From tyagi@HouseofKaos.Abyss.com  Wed Nov  9 23:50:45 1994
From: tyagi mordred nagasiva <tyagi@HouseofKaos.Abyss.com>
Subject: budhfemnsm.ack.txt
To: ceci@lysator.liu.se (Ceci Henningsson)
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 1994 14:48:54 -0800 (PST)
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From: Dharma Publications 'Gassho' (dharma@netcom.com)
Subject: Buddhism/Feminism (Anne Klein excerpt) (9400.budhfem.ack)



                         PRESENCE WITH A DIFFERENCE:
                   BUDDHISTS AND FEMINISTS ON SUBJECTIVITY
                               by Anne C. Klein




         Postmodernist narratives about subjectivity are inadequate.
                                    -- Jane Flax, //Thinking Fragments//

         Without mindfulness there will be no reconstitution of already
         acquired knowledge and consciousness itself would break to pieces,
         become fragmentary. -- Soma Thera, //The Way of Mindfulness//


  What is a woman? Simone de Beauvoir initiated a fruitful period of 
  reflection on this issue with her famous statement, "One is not born a 
  woman, but, rather, becomes one" (Beauvoir 1974, 301). Her emphasis on   
  "becoming" can be seen as prefiguring an entire corpus of feminist 
  postmodern reflection on the elusive nature of self and subjectivity. But, 
  as Judith Butler puts it in her rejoinder to Beauvoir's comment, "How can 
  one become a woman if one wasn't a woman all along?" (Butler 1990, 111).  
  With this she expresses a crucial piece of the essentialist resistance to 
  postmodern theories.

  Much of contemporary feminist theory falls somewhere between the 
  essentialist and postmodern positions suggested by these statements.<1> I  
  suggest that the apparently irresolvable antipathy between these positions 
  rests in part on the incorporation of Western philosophical assumptions on 
  subjectivity, that is, on categories associated with awareness. I also 
  propose that two other elements in Western thought, incorporated by 
  feminists, contribute to this antipathy: (1) the strong tendency in 
  Western philosophy to structure inquiries into how things are and how they 
  are known as separate branches of investigation and (2) the profoundly 
  embedded contemporary Western assumption that subjectivity is to be 
  understood solely through its engagement with language. Although I focus 
  here on feminist writing, much of what follows is relevant also to 
  nonfeminist Western reflection.

  The central dilemma of the essentialist-postmodern debate among feminists 
  is clear: How can contemporary Western women frame a sense of self that is 
  neither overly essentialized nor so contingently constructed that its very 
  existence and power is in question? The stakes of this debate are high. 
  These are not questions of theory only, but speak to deeply rooted visions 
  of what it means to be a "woman." How does one live with the powerful 
  pulls toward the different experiences that "essentialisms" and 
  "postmodernisms" suggest? How can a woman claim the kind of solid self 
  that gives her strength while still recognizing the multiple social, 
  economic, political, and gendered vectors that condition and constitute 
  this self? Through postmodern perspectives, for example, I can articulate 
  the complex processes of becoming by which identity is configured and 
  thereby honor the endless movement and connections between my life and 
  thoughts and those of myriad others, but I do not thereby recognize a 
  depth or "place of her own" in any individual subjectivity. Essentialists 
  tend to privilege such a place, thereby extolling the rootedness in self 
  that many find crucial to a sense of well-being, but essentialists also 
  tend to overlook social, political, or psychological particularities. 
  Thus, naming an essential identity can be empowering but also limiting, 
  and it is certainly philosophically problematic.<2> These issues of 
  personal power, connection, independence, and relationship lie at the 
  heart of the feminist essentialist-postmodern debate.

  The way a women understands subjectivity is critical to her understanding 
  of the tensions between feminist essentialist and postmodernist 
  orientations. By "subjectivity" I mean to include the specific functions 
  and categories of knowing associated with the human mind. These, I 
  propose, have been unnecessarily curtailed in recent debates between 
  essentialists and postmodernists. I want to suggest a way of expanding the 
  scope and vocabulary of feminist discussions on subjectivity by drawing 
  from a religious and philosophical matrix especially rich in this regard. 
  My pivotal thesis is that an expanded understanding of subjectivity can 
  change the nature of the tension between feminist essentialist and 
  postmodern perspectives and, in the process, uncover and challenge a bias 
  toward mastery implicit in postmodern narratives. To explore this thesis I 
  here use selected material from Indian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions. I 
  propose that these traditions recognize positions analogous to the 
  essentialist and postmodern positions, yet read the relationship between 
  these positions quite different, understanding them as far more compatible 
  than contemporary feminists tend to do. The difference in these readings 
  is due largely to their different ways of understanding subjectivity.

  Fundamental to Buddhist characterizations of subjectivity is a mental 
  state known as mindfulness, here meaning the ability to retain clear and 
  stable attention on a chosen object. Mindfulness gives evidence of both 
  essentialist-like and constructionist-like orientations, and will here 
  serve as my prime example of how a Buddhist discussion of subjectivity can 
  relate to feminist concerns. Mindfulness facilitates an "essential" type 
  of centering and at the same time is compatible with constructionist or 
  postmodern sensibilities because it perceives how the flux constitutes the 
  mind-body complex. Paradoxically, the more one's mindful concentration 
  develops, and the more grounded one is in present experience, the clearer 
  one is about the fragile and constructed nature of the self. I say 
  "paradoxically," but the tension of paradox is only in description, not in 
  the experience. In this way mindfulness and associated states of calm and 
  concentration can ameliorate the nature of the tension between 
  essentialist and postmodern perspectives in feminist contexts.

  My discussion therefore begins with classic Buddhist descriptions of 
  mindfulness. I then consider how the particular affinity mindfulness has 
  with what Buddhists call the "unconditioned" relates to postmodern 
  emphases on the complementary processes of deferral, differentiation, and 
  supplementation as the only context in which narratives of selfhood occur. 
  From most postmodernist perspectives, the fact that context and meaning is 
  never complete and can always be further supplemented is evidence of the 
  impossibility of any person, object, or narrative being fully present. 
  Because meaning and subjectivity are in this sense never fully present, 
  they are always deferred. This is a critical observation for feminist 
  reflection on self and identity.

  Paul Ricoeur once said that in the United States deconstruction is 
  especially prominent among literary critics but that it is in fact a way 
  of addressing religious issues. In this context he described 
  deconstruction as a way of unmasking the questions behind the answers of a 
  text or tradition.<3> Can we speak of the mind in any way except in terms 
  of what it knows? This is a question I see as implicit in Buddhist 
  traditions and one that becomes explicit when we juxtapose Buddhist and 
  feminist perspectives. A mental state such as mindfulness is not described 
  in terms of what is understood, but rather in terms of the mode of 
  awareness itself. When we look at feminist essentialist-postmodern debates 
  through a Buddhist lens, it appears that what most feminist reflections on 
  subjectivity have in common is their focal concern with the contents of 
  the subject: what she knows, what feelings she has, how she differentiates 
  and constructs herself through these. Buddhist traditions also take 
  enormous and explicit interest in what one knows and how one knows it. 
  They differ from most feminist reflections, however, in devoting much 
  attention to exploring the type of mind that knows various objects; this 
  interest is to be distinguished from an investigation of the ideas, 
  emotions, or other "contents" of the mind. Seldom discussed in Western 
  feminist discourse on subjectivity, mental states such as mindfulness and 
  concentration are difficult to map onto Western categories of 
  subjectivity.

                        - Dimensions of Subjectivity -

  Teresa de Lauretis says that subjectivity arises from "a complex of habits 
  resulting from the semiotic interaction of 'outer world' and 'inner 
  world,' the continuous engagement of a self or subject in social reality" 
  (1984, 182.) <4> Judith Butler, equating the subject with the "I," finds 
  that identity is something that cannot pre-exist linguistic signification, 
  and that identity is above all a practice. What kind of practice? One that 
  "inserts itself in the pervasive and mundane signifying acts of linguistic 
  life" (1990, 145). Both positions are in keeping with postmodernists' 
  emphasis on the formative role of language in self-experience. I propose, 
  however, that it is insufficient to conceive of subjectivity and selfhood 
  only in relation to language and that the insistence on doing so is itself 
  a particular construction of Western intellectual history. As Jane Flax 
  has observed, philosophy privileges knowledge so exclusively that other 
  alternatives are not explored (1990, 194).  Moreover, knowledge in 
  feminist postmodern contexts refers almost entirely to conceptually based 
  knowing, as opposed to visceral knowledge of the body, for example, or a 
  capacity to experience feeling vividly. Indeed, the split between feminist 
  essentialist and postmodern positions is often a split between emphasizing 
  the body (as do Mary Daly, Helene Cixous, and Adrienne Rich, for example) 
  or the mind  (Judith Butler, Chris Weedon, Teresa de Lauretis). In this 
  way the feminist debate replicates a cultural tendency to bifurcate mind 
  and body, even though most feminists decry this tendency.

  To go beyond this bifurcation requires that we recognize forms of 
  subjectivity which are viscerally connected to the body and for which 
  "knowledge" in the sense of information is not the sole criterion. There 
  are sources in recent Western reflection for such visceral awareness, 
  though they have not often been brought to bear on discussions among 
  essentialists and postmodernists. Flax, for example, points to Melanie 
  Klein's discourse on an infant's instinctive curiosity about her mother's 
  body. I would mention also a telling passage in Emily Martin's discussion 
  of the subjective state of women in the process of giving birth. This is a 
  time when what is known is not the central experiential criterion. But 
  what is? Michael Odent, whose clinic in Pithiviers, France, has pioneered 
  an especially supportive environment for women giving birth, describes it 
  like this: "Women seemed to forget themselves and what was going on around 
  them during the course of an unmedicated labor. They get a faraway look in 
  their eyes, forget social conventions, lose self-consciousness and self- 
  control. . ... I have found it very difficult to describe this shift to a 
  deeper level of consciousness during a birth. I had thought of calling it 
  'regression,' but I know that the word sounds pejorative, evoking a return 
  to some animal state. 'Instinct' is a better term, although it, too, 
  resonates with moralistic overtones" (quoted in Martin 1992, 163).

  Indeed, the terms we have are limited. The problem with words such as 
  "instinct" is also part of the problem with essentialist vocabularies; 
  they imply the demise of the kind of individual personhood valued in North 
  American and European cultures, and they seem to identify the self with an 
  "acultural" body.  Martin herself suggests a more positive frame for what 
  Odent describes:

       Instead of seeing the Pithiviers women as engaged in a "natural"
       lower-order activity, why can we not see them as engaged in a
       higher-order activity? The kinds of integration of body and mind
       fostered by the psychophysiological approach and others, the kinds
       of wholly involved activity captured by the metaphors of the
       journey and the trance, could well be taken as higher, more
       essentially human, more essentially cultural forms of consciousness
       and activity. Here, perhaps, are whole human beings, all their
       parts interrelated, engaged in what may be the only form of truly
       unalienated labor now available to us. (Martin 1992, 164).

