appears in [NON-ENGLISH] literature. It stymies the ordinary mind.

However, unborn and unceasing, like ignorance and wisdom, like samsara and nirvana, are only contradictory when one forgets the larger dimension of which they are like waves in the ocean, appearing in all their unique presencing, but not contradictory the way a dualistic or [INAUDIBLE] oriented kind of mind, ordinary mind, would have it.

Therefore, once wisdom recognizes the infinite inclusivity of the [NON-ENGLISH], paradox resolves, birth is movement, and change. The birthless is still. It all dances together like waves on an ocean.

There's something else we need to know about wisdom, and that is intimated in the next line. Rest, neither erase nor place. So having had this mini-epiphany of rising and ceasing, Yeshe Tsogyal expressing reality in this way, one receives an instruction.

And this instruction is almost verbatim an echo of a passage from 5th century India when, as cited by [NON-ENGLISH], a Sanga, the greatest Sanga Mahayana scholar wrote, there is nothing whatsoever to remove from this nor anything in the slightest to add.

This is very significant. It means that-- so effort is a function always of feeling that the wisdom, the goal of the path lies outside oneself. And that is a form of bifurcated dualism that exactly the Sadhana wants to counter. What it is pointing to is that it's already there. It says in many, many ways, [NON-ENGLISH], all the great writers of [NON-ENGLISH] have wondrous ways of saying, it's there. Don't look elsewhere. It's here. But we don't know how to look here. So that takes practice.

In this way, in singing this line, you're inviting yourself into a less effortful mind. Which phenomenologically, a less effortful mind is also a less dualistic mind. Think of being relaxed, if you're ever relaxed, just sitting outside, not so much dividing the world into good and bad, just kind of there.

In letting go of effort, you are no longer a subject yearning for an object across a chasm. You're easing your way toward recognizing your own being right here, just as it is. How could it be otherwise? The [NON-ENGLISH] is already perfect and complete. Nothing could or should be done. Doing in that instance obstructs one's actual purpose.

Yeshe Tsogyal is divine because her presence continuously demonstrates this essential [INAUDIBLE]. [NON-ENGLISH] cites a verse from the [NON-ENGLISH], the all-creating majesty, [NON-ENGLISH], which is kind of the theme song for the practitioner, easier sung then realized. Nothing hinders waking more than remaining unaware of what is already there, right there without fuss or strain.

The stages of practice leading up to this point have involved a great deal of effortful and also subtle doing, practices for training body, speech, and mind. But when it comes to the way things are, wisdom, rest, ease, and enormous trust are what make possible recognition of what this is. Rest, the rest that's invited here in this third line, is an organism's way of recognizing that indeed, there isn't anywhere else to go. Wisdom is everywhere.

Here we land on [NON-ENGLISH] unified theory of seeing and being, what we might call a unified epistemology and ontology, engaging song as well as contemplative and philosophical acuity, all of which align with metaphors and images of female, one relaxes into the groundless ground of the [NON-ENGLISH]. No more story, no more plight. Just like that, our ordinary sense of [NON-ENGLISH] premised on distance softens.

As the wisdom of completeness grows more robust, you grow more and more akin to Yeshe Tsogyal. This means you are starting to live up to her name. Her name is starting to become your name. Her name translates as Queen of the Wisdom Seas. Wisdom, like the ocean, is not something you get or make. It's there all along.

In this way, binarial barriers of all kinds soften, including gender binaries, including the related binaries of me and you. In these ways, a masculine subject looking from a seat of power at an objectified feminine can potentially cede its place as a governing structure of experience.

But not so easily. The gaze of patriarchy has shaped our globe. Likewise, perceptions of racial, national, and other types of otherness. Nonetheless, from the Sadhana perspective, these are not foundational, antic, or epistemological categories. None of them are. Gender is not.

It is simply a powerful premise based on the delusion of a subject having control over an object, or the related and equally powerful delusion that these so-called subject and object are fundamentally separate. It doesn't mean they're not distinct, but fundamentally separate is denied here.

