Sublime

Since the early 1990s, Khandro Rinpoche has been traveling and teaching in Europe, Asia, and North America, and has established a nunnery and retreat center in India called Samten Tse especially for Asian and Western women monastics.

Khandro Rinpoche was trained in both Kagyü and Nyingma traditions, often the only girl among many monks and tülkus.

The Samding ḍākinī served as abbess to a monks’ monastery

Certainly she is called an incarnate ḍākinī, but it is not common for ḍākinīs to receive a monastic education or to inherit the roles and responsibilities of a tülku.

Her spiritual practice was called Chöd (pronounced “chuh”), which means “to cut through.” She developed this form of meditation, unusual even in her time in Tibet, and it generated such amazing results that it became very popular, spreading to all the schools of Tibetan Buddhism and beyond.

Tertöns are also women, as in the case of the contemporary tertön Khandro Khachi Wangmo, who was considered an incarnate ḍākinī.

she dressed in yoginī clothing, wearing her hair long and combed back without any ornamentation.

I was particularly aided by an early interview with Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, a renowned Tibetan yogin-scholar of the Kagyü lineage whose spontaneous teachings emerged as foundational in my understanding of the ḍākinī.

Then there is Chagdud Khandro, who is not a Tibetan, but after spending a long time with Chagdud Rinpoche, one of the most authentic Vajrayana masters, as a disciple and wife, she has demonstrated that she is a great practitioner able to inspire many disciples.