  In order to encompass subjectivity more fully and to dissolve barriers 
  between essentialist and postmodern positions, we need to include among 
  our categories of subjectivity a dimension of mind that is not primarily 
  linguistic or conceptual, and yet (unlike Klein or Martin's examples) is 
  capable of being cultivated, and therefore is to be included among 
  "higher-order" and "cultural" human activities. This is a possibility that 
  promises to reframe many areas important to women -- from how birthing and 
  motherhood are valued, to relieving the ancient dualisms between mind and 
  body, to gaining a new perspective on contemporary essentialist-postmodern 
  antagonisms.

                - Mindfulness: Coherence and Constructedness -

  In ancient India, would-be surgeons were presented with a leaf floating on 
  water and a sharp cutting instrument. Their challenge was to sever the 
  leaf without sinking it. Too strong a stroke, and the leaf was submerged; 
  too timid an effort, and it remained uncut. "One who is clever shows the 
  scalpel stroke on it by means of a balanced effort (Buddhaghosa 1976, 
  I:141). The balance of the surgeon serves as a model for the balance 
  required in mindfulness. This criterion of balance, like the related 
  criteria of alertness, laxity, and excitement, suggests ways to reflect on 
  how the mind is, apart from its knowledge or feelings. This is not to deny 
  the profound intertwining of language and subjectivity, but to say that 
  the mind is not only its linguistic associations; it has a depth and 
  dimension to it not entirely governed by language or analysis. This 
  dimension is not clearly accounted for in either feminist essentialist or 
  postmodern discussions of subjectivity. In Indian, Tibetan, and other 
  Buddhist traditions, however, subjectivity is not simply a concatenation 
  of details, but has a "visceral" existence of its own.

  Mindfulness is also important because it is said to entail a focusing 
  capacity beyond the level of ordinary flickering attention. Theravada, the 
  Buddhist tradition still extant in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Burma, takes 
  the Foundations of Mindfulness Sutra as central to its meditation 
  practice.  This text teaches mindful observation first of the breath, in 
  order to stabilize the mind, then of the body and mind, along with the 
  existential attributes of these, such as impermanence.<5> This focusing 
  capacity makes it possible to notice particular details to which one was 
  previously impervious.

  For example, one's arm usually feels solid and constant. With practice it 
  comes to feel, at least during a meditation session, like an ongoing flux 
  of mini sensations with no overarching "arm" except as a name given to 
  these myriad sensations. If one turns attention to other mental processes, 
  "mind" too is experienced as only flux. Whether one places attention on 
  breath, body, or mind itself, what was formerly experienced as solid and 
  cohesive is revealed as quite the opposite, so that the object seems to 
  dissolve, and "having seen the dissolution of that object, one 
  contemplates the dissolution of the consciousness that had that as its 
  object" (Buddhaghosa 1976, II:751). As Buddhaghosa wrote in his fifth 
  century work //Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga)//, a classic 
  expression of Theravadin phenomenology, "all formations [e.g., the 
  person's mental and physical constituents] which keep on breaking up, 
  [are] like fragile pottery being smashed, like fine dust being 
  dispersed.... Just as a man with eyes standing on the bank of a pond or on 
  the bank of a river during heavy rain would see large bubbles appearing on 
  the surface of the water and breaking up as soon as they appeared, so too 
  he sees how formations break up all the time" (Buddhaghosa 1976, II:752).

  Mind and body are revealed as nothing but a great disappearing act. The 
  more one's mindful concentration develops, the clearer one is about one's 
  fragile and constructed nature. At the same time, one is physically 
  grounded in present experience. No matter how intense the insight into 
  flux, one's own steady focus vouches viscerally for meaningful personal 
  continuity.

  Fredric Jameson has suggested that modern Westerners, unable to grasp 
  their social context in its entirety, instead satisfy themselves with 
  focusing on their own particular place in that larger whole; coherence in 
  terms of social situatedness has been replaced by this exercise of 
  cognitive mapping. In feminist postmodern reflection as well, the idea 
  that mind is always and primarily constituted by context crowds out the 
  possibility of any sense of completeness, or wholeness; hence, perhaps the 
  fascination with supplementation. By contrast, mindfulness, and the mental 
  focus that develops from it, is described as a unifying dynamic and seen 
  as lending coherence to the subject even as it reveals the endless flux of 
  self and world. Put another way, mindfulness and the dimensions of 
  concentration related with it simultaneously demonstrate the self's 
  constructedness and its fully viable agency. This too is not just a 
  theoretical issue; it is perhaps the fundamental existential oxymoron: all 
  my life I am changing (getting older, dying) and at the same time 
  remaining the same (retaining a sense of identity). Mindfulness, even of 
  dissolution, is grounding. It is an experience of being strongly centered 
  in the present and in oneself. Such grounding in the face of dissolution 
  is the beginning of constructive personal strength.

  In its function as a witness, mindfulness is characterized as a silent 
  subject, saying nothing itself. This silence is not an inability to speak, 
  but the ability to not speak, and thereby sometimes to be free from 
  domination by the patternings of language and thought.

  If we can understand mind as having such a silent dimension, then 
  mindfulness is not yet another voice, yet another information-bearing 
  strand, in the internal dialogue.<6> It resembles the "evenly hovering 
  attention" of a psychoanalyst (something no one in the profession would 
  wish to call "instinctive" even though this is a subject state which, like 
  that of the Pithiviers women, suggests a "shift to a deeper state of 
  consciousness").<7> Again, what is important about such a mind is how it 
  flows, rather than what it knows. And this importance resonates throughout 
  the mind-body complex. A number of feminist women have written about the 
  importance of mindful clarity. The wandering that Mary Daly chronicles 
  requires immense awareness and self-knowledge (1985, xii, 89).  Doris 
  Lessing, herself influenced by the meditative traditions of Sufism, makes 
  awareness the starting point of Martha Quest's spiritual odyssey in //The 
  Four Gated City//.  Martha learns how to make herself "alive and light and  
  aware" (37) she knows the advantages, walking in the London rain, of 
  having "her head cool, watchful, alert" (38). She knows too the sense of 
  "a quiet, empty space, behind which stood an observing presence." Here 
  also mindfulness is described in terms of mental characteristics other 
  than knowledge. But from a Buddhist perspective there is little in the way 
  of an epistemological clarification of what this is or how it is 
  cultivated.

  Mindfulness is physically centering. Quieting the processes of distraction 
  stills the breath and soothes the body. Indeed, acknowledging the intimate 
  relationship between bodily and emotional or cognitive experience is vital 
  to many meditative traditions. Physical and mental processes are not two 
  halves of a whole, but two avenues of access into the fully integrated 
  complex in which they participate. Subjective shifts, in this view, always 
  involve the entire person. Calming, for example, is associated with a 
  variety of pleasurable physical sensations, from feeling one's body as 
  preternaturally soft or light, to -- far more rarely but also more 
  famously -- intense sexual pleasure.

  Mindfulness, says Buddhaghosa, reveals mind and body as functions in 
  constant communication, always shaping and responding to the other "like a 
  drum and the sound of a drum" (690). Tibetan Buddhists describe mind as 
  inseparable from the inner currents (rlung, prana) on which it rides. As 
  the inner currents flow through the body, they facilitate physical as well 
  as mental movement. Watching the breath affects the movement of these 
  currents, as does regulating the breath through slow and rhythmic 
  chanting, another important technique for soothing the mind. These 
  traditions also emphasize that consciousness is never fully disembodied; 
  it is always associated with the subtle physicality of internal 
  currents.<8> This is why some esoteric traditions teach a variety of 
  postures to enhance their meditation practices: the placement of body 
  directly affects the way in which currents of energy course within it, and 
  these energies in turn affect all manner of internal experience -- 
  emotional, spiritual, conceptual.

  Mindfulness is grounding because of the way it globally affects one's 
  experience of self and world. Mindfulness allows one to accept the present 
  and to accept oneself in the present. This is accomplished not by 
  altering, accessing, or restructuring the contents of the mind, but by 
  altering the tone of consciousness.

  For all these reasons, the subject is not to be understood only as a
  language-constituted instrument. Focused attention reveals depth as well
  as informational breadth, a depth not wholly navigable through the
  language-bearing coordinates articulated in postmodern reflections. The
  difference between experiencing one's state of mind and experiencing its
  "contents" is one of the most important subjective differences in
  Buddhism; it is a distinction that has no real parallel in contemporary
  theory. From a Buddhist perspective, postmodernists have a strangely
  disembodied notion of mind, precisely because there is no room to take
  account of the state of the subject, apart from the constructs that are
  its contents.



>From drm3p@darwin.clas.virginia.edu Mon Aug  8 15:40:42 1994
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From: David Ross Mcirvine <drm3p@darwin.clas.virginia.edu>
Message-Id: <199408082240.SAA66802@darwin.clas.Virginia.EDU>
Subject: GASSHO v1n5 (Part 3 of 3) (fwd)
To: tyagi <Tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com>
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 94 18:40:01 EDT
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Status: OR

According to Barry Kapke:
>From daemon Fri Aug  5 11:27:59 1994
Date: Fri, 5 Aug 1994 07:34:17 -0700
From: dharma@netcom.com (Barry Kapke)
Message-Id: <199408051434.HAA05638@netcom7.netcom.com>
Subject: GASSHO v1n5 (Part 3 of 3)
To: GASSHO-subscriber@netcom.com

  The absence in contemporary feminist theory of specific attention to the 
  kinds of subjective shifts Buddhist traditions describe partly results 
  from the already mentioned separation, in the West, of investigation into 
  how things are and into how they are known, that is, the distinctness of 
  epistemology from ontology.<9> Feminist theory both perpetuates this 
  separation and, in some quarters, protests it, observing that such 
  separation contributes to the abstractness of modern philosophy, against 
  which feminists seek theory anchored in experience.<10> Most Indo-Tibetan 
  Buddhist traditions intimately and explicitly entwine ontological and 
  epistemological issues. That is, the attention given to ontological 
  descriptions of persons or things is generally matched by detailed 
  consideration of what happens to the subject who knows this. Buddhists 
  must have categories of mind which are not linked with language since they 
  do not find all epistemological error to be a function of language.<28> 
  Thus, in the Buddhist traditions considered here, silence in the face of 
  language suggests a subjective dimension not primarily governed by 
  language, a dimension that offers a coherence that is not necessarily a 
  narrative or cognitive coherence.