These are deeply rooted characteristics of ordinary knowing. And they contribute significantly. These dualisms are deeply rooted in characteristics of ordinary knowing. And they contribute significantly to the creation of many types of suffering, including injustice, poverty, racialized class discrimination, gender binaries are all widely implicated in this fundamental from the perspective of the Sadhana and much of Buddhist literature delusional.

Shifting them isn't easy. It requires some version of the grounded and committed rebelliousness exhibited by Yeshe Tsogyal herself as well as the wisdom of wholeness.

Pierre Hadot, famous for his analysis of spiritual exercises in ancient Greece and Rome, and priding himself on being jargon-free, and any readers are thankful for that, notes that he agrees with Foucault, that quote, "Before Descartes, a subject could have access to the truth only by carrying out beforehand a certain work upon themselves, which made them susceptible of knowing the truth."

For Buddhists who wish to practice it, the Sadhana offers precisely such preparation of the self. And acknowledging this, one is already recognizing that the subject, as Foucault elsewhere emphasizes is amenable to influence.

We all know this. It's what makes education possible. Today neuroscience speaks of brain plasticity. Conviction in profound amendability is also there in the Buddhist tradition in the rubric of Buddha nature, as we saw earlier, the Dharma [NON-ENGLISH]. The Sadhana's specific and [NON-ENGLISH] inflected process points to a reality while which while itself genderless also aligns compellingly with feminine divinity through image, metaphor, and cultural association.

Foucault and modern secular discourse potently analyze the formative power of their subjectivity possessed by institutional, economic, and racial structures-- man-made structures. Our Sadhana and it's cultural context are largely silent on such matters but brilliantly lucid on the types of inner preparation that can be helpful in alleviating them. Let me pause on the word helpful here. Sadhana practice is neither the only way to [INAUDIBLE] such structures, nor will it necessarily do so on its own.

However, it does seem to have meaningful potential to align us with inclusive social norms and eco-interdependence to inclusive racial as well as gender diversities. That potential increases exponentially when taking up such practices with a conscious intent, that getting free of the blinders to one's real nature will also bring skill and energy for contemporary calls to social and environmental justice, for example.

From the Sadhana's own perspective, all this depends not only on the kinds of power or institutional structures to which Foucault calls attention, but also and very importantly, on the understanding that more is going on than one's mind being amenable to change, important as that is.

The mind in this Buddhist view not only comes to have or know something through learning but already is something which needs no change. Hence, as this third line emphasizes with there is nothing to do when it comes to this real nature, the energy, which is also the essence of speech, there is nothing to do. Yeshe Tsogyal expresses and facilitates that is-ness.

Connection to her facilitates it. She is clearly gendered female. And yet neither enclosed in nor excluded through that nomenclature. She is not encumbered, limited to a feminine identity. Being unconditioned, in fact, is central to her divinity. It is her and our unborn nature. But that's only part of what she is.

Unceasing activities, as we've said, is equally part of [NON-ENGLISH] understanding of reality as the unconditioned unborn state. [INAUDIBLE] masters constantly remind us of this, lest we think that the ground was ground. The Buddha nature is a world, apart.

Not at all. This, I believe, is a theme of TNT. It is the ground and source of all the dynamics of our lives, ordinary and awakened. At the most basic ground of reality, [INAUDIBLE] says there is neither Buddha nor ordinary being. This ground-less ground, Buddha in nature itself is more primary than a designation as awakened or ignorant, as male or female, or anything on the continuum between these poles.

Yeshe Tsogyal's divinity lies with how she orients one to this. Like Mother wisdom, [NON-ENGLISH], who lives in her, she is arising and ceasing. Ordinary mind sees with ignorant-- sees ignorance and wisdom as unambiguously dualistic. Whereas they actually largely exist on a continuum, but not only on a continuum, because wisdom is always the final flavor of every type of knowing. Wisdom, says [NON-ENGLISH], is the actual way all things are.

Mention this a few times. I want to spent a moment on this. It's really worth considering. In saying that wisdom is the actual way all things are, [NON-ENGLISH] is shining a light on the wonder of first person perception. This is not a third person proclamation, everything is the nature of wisdom.

And you have-- it's your experience and everything that you know is part of your experience is part of your knowing. And your knowing, the lens through which everything arises for you, its nature is wisdom.