  From a Buddhist perspective, the subjectivity described in postmodern 
  literature as lacking a coherent narrative, or as emerging through a play 
  of language-based differences, is inappropriately thin.  Little attention 
  is paid to its broader dimensions, meaning something other than its 
  conceptual, ideational, or emotional activities. Failure to consider such 
  dimensions seems to me a crucial factor in making the postmodern self seem 
  too thin or monodimensional <12> to provide a proper basis for feminist 
  agendas. If, however, subjectivity is not limited to conceptual and 
  emotional functioning, there opens up a new dimension of performance, a 
  new source of personal power, and a different arena from which to connect 
  with the world's diffuseness. In these ways, mindfulness eases the sense 
  of being caught "inside" oneself, as if isolated from the wider world. Its 
  subjective space need not entirely be localized inside the body, because 
  to go deep enough "inside" is also sometimes to touch a point that 
  connects with a vast neither-external-nor-internal-world. For all these 
  reasons I believe it is important for women to acknowledge and be on 
  intimate terms with an experience of personhood that is not simply a 
  constellation of learned codes, assorted information, and unique personal 
  expressions. These latter must not be lost, but they cannot be the sole 
  basis for selfhood either. Postmodern theories, unlike Buddhist theories, 
  are very articulate about a subject's position among the coordinates of 
  race and class and other historical, socio-economic, and political 
  realities. The kind of "constructedness" of which classic Buddhist forms 
  of mindfulness take note is not this sort of constructedness. Mindfulness 
  is not a matter of interpreting one's position. Thus Buddhists would be 
  unlikely to find the subject reduced to a "site of competing discourses," 
  as it often is in postmodern descriptions, both feminist and nonfeminist.

  There are no explicit Buddhist analyses of class, race, or gender, for 
  example. Buddhist perspectives we consider here could agree that social 
  positioning through race, class, or gender, combined with one's 
  interpretation of these, significantly affects consciousness, but they do 
  not understand the whole dimension of subjective functioning to be 
  constituted by these. However, insofar as Buddhist philosophical 
  traditions are often concerned with the process by which thoughts and 
  images shape the self, the matter of culturally produced "ideals" is a 
  form of self-construction important for both Buddhist and feminist 
  reflection. Therefore let us consider the relationship between ideals and 
  subjectivity from a Buddhist perspective.  Might mindfulness and 
  concentration suggest ways to avoid treating the self as a territory to be 
  conquered, governed, or colonized by ideals?

                          - Mindfulness and Ideals -

  I once overheard a conversation between two American Buddhist 
  practitioners. An apparent newcomer asked a more seasoned student, "How 
  has meditation changed you?" She appeared to expect a triumphal story of 
  vanquishing unwanted personality traits by embracing a more ideal style of 
  personhood. The object of this inquiry, responding not at all to her air 
  of anticipation, said with mild surprise, "Change? I don't want to change. 
  I just want to be there." Ideals are problematic philosophically as well 
  as experientially. To assume any type of overly simple relation to an 
  ideal is also to assume a unitariness of subject belied by both 
  postmodernists and Buddhists; it also suggests, untenably from most 
  feminist perspectives, that the appropriate ideals are already fully 
  conceived.

  To have mindfulness, Buddhists often say, is to accept what is and to 
  offset the unbalancing future-orientation that occurs when one is focused 
  primarily on the ideal one would like to become, at the expense of 
  noticing or appreciating what one is.<13> The potential disadvantages of a 
  quest for self, or any religious quest, being dominated by ideals are 
  fourfold: (1) hindering self-knowledge, (2) demeaning the self, (3) 
  providing a means for manipulation, and (4) continuing the type of 
  oppositional style that feminists explicitly seek to overcome.

  Merely a gentle observer, mindfulness is a way of being there. It does so 
  by fostering a capacity to relate to oneself without trying to oppose, 
  judge, or change what is observed. Because it permits self-knowledge 
  without the crippling presence of an ideal against which one inevitably 
  falls short, mindfulness can be understood as departing from the urge to 
  master, override, rein in, or otherwise manipulate the self. In this way 
  mindfulness' quality of self-acceptance provides an important 
  counterweight to the narrative of ideals and to the paradigm of mastery 
  often associated with the implementation of ideals.

                 - Being There: Presence with a Difference -

  Buddhist descriptions of subjectivity in connection with mindfulness and 
  meditation suggest the possibility of a subjectivity not wholly governed 
  by words and therefore not subject to the kind of fracturing associated 
  with feminist postmodern or constructionist perspectives. The Buddhist 
  descriptions of subjectivity referred to here also suggest a self that has 
  the kind of unified strength described by essentialists yet, unlike the 
  selves they describe, is also characterized by a coherence that does not 
  deteriorate when one recognizes the self's constructed nature. These 
  descriptions, and associated practices, offer one a sense of her mind as 
  an extensive, even inexhaustible, resource of strength and fresh 
  perspectives. Such a subjectivity is of particular interest to women, 
  because women are today explicitly concerned with finding modes of 
  expression and reflection that are as free as possible from the 
  internalized cultural restraints on women's being.

  We have said that the silent subject of Buddhist epistemological 
  description has an ontological analogue, which Buddhists variously call 
  emptiness or selflessness, meaning the absence of existing independent of 
  causes and conditions. All persons and things are qualified by this 
  unconditioned absence. The category of the unconditioned is here, unlike 
  in postmodern theory, considered compatible with a theory that emphasizes 
  the conditionality of phenomena in general.

  Knowing emptiness requires a considerable measure of clarity, stability, 
  and intensity,<14> together with associated shifts in breathing, posture, 
  and other physiological processes. It is this absence which is engaged by 
  the "wisdom" for which Buddhist traditions are so famous. Insight into 
  emptiness is an experience replete with meaning because it is empty of
  content. This is not a matter of putting together conceptually organized 
  bits of information, but of reorienting to a cognition that viscerally 
  unites mental and physical dimensions.

  What kind of presence is possible in relation to this absence which is 
  emptiness? Should Buddhists be judged naive for claiming that the "truth" 
  of emptiness can be fully present to consciousness? What kind of "truth" 
  is at issue here anyway? And what kind of consciousness?<15> Direct and 
  full realization of emptiness does not mean that emptiness is completely 
  known in the sense of the subject having mastered or observed some "thing" 
  in a way that brooks no supplementation.<16> Developing an experience of 
  emptiness does not involve further knowledge "about" it but rather 
  increased concentration and focus on it. Concentration, like the 
  mindfulness that makes it possible, is not governed by language. This 
  concentrated and nonverbal witness does not have the same relationship to 
  traces of difference as do other more language-based modes of awareness. 
  Postmodern philosophers argue against what they characterize as the 
  essentialist assumption that a thing is just what it is, and nothing else, 
  and can be known as such (Derrida 1976. 7-8, 20-158-9).<17> For Jacques 
  Derrida, writing is the archetypal situation of shifting differences which 
  characterizes every aspect of our lives; it is a performance of the 
  impossibility of presence (Derrida 1982; 1981, esp. 17-32). For him, 
  however, as for feminist theorists influenced by him, the impossibility of 
  presence rests on premises not relevant to the Buddhist claim we are 
  considering.<18> For Middle-Way and other philosophical traditions within 
  Buddhism, the salient criterion is not how much of an object one knows, or 
  how much information one has captured, but how focused, intense, and clear 
  the knowing mind itself is. The unconditioned emptiness cannot be 
  communicated fully through language, but neither can ordinary things be 
  fully expressed by language or known by thought. Indeed, much of Indo- 
  Tibetan Buddhism understands language to be a system of imperfect and 
  indirect representation.<19> Both Buddhists and postmodern feminists 
  reject naive theories of representation or "pipeline" models of meaning 
  wherein a word or thought is considered "fully" to express or convey that 
  to which it refers.<20> In this way, Buddhist epistemology agrees with 
  feminist and other postmodern emphases on the limitations of linguistic 
  representation. But when emptiness is known directly, thought and language 
  are absent. At the same time emptiness, the absence of independent, 
  unconditioned existence, is fully present to one's experience. Nothing 
  about emptiness is deferred or differentiated from one's mind. Yet, there 
  is nothing particular in emptiness to be assumed present in the first 
  place. It is a mere absence.

  Buddhist descriptions of awareness suggest that no matter how many 
  thoughts, feelings, or sensory impressions it accesses, these can never 
  fully characterize or dominate the mind. There is always room for 
  something else. In other words, as I have already emphasized, Buddhist 
  traditions are inclined to understand a concentrated mind as fully 
  "present" to its object, regardless of whether or not that object is fully 
  known. This is because the critical issue here is stability and 
  attentiveness, rather than the amount of information gathered. The fact 
  that ordinary objects of the senses can never be fully known is in fact 
  something on which most Buddhist and postmodern theories agree. However, 
  this inability of the conceptual mind to fully know an object and the 
  impossibility of an object being "just what it is" are for Buddhists not 
  disruptive of subjective coherence, whereas they are often described as 
  disruptive by feminist postmodernists. These latter do not accept presence 
  because no matter how broadly the boundaries of a person are drawn, there 
  is always something included and something excluded. Descriptions can 
  always be further supplemented; they are never complete. <21> This is 
  where the issues of presence and the problem of ideals converge. Both are 
  predicated on mastery; both are philosophically problematic. On the other 
  hand, a feminist such as Helene Cixous, whose work partakes of both 
  essentialist and postmodern orientations, celebrates the impossibility of 
  circumscribing woman. She rejoices in woman's "endless body, without 
  'end,' without principal 'parts'" (Cixous 1986, 87). Yet what she says is 
  also a cause of concern. How can an endless and therefore shapeless 
  subject shape an identity? How can one avoid being wholly colonized by a 
  limited set of ideals or roles?

                         - Mindfulness and Mastery -

  Only a tradition that acknowledges the significance of internal silence 
  can feature its ontological analogue, the unconditioned emptiness, as part 
  of a path to liberation. This kind of subject is yet to be situated within 
  Western understandings of subjectivity. The silent subject united with an 
  "emptiness" that is the absence of its own previously misconstrued status 
  occupies a position distinct from either of the narratives which, 
  according to Lyotard, have dominated the modern West: the Enlightenment 
  narrative, exemplified by Kant, and the narrative of the Spirit, 
  exemplified by Hegel. In both of these, knowledge of is key. Knowledge is 
  the ideal, the legitimizer, and the redeemer. Who would deny the 
  significance of knowledge? Not feminists, certainly, and not Buddhists 
  either. Without in any way undermining the significance of various types 
  of knowledge, the subject, need not be defined only by what it knows. The 
  subjective dimension of silent concentration offers a space for the 
  subject apart from its dominating knowledge, and the dimension of the 
  unconditioned is the arena in which it functions.

  Women, and men as well, need an epistemology that allows room for multiple 
  incoherencies and incongruities. The type of coherence suggested by 
  attentive focusing in no way contradicts engagement with a multiplicity of 
  ideas, stories, histories, of race, class, gender, or personal style. One 
  remains physically centered and focused in the midst of observing this.  
  When the mind is understood as an open expanse, there is always room for 
  something more. When that same mind has a dimension that retains its open, 
  unlanguaged status even -- or especially -- in the face of dissolution and 
  multiplicity, its dynamic of coherence cannot be interrupted by 
  particularity or incongruency. This dimension is greatly facilitated by an 
  ontology which expresses the inessential essence -- for example, emptiness 
  -- considered an attribute of persons and things but which is not itself 
  governed by their particular qualities. In brief, such subjective 
  spaciousness becomes available through subjective processes not rooted in 
  language and through engaging an object not governed only by 
  particularity. This points to a sharp distinction between Buddhist and 
  contemporary feminist sensibilities. Again, the crucial issue for the 
  Buddhist traditions is not the extent to which one is master of the 
  details of an object, but the way in which one is centered in awareness 
  itself. By contrast, agency and mastery are focal concerns for those who 
  propose language and writing as the governing metaphor of experience, as 
  evidenced by the near-hysteria (highly intellectualized) at the 
  possibility of their dismantling or demise. From a Buddhist perspective 
  the contemporary fascination with diffrance suggests an intellectual 
  history that did not take sufficient note of the interdependent and 
  conditioned nature of persons or things in the first place.<22> To that 
  extent, Buddhist philosophers would be in sympathy with the kind of 
  correction postmodernists seek. But, why make such a fuss about diffrance 
  except for the desire of complete possession thwarted by it? The bias 
  toward "mastering" against which postmodernism poses itself resurfaces 
  here.

  Partly because of this fascination with mastery, the unmasterability of 
  the textualized world becomes, in postmodern reflection, the most 
  mysterious and interesting thing about it. This at least is my reading of 
  the "question" behind the "answer" of diffrance, including its insistence 
  on not really being an answer. Such fascination is a compelling 
  undercurrent of the postmodern deconstruction of Enlightenment 
  sensibilities. The glory days of old when individuality, agency, and truth 
  could be enshrined as cultural icons only lend drama to their present 
  dethroning. I agree with Flax that women are by definition left outside 
  this story-line (Flax, 1990, 215).<23> Like the unconditioned and the 
  nonverbal, women too are "other" to the deconstructive network, for the 
  unconditioned and the nonverbal, like women, are unmasterable through the 
  ordinary channels of power, especially language; they all lie outside the 
  male-ordered fascination with agency, legacy, and its demise.

  Is it an accident that women, mother, mater, maternal ground, and 
  foundations are all excluded or severely limited by contemporary theory? 
  As Nancy Hartsock put it, "Why is it, just at the moment in Western 
  history when previously silenced populations have begun to speak for 
  themselves.... that the concept of the subject and the possibility of 
  discovering/creating a liberating 'truth' become suspect?"<24> Useful as 
  some of Derrida's observations and other postmodern insights have been to 
  feminist theory, women and others who would think new thoughts must make 
  claims outside this "story-line" by swimming past its boundaries into the 
  deeper dimensions of subjectivity.

  The Buddhist story-line we are following here is different. It requires 
  the possibility of subjective silence and objective absence. Silence and 
  its analogue, the unconditioned emptiness, as well as the compatibility 
  between the conditioned and unconditioned, suggest a constellation of 
  connections that contemporary theory as presently constituted does not 
  recognize. Its suspicions of foundationalism conspire against this.

  The subjective dimensions proposed in Buddhist materials suggest a 
  centeredness that is essentialist-like in its power and uncomplicated 
  identity, and yet avoids the overly narrow definitions of "female essence" 
  that lead many feminists to cast aside essentialist aspirations. At the 
  same time, I believe it is critical for women to acknowledge the need for 
  groundedness and for some degree of personal "presence." Yet, when 
  capturing or occupying is not at issue, the question of presence loses its 
  punch. So does the poignancy of women's position as object.

  Feminist descriptions have yet to develop a vocabulary for functions other 
  than capture or knowledge by which subjects engage their objects. Perhaps 
  here lies a clue to a unique womanly gesture, one that, like mindfulness, 
  proceeds in ways other than through the differential of frustrated 
  mastery. I call it a gesture, because in gestures, words are not all that 
  matter. Persons communicate through language, but also through the flesh, 
  blood, and rushing currents of feeling and energy by which they are also 
  constituted. This womanly gesture, in which language may participate 
  without becoming the ruling metaphor, neither masters, succumbs to, nor 
  even excludes, its male audience. In this way, it avoids being a "master" 
  narrative.

  Postmodernists in general and feminist postmodernists in particular have 
  opened up an enormous intellectual space in which to reconsider the 
  relationship of self and knowledge. Feminists have integrated gender 
  concerns into this space as well. But a subjective experience that moves 
  from textuality to a different style of subjectivity altogether is not 
  available in postmodern thought as currently constituted. Feminist 
  appropriations of postmodernist structures have, by and large, conceived 
  of themselves as opposed to essentialist feminist perspectives.<25> For 
  Buddhists, the possibility of subjectivity not anchored in language or 
  oppositionality suggests a way in which the strength and agency associated 
  with essentialist perspectives can be integrated with a full 
  acknowledgment of the complexity of a woman's identity in the contemporary 
  climate. 

  Thus, I think it extremely worthwhile to recognize a dimension or category 
  of subjectivity that is not bounded, constructed, or defined solely by 
  language. Contemporary women's lives, replete with incongruous elements of 
  culture, race, religion, or worldview, can be a cause for celebration so 
  long as one's entire possibility for coherence does not lie with a 
  verbalized narrative coherence. The mastery of detail and nuance that this 
  would require is impossible. But this impossibility need not stand in the 
  way of subjective or personal coherence, for keen and focused attention 
  inevitably reveals that multiplicity makes the only kind of whole that can 
  be one.


                                    NOTES
                                    ~~~~~
  Condensed from my forthcoming book, //Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: 
  Buddhists Feminists, and the Art of the Self// (Boston: Beacon Press, Fall 
  1994), which discusses Buddhist and feminist understandings of self, 
  subjectivity, and compassionate relationship in the light of their 
  respective cultural contexts, and introduces ritual and philosophical 
  elements associated with a female Buddha known as the Great Bliss Queen 
  (bde chen rgyal mo) in order to express and sometimes bridge critical 
  differences between modern secular feminist voices and traditional 
  Buddhist ones.

  In attempting to mark out major connections and dissonances between 
  Buddhist and Western ideas of subjectivity, it is impossible to find 
  language not already embedded with either Western or Buddhist 
  philosophical intent. Nonetheless, one proceeds.

  I am grateful to readers of the chapters of my book from which this 
  article is drawn: Harvey Aronson, Lauren Bryant, Elizabeth Long, Helena 
  Michie, Michael Fischer, Janet Gyatso, Katherine Milun, Meredith Skura, 
  Sharon Traweek, and Philip Wood. In addition I am grateful to the two 
  anonymous readers for Hypatia and its editors. I also thank Steven D. 
  Goodman for very helpful comments on a penultimate draft of this article. 

  <1.> It is, of course, well known that there are many differences among 
  essentialists themselves, as among postmodernists. See, for example, Schor 
  (1989). In my references to these positions, I extract principles that are 
  common, though not necessarily universal, to feminist essentialists or 
  postmodernists respectively. Some writers, for example, Luce Irigary and 
  Hlne Cixous reflect both essentialist and postmodern orientations. Luce 
  Irigaray describes a kind of postmodern essence when she writes: "Woman is 
  neither open nor closed. She is indefinite, in-finite, form is never 
  complete in her" (Irigaray l985, 229). Julia Kristeva, on the other hand,  
  flatly finds any sort of coherence to be a mistake, observing that "the 
  belief that 'one is a woman' is almost as absurd and obscurantist as the 
  belief that 'one is a man'" (Kristeva 1981, 137).

  <2.> Linda Alcoff observes that minority voices in the West are 
  particularly sensitive to the dangers of essentialism, and for this reason 
  Black, Hispanic, Chicana, and other women of color overwhelmingly reject 
  essentialist conceptions of gender (Alcoff, l988. 412). See Anzaldua  
  (1987), Walker (1982), and Moraga (1987). My colleague Angela Valenzuela 
  has pointed out in conversation the complexity of the one hand, minority 
  persons' need to define themselves in opposition to a majority, and, at 
  the same time their objections to having an identity solely defined by 
  that context. Nonetheless some theorists such as Paul Smith call for a 
  reassessment of essentialism's political efficacy (See Smith 1988, 44). 
  See also Fuss's discussion of this in connection with Irigaray (Fuss, 
  1989, 70ff).

  <3.> Paul Ricoeur in colloquium with Harvard Divinity School Faculty, 
  Fall, 1983

  <4.> For de Lauretis's main sources for her interpretations of Lacan, Eco 
  and Peirce see Alcoff (1988. 424 n. 45).

  <5.> For a translation and discussion of this sutra see Thera (1984). For 
  further discussion of mindfulness by modern Theravadins see Thera (1984) 
  and Rahula (l980).

  <6.> Mind is then not to be understood only through the metaphor of 
  "conversation" and the differentiating play of words as it often is today, 
  as, for example in the work of Bakhtin (the "dialogic consciousness" and 
  Rorty's work on Freud). See Flax (1990, 217) with reference to Rorty 
  (1986).

  <7.> This is a kind of quiet mental scanning that allows the analyst to 
  listen closely and clearly to the analysand, and allows the analysand to 
  be aware of what is coming to her own consciousness. (Thanks to Meredith 
  Skura for this observation in the course of a seminar sponsored by the 
  Rice Center for Cultural Studies, Fall 1990.)

  <8.> This internal energy, however, does not fit into the usual categories 
  by which contemporary feminists consider the extent to which thought or 
  consciousness is affected by bodily experience. Therefore, whereas in some 
  contemporary theories the acknowledged difficulty of locating any aspect 
  of mind that is not affected by bodily experience is associated with 
  skepticism regarding the possibility of "pure" consciousness, in the 
  Buddhist traditions considered here it is not. See Flax (1990, 62). 
  Consider also Cixous' emphasis on the body and Kristeva's alignment of 
  feminine and masculine uses of language with feminine and masculine 
  libidinal energy. See discussion by Weedon (1987, 70ff).

  <9.> For an excellent discussion of this see Jane Flax (1980, 21ff). See 
  also Bateson (1982, 313-14).

  <10.> Jane Flax observes that, given the repressive contexts that Western 
  women are likely to encounter, feminism has a special interest in theories 
  that construct self while taking account of the full complexity of 
  subjectivity (Flax 1986, 93).