If you perhaps take your eyes off the screen for a moment and look at something in your room wherever you are, you see it. There is the seeing and the seen, always, hearing and the heard, and so forth. Just your own way of experiencing right now, can you separate these? Can you separate the scene from the seen? Can you ever look at anything, much less your own mind and your own nature, except through the lens of consciousness, of knowing?

You cannot. The fact that you can't has been called by scientists the problem of consciousness. For [NON-ENGLISH], the so-called problem is actually a profound insight into how things are, into what our experience actually is, a recognition of the unique features of consciousness itself. You can't leave home without it. In fact, you can never leave this home.

And thus, recognizing one's reality is vital to the entire Sadhana. As we see in the fourth line of the homage, its first two lines were about how to see Yeshe Tsogyal, the third about allowing that to be enough and done, and now in the culminating fourth lying face-known, nature-known, seen. That is refuge. That is freedom. Mind awakes.

All just what is being recognized is this liberative recognition of what has been there all along. This is ultimately refuge. All one's needs are met. Compassionate activity is the only imperative now. The whole karmic narrative and purported goal of escaping some-- sorry, into nirvana, the plight which brought one to the Sadhana, very simply resolves, or at least approaches more nearly to its resolution.

Within this state of resolution, however nascent or mature it might be, within this recognition, face known, one then continues with the rest of the practice. Again, a moment early in the practice when in a sense, all is done. So relax. Enjoy the ride through the rest of it.

So in conclusion, the divine encountered on account of its female expression becomes without ever losing the divine dignity of that very precise expression a dynamic fecund wholeness, womb, home, and heart of a flamboyant diversity that is possible because of it. Mothers give birth to everything.

So then, a Sadhana is at its very simplest a song we sing, a current moving to and from our human self, and that to which we aspire. Sadhana allows one to perform the story of being human and a Buddha too. Singing maybe accompanied by bells, punctuated by drums, symbols augmenting the energy of the song, the speech.

And if everything goes quite well, every part of us, every part of our world is included in this expansive recognition. Until then, it's a practice, a ritual, and by definition as the great Sanskrit grammarian [NON-ENGLISH] said, a ritual needs to be repeated over and over until it can be done perfectly. That is, until you perform it as only a Buddha can.

[INAUDIBLE] noted once to me that blessings, the waves of grace, literally, that come through practice come more easily when one sings. And the melody used for this practice is, in my understanding, something that dawned with the words themselves. So in translating, I translate it also into a chantable English so it can be sung to this traditional melody.

I'd like to share with you how this sounds, since you've been gazing at these words for a while. I'd like you to hear them. First you'll hear it sung in English by the singer songwriter Laurel Sprengelmeyer stage name, Big Scream. And then you'll hear it in Tibetan. So please rest your weary eyes and listen just for a moment as each sings.

LAUREL SPRENGELMEYER: (SINGING) [INAUDIBLE] I'm born wisdom darkest form. [INAUDIBLE] This [INAUDIBLE] place, this known refuge my [INAUDIBLE].

ANNE CAROLYN KLEIN/RIGZIN DROLMA: And now, Jetsun Kacho Wangmo. She is actually the sister of the revealer of this text and herself regarded as a torra, female awakened being, who lives inside in Yeshe Tsogyal.

JETSUN KACHO WANGMO: (SINGING) [NON-ENGLISH]

ANNE CAROLYN KLEIN/RIGZIN DROLMA: And final images of Jetsun Kacho Wangmo herself, whose voice you just heard singing, she and Adzom Rinpoche were also brother and sister in their immediately previous last lives, when they were the children of the famous [NON-ENGLISH]. Here she is. She is regarded as an emanation of Tara, as I said, and famously sings. She sings at many major rituals in Tibet and learns the music from Adzom Rinpoche when he has received it in vision.

So with that, thank you very much for your presence. And come back into real view, I hope. And we are ready for the next phase that Mimi described earlier.

MIMI WINICK: Yes, thank you so much, Professor Klein. That was a fascinating talk and a real-- it was for me, a real pedagogical experience as well. So thank you. Indeed, we are turning now to the question and answer session. And so, some questions and comments have begun to come into the Q&A. So please keep using that. I'll be facilitating.