  <11.> This is because Buddhist traditions are not simply philosophical 
  systems that purport to describe the world and knowledge of it, but are 
  soteriological systems that claim the ability to describe the world in 
  such a way that one can become freed from it (conversation with Steven 
  Goodman, March 1, 1994, Houston Texas.) Language is not the only reason 
  one is caught up in the world. For example, the Gelukba Consequentialist 
  (Prasangika) school regards the errors it seeks to correct as not only 
  mental or conceptual but also as pervading sensory perception. Moreover, 
  sensory perception can, at least in Buddhist theory, operate without 
  conceptual overlay. For a discussion of Buddhism's claim to deal with a 
  level of error more primal than language, see Napper (1989, 92ff.).

  <12.> This term derived in conversation with Steven Goodman.

  <13.> In the literature on calm abiding, "mindfulness" is distinguished 
  from the function of introspection (samprajanaya, shes bzhin); this latter 
  is the factor of mind that notices whether faults such as laxity or 
  excitement are present. See Hopkins (1983, 74-76).  A classic Mahayana 
  distinction between mindfulness and introspection is made in Shantideva's 
  //Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds,// Chap. 4. See Cox (1992, 67-108).

  <14.> These are characteristics classically associated with calm abiding, 
  the minimal level of concentration required for actual insight into the 
  unconditioned emptiness. See Lodr (1986, 166). Calm abiding is acquired 
  developmentally, culminating the "nine mental states" (sems gnas dgu). 
  Facility with mindfulness, "the power of mindfulness," is said to be 
  completed at the fourth of these states.

  <15.> Indeed, a synonym for a nonconceptual mind is a "complete engager" 
  (sgrub 'jug; *viddhi-pravrti) because it is considered to engage every 
  aspect of its object. In this sense it is fully present to the aspects of 
  the object which present themselves to consciousness. Discussed in Napper 
  (1980) and Klein (1986 Chapter 3). For a detailed discussion of the idea 
  that sense consciousnesses "take on the aspect" of the objects they know, 
  see Klein (1986, Chpt. 3).

  <16.> I draw here primarily from the Middle Way (Madhyamika) philosophy in 
  the tradition of the Indian scholars Nagarjuna and Candrakirti as 
  interpreted by Tsong-kha-pa, founder of the Gelukba order, and other 
  scholars in his tradition, who incorporated many elements of the 
  epistemology of the Indian scholastics Dignaga and Dharmakirti.

  <17.> For an interesting discussion of this aspect of presence see Culler 
  (1982, 105).

  <18.> As Flax observes, for Derrida writing is not bound up with the myth 
  of an "originary or modified form of presence." See Derrida (1978, 211- 
  12).

  <19.> Words do not elicit the actual emptiness, any more than the word 
  "table" elicits a complete table. See Klein (1986, 134-140).

  <20.> See for example, Culler (1982, 92ff.) and Derrida (1976, 12.ff). See 
  also Derrida (1976, 7-8; 20, and 158-159). Indeed, presence and absence 
  derive from the same Latin root //es//. (American Heritage Dictionary 
  [1973, 1515]). For an accessible discussion of this aspect of presence see 
  Culler (1982, 105).

  <21.> Derrida discusses this under the rubric of two well-known topics: 
  supplementation and diffrance (1982).

  <22.> And indeed Derrida is partly reacting against Hegel's idea of an 
  absolute subject, or absolute spirit.

  <23.> This, as Flax observes, does not arise due to the logic of language, 
  but through a failure of gendered analysis (1990, 214-15). She eloquently 
  describes how Derrida's system mirrors the exile of women, and all she 
  represents, from the world of "man," "culture," and "center" (213).

  <24.> Hartsock (1987, 186-206; paraphrased and discussed by Di Stefano 
  (1990).

  <25.> For highly articulate critiques of this opposition, see Fuss (1989) 
  and Schor (1989). 


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                                  * * * * *

  This article appears by permission of //Hypatia// and will appear in 
  volume 9(4), Fall, 1994, Special Issue on Feminist Philosophy of Religion.


  ANNE C. KLEIN is an Associate Professor at Rice University, where she 
  teaches in the Department of Religious Studies and in the 
  interdisciplinary Women's Studies major. She also offers occasional 
  workshops bringing meditation practice to bear on contemporary women's 
  issues. In 1982-83 she was a Research Associate and Lecturer in the Women 
  and Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. In addition to a number 
  of articles in the area of women and Buddhism, she has published three 
  books on issues in Buddhist philosophy and epistemology. //Meeting the 
  Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self// is her 
  first booklength work on Buddhism and feminism. 


  =======================================================================
  {11} PRACTICE
  =======================================================================


               THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ORDINATION AS A BUDDHIST NUN
                             by Sister Ayya Khema


  To be ordained as a Buddhist nun is such a major step in a woman's life 
  that one should be well aware of its significance before undertaking it.

  Up to the moment of ordination, one can, of course, have no idea what 
  being a nun entails, since only lay status has been experienced. 
  Naturally, one will have expectations, hopes, and views, most of which may 
  have to be rectified as one goes along.

  One could compare it to getting married; not having known beforehand what 
  it means to be a married woman, many unrealistic ideas are entertained. 
  Because of a strong commitment of love and togetherness, however, one 
  takes the step, regardless of fears and anxieties. Then, as years go by, 
  if love, commitment, understanding, and devotion wane, the marriage 
  suffers, deteriorates, and eventually collapses.

  The same applies to becoming and remaining a nun. While at first there may 
  be a flush of excitement and anticipation, if love, devotion, commitment, 
  and understanding are not constantly cultivated until they become 
  intrinsic qualities in one's heart, the nun status will not flourish and 
  will eventually disintegrate, either into disappointments and 
  dissatisfactions or a return to lay life.

  There is a significant difference between being a laywoman and being a 
  nun, however, which has great meaning for those who are ordained. I am not 
  talking about status or importance within the community. I am speaking 
  about my own experience, having been a practicing laywoman in the past, 
  and then having become a nun.

  It is a matter of priority and commitment. When one practices as a 
  laywoman, one can certainly meditate, live according to the precepts, and 
  practice generosity. One can do many things, but one's daily life is beset 
  with so many other duties and responsibilities that very often, as I have 
  experienced myself, practice comes last. There are only so many hours in a 
  day, and everyone does have to sleep and eat and clean up and wash. And 
  there are so many other items of importance that seem to beset one's mind 
  and also one's time, that the energy allotted for practice becomes minute.

  When the time comes that one can see clearly that there is nothing more 
  important to do than to practice the path of the Buddha in order to 
  eliminate //dukkha// (suffering) forever, then comes the moment when 
  ordination seems to be the only possible step. That certainly does not 
  mean that all //dukkha// is eliminated, but it does mean that one should 
  have clearly in mind that the priority, the main objective of daily 
  activity, now is the practice of //Dhamma//. If that is clearly in mind, 
  one must also be careful not to use one's time in a way which will 
  interfere with that priority. In Pali, we call that //samvega//, 
  "urgency": to remember every single day why we have put on these robes, 
  namely, to practice.

  It is also important to determine what it means to practice. In the 
  Theravada tradition, we say it consists of two things -- study and 
  meditation. When we see, for instance, that these are the two most 
  important things to do, that does not mean tat we do not sleep at night, 
  eat our meals, or wash our clothes. There are, of course, situations where 
  food needs to be cooked, pathways have to be swept, floors have to be 
  cleaned. We often find women saying, "This is not //Dhamma// work." They 
  only want to do //Dhamma// work. That is a mistaken view. If we practice, 
  then we can do //Dhamma// work in every activity, yet we must not allow 
  the activities to become so overwhelming that we do not have time for 
  study and meditation.

  So it means a balancing act, which is often found to be very difficult to 
  maintain. That is why, in the beginning of one's practice as a nun, one 
  needs an experienced teacher to tell one what to do and to follow this 
  instruction with humility.

  There is another aspect to being ordained as a nun, namely, to become a 
  professional at it. Wearing the robes should not be wearing some special 
  costume, but it should be a declaration of being a servant to humanity. In 
  our tradition it is //anatta// (non-self). We are not trying to be 
  something. We are trying to become "selfless." So in the last essence, 
  wearing the robes means that one is proclaiming the fact that one is 
  trying to become absolutely nobody.

  There are many obstacles in the way, as we all know. One great obstacle is 
  being a teacher! People either love you and think you are wonderful or 
  hate you and think that you are terrible. Another obstacle is building 
  monasteries. Another obstacle is going on trips. And the greatest obstacle 
  of all is the mind itself. But never mind, obstacles are to be overcome. 
  The only thing that counts is that we know why we are wearing the robes 
  and that we know what we are doing while we are wearing them.

  I have often thought of women in robes as //Dhamma// warriors. A 
  successful army has to have the best weapons. What are the most important 
  weapons that this army of //Dhamma// can possibly carry? It is a female 
  prerogative, and sometimes also a female difficulty, that we deal very 
  frequently with our emotions. These emotions can be purified to become 
  real //metta//, "loving kindness," that the Lord Buddha spoke about. This 
  //metta// is the most useful and effective weapon that we can have.

  The world that we know, the world that we live in, has an enormous amount 
  of fear, hatred, unhappiness, anxiety, and animosity between people. If we 
  want to be true disciples of the Buddha, then it is our privilege to 
  develop within our own hearts that love which is totally non- 
  discriminating. Most people in the world are looking for someone to love 
  them. It is our privilege to learn that this is not meaningful, but that 
  developing loving kindness within our own heart and going out to others 
  with it is the real practice.

  Why should one not be able to do that as a laywoman? No reason at all, 
  except that one's own family is always there to grasp at and be attached 
  to. Wearing the robes is the first step of a renunciation process which 
  can and will one day end in //nibbana// (liberation). Living as a nun in a 
  nunnery, one's own family becomes part of the whole of humanity. So that 
  is one step in the renunciation of one's grasping and attachment. By not 
  being attached in that way, we have the possibility of an expansion of the 
  heart toward all beings, not because they need love, want to be loved, are 
  lovable or otherwise, but because the heart can do nothing else. This 
  practice can be the first step of our renunciation. After having renounced 
  our hair, our clothes, our jewelry, our belongings, the next step is the 
  renunciation of that attachment which especially women know -- the 
  attachment to their near and dear ones.

  These robes have been called the banner of the //arahants// (liberated 
  ones). Even though we may not all be //arahants//, we are flying their 
  banner. That is one part of making a nun a professional and not an amateur 
  -- realizing that we are flying this banner. Another aspect of being a 
  professional, rather than an amateur, is knowing. Knowing here means 
  knowledge -- the knowledge of one's own tradition, its history, its 
  implication, and its practice. And the most important aspect is then 
  transferring that knowledge into wisdom. To transfer knowledge into wisdom 
  means to practice through the meditative path, and to experience with the 
  heart that which one knows with the head. I call that "the understood 
  experience."

  When we practice in such a way, we find that we, in ourselves, can prove 
  Lord Buddha's words correct. Then comes the time when we can actually 
  //be// the //Dhamma//, rather than simply reading or listening to the 
  //Dhamma//.

  So the main difference between wearing ordinary clothes and wearing the 
  robes of a nun is that the greatest priority, the total aspiration, is the 
  //Dhamma// within oneself. Lord Buddha said, "Who sees me sees the 
  //Dhamma//, who sees //Dhamma// sees me." This seeing is the inner vision 
  of the //Dhamma//, which is a different reality from what we live in 
  ordinary life. To see that different reality, to listen to a different 
  drummer, gives life a far more profound stability and depth.

  Much of the value of being a nun lies in the example given to other women 
  of a female independent of the approval or the empowerment of males, being 
  instead totally imbued with spiritual aspirations. If a nun finds peace 
  and happiness in her vocation and is able to impart some of that to 
  others, her contribution towards a better humanity becomes of the greatest 
  value and can, in fact, change the quality of life amongst many people.

                                  * * * * *

  Excerpted from //Sakyadhita: Daughters of the Buddha//, edited by Karma 
  Lekshe Tsomo. Copyright 1988. Reprinted with permission of Snow Lion
  Publications, Inc., PO Box 6483, Ithaca NY 14851.


  SISTER AYYA KHEMA was born in Berlin in 1923. In 1949 she became an 
  American citizen, married and had two children. She migrated to Australia 
  in 1964, then travelled to Burma and Thailand to study Buddhism, later 
  continuing her study in the U.S. and Australia. She co-founded Wat Buddha 
  Dhamma, a monastery in the Theravada tradition in Sydney in 1978, and a 
  year later was ordained as a nun. In Colombo she set up the International 
  Women's Centre as a training centre for Sri Lankan nuns and Parappuduwa 
  Nuns' Island for women of all nationalities who want to live a monastic 
  life temporarily or permanently. In February of 1987, Ayya Khema 
  coordinated and spoke at the first International Conference of Buddhist 
  Nuns in Bodh Gaya, India, at which the Dalai Lama gave the keynode 
  address. In May of 1987, she was invited as a lecturer at the United 
  Nations Staff Recreation Council in New York, the first Buddhist speaker 
  ever to have addressed the U.N. In 1989 Sister Ayya Khema established 
  Buddha Haus in South Germany, where she is currently its spiritual 
  director.


  =======================================================================
  {12} CALENDAR:
  =======================================================================

  =======================================================================
                BUDDHIST MEDITATION RETREATS & EVENTS CALENDAR
  =======================================================================

                                    AUGUST

  =======================================================================
  DharmaNet International                                revised:  8/2/94
  =======================================================================


  5/29-8/28  SUMMER ANGO (PEACEFUL DWELLING) RETREAT - Taizan Maezumi.
  Attend all or part. Zen Mountain Center, PO Box 43, Mountain Center CA 
  92561. (909) 659-5272.

  1-3  8th EUROPEAN SHIN CONFERENCE
  Vienna. Contact: Mrs. Simone Zotz (Shin Conference), Hauptstrasse 27, A- 
  7372, Weingraben, Austria.

  2-21  SUMMER KYOL CHE - Zen Master Su Bong.
  Providence Zen Center, 99 Pound Road, Cumberland RI 02864. (401) 658-1464. 
  Fax: (401) 658-1188. Internet: kwanumzen@aol.com

  4-9  FAMILY RETREAT - Christina Feldman.
  Insight Meditation Society, Pleasant St, Barre MA 01005. (508) 355-4378.

  5-7  WEEKEND RETREAT - Bhante Gunaratana or Bhante Rahula.
  Bhavana Society, Rt 1 Box 218-3, High View WV 26808. (304) 856-2341.

  5-13  8-DAY ZEN RETREAT - Yvonne Rand.
  Goat-in-the-Road, Muir Beach CA. Contact: Yvonne Rand, 1821 Star Route, 
  Sausalito CA 94965. (415) 388-5572. Fax: (415) 388-9615.

  5-14  VIPASSANA RETREAT - Gil Fronsdal, Mary Orr, John Travis.
  Santa Cruz CA. Contact: Eileen Phillips, 2911 Gwendolyn Way, Rancho  
  Cordova CA 95670. (916) 361-7128.

  5-14  VIPASSANA RETREAT - Steven Smith & Michele McDonald-Smith.
  Sante Fe NM. Contact: Nancy Shonk, 2502 Alamosa Dr, Sante Fe NM 87505.  
  (505) 471-0422.

  6-12  INSIGHT & OPENING: THE POWER OF THE BREATH & MEDITATION - Stan Grof 
  & Jack Kornfield. Bennington VT. Contact: David Carr, (707) 895-2856.

  7-10  7-DAY SESSHIN - Abbot Tenshin Reb Anderson.
  Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, 1601 Shoreline Hwy, Sausalito CA 94965. (415) 
  383-3134. Fax: (415) 383-3128.

  7-27  METTA & VIPASSANA RETREAT - Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Fred 
  von Allmen. Mannenbach, TG, Switzerland. Contact: Dhamma Gruppe, Postfach 
  5909, CH-3001 Bern.

  9-14  THE ZEN GARDEN - Stephen Morrell.
  Zen Mountain Monastery, Box 197MR, Mt. Tremper NY 12457. (914) 688-2228.

  12-19  KALACHAKRA RETREAT.
  Open only to those who have taken the Kalachakra initiation. Namgyal 
  Monastery, PO Box 127, Ithaca NY 14851. (607) 273-0739.

  12-21  INSIGHT MEDITATION & INQUIRY - Christopher Titmuss, Sharda Rogell, 
  & Jose Reissig. Insight Meditation Society, Pleasant St, Barre MA 01005. 
  (508) 355-4378.

  12-21  EXPLORING THE WAY OF DEVOTION - Kittisaro & Mary Weinberg.
  Gaia House, Woodland Rd, Denbury, Nr. Newton Abbot, Devon TQ12 6DY, 
  England. Tel: Ipplepen (0803) 813188.

  12-21  VIPASSANA RETREAT - Ruth Denison & A. Zinser.
  Germany. Contact: Waldhaus am Laachersee, D-56643 Nickenich, Germany.

  17-21  ZEN ARTS INTENSIVE - Clark Strand, Marcia Shibata, Joan Yushin.
  Zen Mountain Monastery, Box 197MR, Mt. Tremper NY 12457. (914) 688-2228.

  18-21  HIGH SCHOOL & COLLEGE STUDENTS' RETREAT - Bhante Gunaratana or 
  Bhante Rahula. Bhavana Society, Rt 1 Box 218-3, High View WV 26808. 
  Contact: Dr. Arvoranee Pinit, (410) 744-9295.

  19-20  MINDFULNESS RETREAT - Khan Le Van.
  Near Sydney Australia. Contact: Lotus Bud Sangha, 83 Queen St, Ashfield 
  NSW 2131. Tel: (02) 798-4056.

  19-21  WISDOM MEETING WISDOM: A ZEN MEDITATION RETREAT FOR THOSE 55 AND 
  OLDER - Pat Leonetti & Lee de Barros. Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, 1601 
  Shoreline Hwy, Sausalito CA 94965. (415) 383-3134. Fax: (415) 383-3128.

  19-28  VIPASSANA RETREAT - Michele McDonald-Smith & Steven Smith.
  Cloud Mountain Retreat Center, 311 W. McGraw, Seattle WA 98119. (206)
  286-9060.

  19-28  ALASKA WILDERNESS RETREAT: VIPASSANA & DEEP ECOLOGY - Christopher 
  Reed & Michele Benzamin-Masuda. Contact: Ordinary Dharma, 247 Horizon Av, 
  Venice CA 90291. (310) 396-5054. In Alaska, call: (907) 463-5019 or 789- 
  0140.

  20  FAMILY DAY OF MINDFULNESS - Wendy Johnson.
  Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, 1601 Shoreline Hwy, Sausalito CA 94965. (415) 
  383-3134.

  20  FOUR FOUNDATIONS OF MINDFULNESS #1 - Gil Fronsdal.
  Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Box 909, Woodacre CA 94973. (415) 488-0164.

  20-21  YONG MAENG JONG JIN RETREAT.
  Cambridge Zen Center, 199 Auburn St, Cambridge MA 02139. (617) 576-3229.

  22-27  MEDITATION RETREAT FOR WOMEN - Sylvia Wetzel.
  Hartlisberg, BE, Switzerland. Contact: Dhamma Gruppe, Postfach 5909, CH- 
  3001 Bern.

  22-28  SESSHIN - John Daido Loori.
  Zen Mountain Monastery, Box 197MR, Mt. Tremper NY 12457. (914) 688-2228.

  23-25  TRANSFORMING ANGER: NIGHTLY DHARMA TALKS - Ven. George Churinoff.
  Land of Medicine Buddha, 5800 Prescott Rd, Soquel CA 95073. (408) 462-  
  8383.

  24-25  DO I ACCEPT MYSELF? - Christopher Titmuss & Sharda Rogell.
  Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Box 909, Woodacre CA 94973. (415) 488-0164.

  26-28  VIPASSANA DAYLONG - Gil Fronsdal.
  Los Gatos CA. Contact: Leelane Hines, (415) 968-2887.

  26-28  YAMANTAKA AND PALDEN LHAMO INITIATIONS - Geshe Lobsang Tsephel.
  Vajrapani Institute, PO Box I, Boulder Creek CA 95006. (408) 338-6654.

  26-31  YOGA & INSIGHT MEDITATION - Dan Lupton & Yanai Postelnik.
  Gaia House, Woodland Rd, Denbury, Nr. Newton Abbot, Devon TQ12 6DY,    
  England. Tel: Ipplepen (0803) 813188.

  26-9/2  INSIGHT MEDITATION & INQUIRY - Christopher Titmuss & Sharda 
  Rogell. Santa Rosa CA. Contact: Janet Hewins, 173C Parnassus, San 
  Francisco CA 94122. (415) 759-6461.

  27  MEN'S RETREAT DAY - Jack Kornfield, Robert Hall & Wes Nisker.
  Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Box 909, Woodacre CA 94973. (415) 488-0164.

  27  LIVING WITH DYING: A DAY OF CARING FOR THE CAREGIVERS - Furyu Nancy 
  Schroeder & Grace Damman. Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, 1601 Shoreline Hwy, 
  Sausalito CA 94965. (415) 383-3134. Fax: (415) 383-3128.


  =======================================================================
                                  SEPTEMBER
  =======================================================================


  28-10/5   MAHAMUDRA RETREAT - Ven. Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso.
  Rigpe Dorje Center, PO Box 690995, San Antonio TX 78269. (212) 698-0529.