But I'm going to take host's privilege to pose a question of my own to our speaker first. So Anne, you were talking about how this is work that for you goes back to earlier work in your career.

And I wanted to ask you actually about some of your earliest academic work which you discussed briefly in an essay you wrote some time ago for the journal Hypatia, where you mentioned that you-- mystical or ecstatic experience, which is a central concern of our transcendence and transformation seminar has long been a part of your research, going back even to a dissertation you wrote about, quote, "The Relationship of Hard Intellectual Work to Mystical Experience."

And I wanted to ask you how has or how have those two dynamics, hard intellectual work and mystical experience, shaped this project and your return to this figure of Yeshe Tsogyal. And I also wonder if the gendering of those practices, the intellectual rigor and the mystical experience in the American context in which you teach at Rice where often the former is gendered sort of masculine and the latter gendered more feminine, if that sort of gender patterning has shaped your research.

ANNE CAROLYN KLEIN/RIGZIN DROLMA: Oh, thank you, Mimi. You have really identified what I think of as a through thread of what I've been following all these years. So one of the things-- I'll skip around a bit to among your various points. Very early on, when I was first introduced to the Tibetan tradition was actually University of Wisconsin.

And the very famous in Tibet Last Abbot of Free Tantra College of Lower Lhasa came to University of Wisconsin. And he taught-- that when I first studied Buddhist philosophy, which I was really animated and inspired by. So that's just always been a very strong interest of mine. And then on weekends, for whoever wanted to come, he taught meditation. And he taught meditation on compassion.

And so, from the beginning of my connection with the [INAUDIBLE] Tibetan tradition, the meditation, the mystery, the transcendent possibility was right there. We didn't talk about it in the philosophy class, at least then. But it was right there. There was practice, there were scholarship.

And really, a model that has impacted me greatly, and I think perhaps, now that you mention it, countered a bit the gendering of scholasticism and receptivity in the academy that you mentioned, studying with really those who were regarded as the greatest scholar of their generation. And having a chance to sit with them, and read texts that they consider really difficult, not Sadhana text, [NON-ENGLISH], philosophy text, and the kind of lack of breathiness.

That kind of, I don't know, sharpshooting scholarship. Made me so relaxed and so flowing at the same time that they were looking, and they were citing texts from memory, they were thinking out loud creatively. They were engaged intellectually, but they weren't collapsed into an identity as a disembodied thinker, I guess as my experience. And it took me a long time even to articulate that. I knew it impacted me.

And so, I was interested in that. I am interested in that. And I'm interested in the way-- so I'm interested in the way that thinking alone is encumbering of one's energies.

So if speech is in essence energy, and if that can't find expression through having some kind of inner state that resonates with the capacity of energy, which is to flow, and move, and be creative, and so on, then there's something obstructive. And I'm just-- I'm just interested in how that works from all different kinds of perspectives.

And coming back to the Yeshe Tsogyal practice, after my interest in the Great Bliss Queen, which was also an exploration of dualism. And what I think is new for me here is a theme that I mentioned in talking just now is that she is like quintessentially feminine.

But that's not the long and short of her. He points to some much larger wholeness. And that seems to be really important. And it seems really to be important also the implied inclusivity of the trajectory between quote male and female and all the variabilities in life, in general, and gender.

And thank you for mentioning that article. Because which really is a short story embedded-- I published it as a short story alone and then thought to try to pull out some of its philosophical dimensions. And that was really when I tuned into the theme of wholeness.

And that was a long time ago. And only now am I-- and then a couple of books that I'm writing, but and certainly this one-- I'm kind of working on them simultaneously-- wholeness is a big theme. I think it's a very healing notion that is necessary in a world of increasingly conflicted boundaries.

MIMI WINICK: Thank you so much. That was a full and whole answer. So we've been getting some excellent questions and comments in the Q&A. So I'm going to turn to that now. Namita [? Hertzel ?] asks, would you please talk a bit more about the process of liberation within the saga of Yeshe Tsogyal? Why did she need to free herself?

ANNE CAROLYN KLEIN/RIGZIN DROLMA: So that's a very interesting question, because you have opposite positions really. In the biography, which is called an autobiography, she's in human form. Humans have problems. They will not be avoided. And she has to free herself at the level of the constrictions of her culture.