  2-5  LABOR DAY INSIGHT WEEKEND - Christopher Titmuss & Sharda Rogell.
  Santa Rosa CA. Contact: Janet Hewins, 173C Parnassus, San Francisco CA  
  94122. (415) 759-6461.

  2-5  LABOR DAY WEEKEND VIPASSANA RETREAT - Rodney Smith.
  Cloud Mountain Retreat Center, 311 W. McGraw, Seattle WA 98119. (206)  
  286-9060.

  2-5  MINDFULNESS RETREAT - Anh Huong Nguyen.
  Claymont Court, WV. Contact: Anh Huong, (703) 938-9606.

  2-5  LABOR DAY SESSHIN - Hawaii Diamond Sangha.
  Palolo Zen Center, 2747 Waiomao Road, Honolulu HI 96816. (808) 735-1347.

  2-5  LABOR DAY SESSHIN - Sanbo Kyodan tradition.
  Maria Kannon Zen Center, 7422 Villanova St., Dallas TX 95225. (214) 360- 
  0595. Contact: Dawne Schomer, (214) 414-8637.

  2-5, 2-11  VIPASSANA RETREAT - Ruth Denison.
  Insight Meditation Society, Pleasant St, Barre MA 01005. (508) 355-4378.

  2-8  LAM.RIM RETREAT - Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche and Robina Courtin.
  Vajrapani Institute, PO Box I, Boulder Creek CA 95006. (408) 338-6654.

  9-11  VIPASSANA RETREAT - Kamala Masters & Steven Smith.
  HI. Contact: Yuklin Aluli, 415C Uluniu St, Kailua HI 96734. FAX: (808)  
  262-5610.

  9-11  MINDFULNESS RETREAT - Jack Lawlor.
  Spring Green WI. Contact: Lakeside Buddha Sangha, PO Box 7067, Evanston IL  
  60201. (708) 475-0080.

  9-11  KALACHAKRA INITIATION - Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche.
  Vajrapani Institute, PO Box I, Boulder Creek CA 95006. (408) 338-6654.

  9-18  VIPASSANA RETREAT - Ajahn Sumedho.
  Amaravati Buddhist Centre, Great Gaddesden, Hemel Hempstead, Herfordshire 
  HP1 3BZ, England. Tel: Intl. code + 44 44284-3239; in UK: 044284-3239.

  10  WRESTLING WITH THE ANGEL: WHERE MIND AND SPIRIT MEET - Jack Kornfield, 
  Joanna Macy, Ram Dass, Jennifer Welwood, John Welwood, Jai Uttal. A 
  special benefit. Contact: The Living/Dying Project, 20 Sunnyside Avenue, 
  Suite A243, Mill Valley CA 94941. (415) 332-2033.

  11   FOUR FOUNDATIONS OF MINDFULNESS #2 - Gil Fronsdal.
  Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Box 909, Woodacre CA 94973. (415) 488-0164.

  11-14  VIPASSANA RETREAT - Christopher Reed & Michele Benzamin-Masuda.
  Ordinary Dharma, 247 Horizon Av, Venice CA 90291. (310) 396-5054.

  12  NUMATA LECTURE: The Development of American Buddhism: Two Overviews - 
  Professor Charles Prebish. Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1900 Addison 
  Street, Berkeley CA 94704. (510) 849-2383. Fax: (510) 849-2158. Free. 

  15-18  VIPASSANA RETREAT - Shinzen Young & Shirley Fenton.
  Encino CA. Contact: Vipassana Support Insitute, 4070 Albright Av, Los  
  Angeles CA 90066. (310) 915-1943.

  16-18  THE JATAKA TALES - Rafe Martin.
  Zen Mountain Monastery, Box 197MR, Mt. Tremper NY 12457. (914) 688-2228.

  16-19  VIPASSANA RESIDENTIAL RETREAT - Mary Orr.
  Contact: Joy Fox, 147 East Spring, Fayetteville AK 72701. (501) 444-  
  6005.

  16-26  WILDERNESS FAST: PRACTICING ECOPSYCHOLOGY - Joan Halifax.
  Upaya, 1404 Cerro Gordo Rd, Santa Fe NM 87501. (505) 986-8518. Fax: (505)  
  986-8528.

  17  VIPASSANA DAYLONG - James Baraz.
  Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Box 909, Woodacre CA 94973. (415) 488-0164.

  19  NUMATA LECTURE - Rick Fields. Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1900 
  Addison Street, Berkeley CA 94704. (510) 849-2383. Fax: (510) 849-2158. 

  19-25  SESSHIN - John Daido Loori.
  Zen Mountain Monastery, Box 197MR, Mt. Tremper NY 12457. (914) 688-2228.

  21-11/3  PARTIAL #1 RETREAT - Joseph Goldstein, Carol Wilson, Steven 
  Smith, Michele McDonald-Smith, Steven Armstrong. Prerquisite is one 9-day 
  retreat with an IMS teacher or special permission. Insight Meditation 
  Society, Pleasant St, Barre MA 01005. (508) 355-4378.

  21-12/17  THREE MONTH RETREAT - Joseph Goldstein, Carol Wilson, Steven 
  Smith, Michele McDonald-Smith, Steven Armstrong. Prerquisite is one 9-day 
  retreat with an IMS teacher or special permission. Insight Meditation 
  Society, Pleasant St, Barre MA 01005. (508) 355-4378.

  23-25  WEEKEND RETREAT FOR LESBIANS & GAY MEN - Arinna Weisman & Eric  
  Kolvig. Dhamma Dena, HC-1, Box 250, Joshua Tree CA 92252. (619) 362-  
  4815.

  23-10/2  NINE-DAY VIPASSANA RETREAT - Rosemary & Steve Weissman.
  Cloud Mountain Retreat Center, 311 W. McGraw, Seattle WA 98119. (206)  
  286-9060.

  24  WOMEN'S VIPASSANA DAY - Julie Wester.
  Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Box 909, Woodacre CA 94973. (415) 488-0164.

  25  DAY OF FORGIVENESS PRACTICE - Anna Douglas.
  Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Box 909, Woodacre CA 94973. (415) 488-0164.

  25-28  VIPASSANA RETREAT - Mary Orr.
  Watsonville CA. Contact: Mt. Madonna Center, (408) 847-0406.

  26  NUMATA LECTURE: Visible and Invisible: Buddhism in America -    
  Professor Jan Nattier. Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1900 Addison Street, 
  Berkeley CA 94704. (510) 849-2383. Fax: (510) 849-2158. Free.

  30-10/2  VIPASSANA RETREAT - Gil Fronsdal.
  Grand Forks ND. Contact: Sr. Brigid, Koinonia Spirituality Center, 2801 
  Olson Dr, Grand Forks ND 58201. (701) 772-4607.


                                  * * * * *

  This calendar is updated as new material comes in. The latest version is   
  online at Dharma Electronic Files Archive (DEFA) and may be accessed via  
  anonymous ftp to ftp.netcom.com (directory: pub/dharma/Buddhism/Resources)  
  or via WWW (//ftp.netcom.com/pub/dharma/defa-home.html). It is posted at  
  the beginning of the month in the Dharmanet conference SANGHA and the  
  Internet mailing list BUDDHIST. It also is published in the e-journal  
  //Gassho// (subscribe to: dharma@netcom.com).

  Please report additions, changes and deletions to DharmaNet International,  
  P.O. Box 4951, Berkeley CA 94704-4951. E-mail: dharma@netcom.com


  =======================================================================
  {13} REVIEWS:
  =======================================================================

  [No reviews submitted this issue. Individuals interested in reviewing   
  books, please contact Barry Kapke <dharma@netcom.com>.]


                               Books Received:

  //The Edicts of King Asoka: An English Rendering//. Ven. S. Dhammika. 40 
  pages; paperback. ISBN 955-24-0104-6. Wheel Publication no. 386/387.  
  Buddhist Publication Society, PO Box 61, 54 Sangharaja Mawatha, Kandy SRI 
  LANKA. 1993.

  //Reading the Mind: Advice for Meditators//. Tan Acharn Kor Khao-suan- 
  luang. 48 pages; paperback. ISBN 955-24-0105-4. Wheel Publication no. 
  388/389. Buddhist Publication Society, PO Box 61, 54 Sangharaja Mawatha, 
  Kandy SRI LANKA. 1993.

  //The Lion's Roar: Two Discourses of the Buddha//. Edited by Bhikkhu 
  Bodhi; translated from the Pali by Bhikkhu Nanamoli. 48 pages; paperback. 
  ISBN 955-24-0115-1. Wheel Publication no. 390/391. Buddhist Publication 
  Society, PO Box 61, 54 Sangharaja Mawatha, Kandy SRI LANKA. 1993.

  //The Sutra on Upasaka Precepts//. Translated from the Chinese of 
  Dharmaraksha (Taisho, Vol. 24 No. 1488) by Bhiksuni Shih Heng-ching. BDK 
  English Tripitaka 45-II. 240 pages; hardback. ISBN 0-9625618-5-1. Numata 
  Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2620 Warring Street, 
  Berkeley CA 9404. 1994.

  //Dharma Family Treasures: Sharing Mindfulness With Children//. Edited and 
  illustrated by Sandy Eastoak. 304 pages; paperback. ISBN 1-55643-172-4. 
  North Atlantic Books, PO Box 12327, Berkeley CA 94701-9998. 1994.

  //Thank You and OK!: An American Zen Failure in Japan//. David Chadwick. 
  480 pages; paperback. ISBN 0-14-019457-6. Penguin/Arkana, 375 Hudson 
  Street, NY, NY 10014. 1994.

  //Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras//. Diana
  L. Eck. 276 pages; paperback. ISBN 0-8070-7303-2. Beacon Press, 25 Beacon
  Street, Boston MA 02108. 1994.