That's really what the story is about. She's supposed to marry. She's a princess. She's married to the King. She's not supposed to be doing all this spiritual activity. But she does. She breaks free of her cultural constrictions.

Now as Yeshe Tsogyal, she like all of us have Buddha nature, have wisdom as our ultimate reality. But she may not have fully recognized her potential if she had not been able to do these spiritual practices.

Or like Buddha, who according to [NON-ENGLISH] Buddhism was born a Buddha. He didn't become awakened under the [NON-ENGLISH] tree. That's a story to give us an inspiration and help us see what it would look like for an ordinary person such as ourselves to move along a trajectory that just opens up into a different dimension, that you can start here-- and where else can you start, and move into this other dimension only to discover that it's always been within you.

So in the Sadhana, the plight is the practitioners. She doesn't need to free herself. In the Sadhana, she embodies what you are seeking to accomplish. And sometimes there's a question of, yes, but here I am, a woman in this century, in this culture, in this world. There's a lot of pain and suffering associated with that.

How does that relate to the Sadhana? And I think that's a question that every individual will resolve. I do think, though, that it's important that the biographies give you this dimension of female and human suffering that absolutely needs to be addressed. In the Sadhana though, she's the embodiment of freedom. We're the ones who are trying to recognize, you might say, the Yeshe Tsogyal within us.

And part of the power of the Sadhana for me is its way of echoing ancient literatures. And part of what I am doing also is showing-- I indicated a very few such echoes-- but there are many. They really-- a single line talking about unborn pulls together a lot of descriptions about one's own experience, which phenomenalogically one can access, maybe not always through logic.

And the Sadhana takes you through different phases, different aspects of that state of wisdom to, if I can't recognize it from here, maybe I can recognize it through making an offering, or through imagining myself as Yeshe Tsogyal, or through letting my body feel like its light. Because the body actually holds a lot of patterns of-- habit patterns of ordinariness.

So there are many ways in the practice that one can begin to loosen the binds of ordinariness, which is not one's real nature one is told again and again. And I think important to say it takes time. And that's why I mentioned [NON-ENGLISH] and [NON-ENGLISH] emphasis. It's got to be repeated a lot.

Repetition is a really important part of Sadhana practice. And I think it's something that doesn't always sit well with modernity. We're in a rush. We've done something once, it's done. I hope that addresses your question. It's a very interesting question.

MIMI WINICK: Thank you. Another question, this one from a colleague on transcendence and transformation, [INAUDIBLE] who thanks you for the talk and asks, what is the symbolic significance of the nakedness and arguably erotic appeal in the iconography of Yeshe Tsogyal that we saw in the slides to your talk.

And he notes, rather than attenuating gender-specific attributes, as one might perhaps in a figure representing non-dualism, these attributes seem to be amplified, emphasized. And so, how does this relate to the question of wholeness, the non-binary, that also includes the feminine.

ANNE CAROLYN KLEIN/RIGZIN DROLMA: Mm-hmm, yeah, another great question. Thank you. Yes, it is amplified, the femininity, so to speak, is amplified. And for me, it seems to heighten the-- I started out saying there's kind of a conundrum here. Because on the one hand, she's feminine. And now, as you say, she's really feminine.

And on the other hand, what ultimately is being pointed to is beyond the feminine, even though the womb of the world is a feminine image and aligns with feminine imagery, there's also something transcendent. Males of course, are included in this, but not featured in the Sadhana. So for at least for a modern sensibility, I feel that her great femininity is partly reminds me, at least, of how when expanding into wholeness, you don't lose precision of detail.

More traditionally perhaps, the most prestigious practitioners, mystics, at least the ones whose names are recorded in history, have turned out surprisingly to be mostly male. And so, surely there's a component of a male erotic gaze being fascinated by-- easily paying attention to this feminine beauty. The ultimate-- there's energy in it, there is fire in it. One needs a certain kind of fire for practice.

The nakedness, however, is really-- I mean, I can't say it's not sensual, because it's perceived that way. However, it's rendered as the state of wholeness, the state of recognizing reality is often described in [NON-ENGLISH] texts as a very naked state, unencumbered by any of the images, imprints, humiliations, traumas, some part of us is not encumbered by those things which are so formative to our ordinary experience.

So this mind is a naked mind reality is sometimes pictured-- also it's pictured as a male figure of [NON-ENGLISH], who is also naked and in union with his female partner, [NON-ENGLISH]. So on the one hand, there is an appeal perhaps to what is a beauty, there's an energy in seeing something that is considered aesthetically divine, which is how this is regarded.

And more phenomenalogically, if one gets there, there is an invitation to recognize or at least believe that someday you could recognize a state that is in fact transcendent of all of these. And at the same time doesn't wipe out their particularities, that is naked, that in and of itself-- the groundless ground itself, in Buddhist language, is prior, ontologically prior to either being awakened or being an ordinary being.

So even the categories of liberated and unliberated, much less the categories of male and female, they're obviously influential structures. But from this perspective, they're not the deepest, actually, structures of our being. So those, yeah, play out in that way. Did I--

MIMI WINICK: Thank you.

ANNE CAROLYN KLEIN/RIGZIN DROLMA: Thank you. Thank you for that. All of these are things I'll think about more also.

MIMI WINICK: Yeah.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

MIMI WINICK: And here's potentially a more challenging or a particularly challenging question from anonymous attendee. Yeshe Tsogyal was a student and sexual consort. How do we understand such a relationship and the power dynamics in light of accusations of sexual abuse of Tibetan Lamas towards female students in the modern day?

ANNE CAROLYN KLEIN/RIGZIN DROLMA: Well, that's a hot button issue, isn't it. There is a world of-- so I can talk about how it's looked at-- I mean, I think we have two things in tension here, honestly.

And part of why I wanted to bring together the Saga and the Sadhana was in one way to highlight that tension, and in another way to say that there is implicitly, well actually, explicitly, there's recognition of these issues in the cultural context of this practice itself. I think that's really important. That in terms of the modern context, I don't think there is any justification there to be found or is even claimed.

Well, probably claimed by some for some of the events that have occurred in recent time that are familiar to many people. That is the-- what do you say, the perniciousness of unequal power relations is recognized in her biography itself, you could say. So you take that recognition, this is ideally, somebody who's got a traumatic sexual history around these-- maybe has to do other kinds of work. I actually believe that. Because I know this is true for some.

At the same time, she overcomes all of these things. She herself is not traumatized. She herself arises, just as one in principle-- maybe take decades-- could also arise from these binds. So Yeshe Tsogyal is herself also awakened. She is [NON-ENGLISH] equal in that sense. She participates with him. They're a couple. He has these revelations. She conveys them. The whole [NON-ENGLISH] tradition owes its existence in Tibet to her.

So on the one hand, I would say that there is tension there that can use more unpacking. And that there is also for one to whom this appeals, not every practice is for everyone, but for one to whom this appeals, it is a potential way past these very difficult, and very constricting, and often very dangerous binaries, including the male female binary in the way that gets translated into a perceiving subject and a perceived object, and the active passive, and all the iterations of that goes back to a certain kind of gender identity as many scholars have written. And I also touched on that in my [INAUDIBLE] book.

But what I'm also very interested in, just by way of disposition, and because I care a lot about phenomenology of practice, the epistemology of practice, I'm interested in and moved by the case made for the actual possibility of loosening those bonds for oneself, and the impact that could have on larger society, or at least one's own immediate cohort.

Thank you for bringing that up. If you want to-- any, those of you whose questions I'm sure none of which I'm sure I've completely responded, I'd be very happy if you'd like to be in communication. Because I'm thinking about this actively now also. And I appreciate very much your inquiries.

MIMI WINICK: Yeah. That active thinking is apparent and such a pleasure here. So thank you. I think we have time for one or two more questions. So now, a brief question that may have a more expansive answer. Another anonymous attendee asked, how has Yeshe Tsogyal influenced female practitioners in Tibet in particular?

ANNE CAROLYN KLEIN/RIGZIN DROLMA: We only know-- or at least I only know so much. But for example, if you haven't read Love and Liberation Sarah Jacoby's study of the life and writings of Sera Khandro, I'll put her name in the chat. But you'll find the book Love and Liberation. Her whole life was governed by her discussions with Yeshe Tsogyal. Understand she's also considered an emanation of Yeshe Tsogyal.

But in some sense given that the Dakini moves in everything, so are we all, if we wish to look at that part of her identity. So she has conversations with Yeshe Tsogyal which are crucial in her making decisions about what she will do in her life. [NON-ENGLISH] sister, Jetsun Kacho Wangmo, whose face you saw briefly, who is recognized as a incarnation of Tara, who is actually part of a kind of synod of wisdom women, including Yeshe Tsogyal.

She's very connected with Yeshe Tsogyal, she herself once said that she has a very strong relationship with Tara. She appears to her. She has visions of her. She finds comfort in her, as Sera Khondra definitely did.

They're now in Holly Gayley's new book, the story of actually the incarnation of Sera Khondra, who has her own relationship with Yeshe Tsogyal. So definitely, how widespread exactly this is, I don't know. But I think-- well, I don't know. I don't have hardcore-- right now, Sarah Jacoby and others, Holly Gayley are doing research into the lives of women and nuns in Tibet. And there shortly will be more, I think, real on the ground information about this.

But just from my own anecdotal connection with these women, they have a very strong connection with these female inspired figures. And a volume that Connie Buchanan, and Christy Atkinson, and Margaret Miles put together for my kind of generation of women's studies research associates, I wrote an article called, "Primordial Purity in Everyday Life," and just recognizing how the fact of primordial purity, and divine women, I think as we all know, doesn't automatically translate into women having their appropriate recognition in social contexts. Another great question. Yeah.

MIMI WINICK: Thank you. I think-- yeah. So many great questions. And we won't get to all of them. So I apologize. But I assure you that Anne will be receiving all your questions in text form tomorrow, I think, or later this week.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

MIMI WINICK: [LAUGHS]

ANNE CAROLYN KLEIN/RIGZIN DROLMA: Sure.

MIMI WINICK: We may have time for just one more question. And possibly I'll try to pick a shorter one.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

MIMI WINICK: Is there anything-- yeah. So another attendee asks, is there anything more you can say about Adzom Paylo Rinpoche's past life as male until the age of 20 and then as female for, I think, nine years, as well as any special implications of the calling of Yeshe Tsogyal [NON-ENGLISH] in the Sadhana.

ANNE CAROLYN KLEIN/RIGZIN DROLMA: I'll start with the second one, because it's easier. The [NON-ENGLISH] is actually usually means a fierce deity. And to my knowledge, I haven't seen it used as an epithet of a female figure before. So that's interesting.

He glosses that as referring to the three Buddha [NON-ENGLISH], if you're familiar with the three bodies of any awakened being, which is essentially their emptiness, their luminosity, and their responsive compassionate emanation. So that's the meaning of [NON-ENGLISH] in this context. It's quite glorious to see he or her called a [NON-ENGLISH].

That story that I related to you was told to me by a relative of his. I do not know of yet, anyway, any textual reference to it. I'm also quite interested in it. But I do know that in a chant that was recorded by Jetsun Kacho Wangmo some years ago, there's a text which lists all of the previous incarnations of Adzom Rinpoche, which as I mentioned, includes [NON-ENGLISH], includes also [NON-ENGLISH], and also includes [NON-ENGLISH]. He's in his litany of previous lives.

MIMI WINICK: Well thank you so much. And thank you again for this fascinating talk and discussion. We have just hit our 5:30 end time. So again, I assure you that all the remaining questions will be passed on to our speaker. And this event-- video of this event will be posted to the Center for the Study of World Religions events page in the coming weeks. So thank you again so very much.

ANNE CAROLYN KLEIN/RIGZIN DROLMA: Thank you, Mimi. Thank you for all your gracious hosting and for mentioning that article, which hardly anybody ever mentions, which I'm particularly fond of actually. Thank you very much. And thank you all for listening. And hey, thanks to the Women's Studies Program. What a glorious gift, and also to the Center, which has always had such a profound relationship with it. I'm very grateful.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER 2: Sponsor, Center for the Study of World Religions.

SPEAKER 1: Copyright 2022, the President and Fellows of Harvard College.


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