  =======================================================================
  {14} RESOURCES:
  =======================================================================

  The following is a sampling of "electronic books" that are published by
  DharmaNet International and are available for free distribution. These are 
  available via anonymous ftp from Dharma Electronic Files Archive (DEFA), 
  the online Buddhist library maintained by DI, or from participating 
  DharmaNet BBS sites (see the list at the end of this issue). DEFA may be 
  accessed at:

     ftp.netcom.com:pub/dharma
     sunsite.unc.edu:pub/academic/religious_studies/Buddhism/DEFA
     ftp.nectec.or.th:pub/mirrors/dharma
     etext.archive.umich.edu:/Religious.Texts/DharmaNet


                                Books by Women
                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  All of Us: 12 Talks by Sister Khema (ALLOFUS.ZIP)
  Meditating on No-self, by Sister Khema (BODHI095.ZIP)
  Emotion: Working with Anger, by Michele McDonald (MCDONALD.ZIP)
  Condensed Breath Meditation, by K. Khao Suan-luang (CONDENSE.ZIP)
  Here and Now, by Sister Khema (Forthcoming)
  Little Dust in Our Eyes, by Sister Khema (Forthcoming)
  Pride & Conceit, by Elizabeth Ashby and B. Fawcett (BODHI014.ZIP)
  One Foot in the World: Buddhist Approaches to Present-day Problems,
     by Lily de Silva (WHEEL337.ZIP)
  Radical Therapy, by Lily de Silva (Forthcoming)
  Reading the Mind, by K. Khao Suan-luang (Forthcoming)
  Teisho: Beginning Anew, by Sister Annabel Laity (LAITY_92.ZIP)
  Teisho: The Pools, by Charlotte Joko Beck (BECKPOOL.ZIP)
  The Buddha's Way & Abortion, by Yvonne Rand (JIZO.ZIP)

                        Books About Women in Buddhism
                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Inspiration from Enlightened Nuns, by Susan Elbaum Jootla (WHEEL349.ZIP)
  Buddhist Women at the Time of the Buddha, by Hellmuth Hecker
     (WHEEL292.ZIP)
  The Position of Women in Buddhism, by Dr. (Mrs.) LS Dewaraja
     (WHEEL280.ZIP)



  The DharmaNet File Distribution Network and the Dharma Electronic File   
  Archive (DEFA) will not distribute files without permission to do so from  
  the author and/or publisher. (See the Electronic Distribution Agreement  
  accompanying each file.) If you are the author/publisher of Buddhist texts  
  that you would like to see added to these online libraries, please contact  
  Barry Kapke at DharmaNet International, PO Box 4951, Berkeley CA 94704 or 
  by e-mail at dharma@netcom.com   MAY THESE RESOURCES BENEFIT ALL BEINGS!


  =======================================================================
  {15} SANGHA:
  =======================================================================


                 -------------------------------------------
                            SF Bay Area Directory
                                      of
                 Buddhist Monasteries, Lay Practice Centers,
                              and Organizations
                 -------------------------------------------


                                  Pure Land
                                  ~~~~~~~~~

  Berkeley Buddhist Temple
  2121 Channing Way, Berkeley CA 94704
  Voice: 510-841-1356

  Buddhist Church of Oakland
  825 Jackson, Oakland CA
  Voice: 510-832-5988

  Buddhist Church of San Francisco
  1881 Pine St, San Francisco CA 94109
  Voice: 415-776-3158

  Buddhist Churches of America (Jodo Shinshu)
  1710 Octavia, San Francisco CA
  Voice: 415-776-5600  FAX: 415-771-6293

  Buddhist Temple of Alameda
  2325 Pacific Av, Alameda CA
  Voice: 510-522-5243

  Institute of Buddhist Studies
  1900 Addison Street, Berkeley CA 94704
  Voice: 510-849-2383  FAX: 510-849-2158


                                  Theravada
                                  ~~~~~~~~~

  Buddha Sasana Foundation
  45 Oak Road, Larkspur CA 94939
  Voice: 510-381-6905

  California Buddhist Vihara Society
  4797 Myrtle Drive, Concord CA 94521
  Voice: 510-845-4843

  California Vipassana Center
  PO Box 510, Occidental CA 95465
  Voice: 707-874-3031

  Dhammachakka Meditation Center
  Box 206, 2124 Kittredge Street, Berkeley CA 94702
  Voice: 510-531-1691

  International Meditation Center-USA
  Contact: Linda H. Kemp-Combes
  1331 33rd Avenue, San Francisco CA 94122

  Nama-Rupa
  10 Arbor Street, San Francisco CA 94131
  Voice: 415-334-4921

  Spirit Rock Meditation Center
  P.O. Box 909, Woodacre CA 94973
  Voice: 415-488-0164  FAX: 415-488-0170

  Taungpulu Kaba-Aye Monastery
  18335 Big Basin Way, Boulder Creek CA 95006
  Voice: 408-338-4050

  Theravada Buddhist Society of America
  68 Woodrow Street, Daly City CA 94014
  Voice: 415-994-8272

  Wat Buddhanusorn
  36054 Niles Blvd., Fremont CA 94536-1563
  Voice: 510-790-2294 or 510-790-2296

  Wat Nagara Dhamma (Wat Nakorntham)
  3225 Lincoln Way, San Francisco CA 94122
  Voice: 415-665-7566

  Wat Mongkolratanaram
  1911 Russell Street, Berkeley CA 94703
  Voice: 510-849-3419 or 510-540-9734


                          Tibetan/Vajrayana/Dzogchen
                          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Ati Ling
  PO Box 90, Oakville CA 94562
  Voice: 707-255-7172

  Dharmadhatu - San Francisco
  1630 Taraval, San Francisco CA 94116
  Voice: 415-731-4426

  Dharmadhatu - Berkeley
  2288 Fulton, Berkeley CA 94704
  Voice: 510-841-3242

  Dharmadhatu - Palo Alto
  201 N. Covington Road, #2, Los Altos CA 94022
  Voice: 415-949-3082

  Dudjom International Foundation
  PO Box 40155, Berkeley CA 94704-0155
  Voice: 510-849-9928

  Kagyu Droden Kunchab
  1892 Fell Street, San Francisco CA 94117
  Voice: 415-752-5454

  Kamtsang Choling, USA
  Voice: 415-661-6467

  Karma Jigme Ling
  33 Marne Street, San Francisco CA 94127
  Voice: 415-661-6467

  Land of Medicine Buddha
  5800 Prescott Road, Soquel CA 95073
  Voice: 408-462-8383  FAX: 408-462-8380

  Maitreya Institute
  3315 Sacramento Street, Suite 622, San Francisco CA 94118
  Voice: 415-668-5920

  Nyingma Institute
  1815 Highland Place, Berkeley CA 94709
  Voice: 510-843-6812

EOF


From tyagi@HouseofKaos.Abyss.com  Fri Nov 11 04:38:37 1994
From: tyagi mordred nagasiva <tyagi@HouseofKaos.Abyss.com>
Subject: buddhism.sem.txt
To: ceci@lysator.liu.se (Ceci Henningsson)
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 1994 19:38:01 -0800 (PST)
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL0]
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 13365     

To: alt.zen
From: gary.ray@tigerteam.org (Gary Ray)
Subject: Prerequisites to Spiritual Practice
Date: 49941108

Prerequisites to Spiritual Practice

By: Stephen Echard-Musgrave Roshi
FROM: Magical Blend, Jan-Apr 1990

     Every teacher has problem students.  There is not a Zen
center, ashram, church or temple that does not have a few members
who have an unusually hard time adapting to their practice and to
fellow students.  The problem seems to be that most of these people
are not properly prepared to begin spiritual discipline.  They
expect the discipline to provide them with on-the-job training in
emotional maturity.

     Unfortunately, no matter how compassionate the teacher may be,
he or she cannot devote the extraordinary amount of time and energy
needed to parent a student to maturity.  And, if it is a problem
for the teacher to find the right student, it is equally difficult
for the student to find the right teacher and tradition.  There is
much in this society that leads one away from the path of wisdom
and into inappropriate ways of living,and some of these diversions
can be mistaken for the path itself.  Confronted with all this, it
is easy to become confused.  Sometimes the journey appears to be an
endless labyrinth composed of countless potential paths.

     While I cannot lay out a simple road map for the spiritual
search, there are certain guidelines and tools which might help
someone in beginning a spiritual journey.  First, spiritual seekers
must develop a working knowledge of their own personality.  They
must understand their own spiritual history and how it affects
their actions both consciously and unconsciously.  to do this, one
has to be honest, capable of self-analysis, and willing to take the
perilous journey of psychic discovery.

     Because the power of the unconscious is formidable, a guide is
highly recommended, but should one feel confident enough to
undertake this journey without professional support, a trusted
friend may be chosen as a guide.  It is important, however, that
this friend should not have a natural agenda towards the student,
such as a parent, lover or spouse does.  Also helpful are such
techniques as dream analysis, journal therapy, or some other form
of self-analysis because spiritual exercises, like physical
exercises, is best preceded by a short period of preparation or
warm-up to achieve maximum benefits.  In circumstances where the
spiritual practice to be engaged in is particularly rigorous, such
as ritual magic, Zen or Tibetan Buddhism, it is better to use a
professional who is well-versed in the discipline of psychological
analysis.

     In undergoing the process of self-analysis, it is important
that we try to remove ourselves from excessive attachment to
emotion and emotive states.  The goal of the process is not to get
ourselves in touch with feelings, but to free ourselves from those
feelings.

     Personal feelings are different from emotions.  Emotions are
natural responses to primary situations.  Personal feelings are
secondary responses attached to both conceptual and emotional
frameworks that interfere with our self-understanding, darkening
the path of self-understanding instead of illuminating it.  Whereas
emotion involves an organic, instantaneous, natural response to
stimuli, personal feeling is a complex of emotional memory that
does not allow for intermediate response to the moment without
referencing its own complete matrix.  Freeing oneself of personal
feelings allows a simpler, more direct emotional relationship to
life.  When emotion is no longer interrupted in the present by
patterns of the past, we are free to experience our life in an
organic way instead of through the bondage of pathological
conditioning.  This does not mean that we cripple our memory; we
are still capable of recapturing past emotions.  It is simply that
these past emotions are no longer able to disrupt our life through
creating negative patterns of conditioning.

     The only way one can accomplish this liberation is through the
systematic unearthing of these emotive patterns.  This must be done
in a controlled environment that helps to separate emotions from
the conceptual framework in which they reside.  And since what we
are doing is defusing our memory; we should take the same care as
if we were on a bomb squad, because if we try this without the
proper preparation and diligence it will have the same explosive
result.

     Only after one has gained a reasonable level of maturity is it
time to take up the challenge of the deeper spiritual paths.  This
does not mean we cannot begin the preliminary spiritual practices
involving correct moral action, devotion, mindfulness, etc.  It is
simply that we proceed cautiously into those disciplines whose
practice involves direct confrontation with our view of self when
that self is still fragile for us.

     How can we know if we have reached a sufficient level of ego
development to attempt a path of self-transcendence?  There are
certain key questions that one can ask oneself, the answers to
which are indicative of maturity level.  The questions of
importance are:

     1.   Are you easily offended?  Do situations or people that
          you disagree with make you feel threatened or angry?

     2.   Are you easily bored?  Do you have trouble simply being
          without the presence of an underlying level of
          discontent?

     3.   Do you lack discipline?  Do you find it impossible to set
          realistic goals and achieve them?
     4.   Do you lack direction?  Do you have problems figuring out
          what it is that you should be doing in your life?

     5.   Do you love potential and disregard actuality?  Do you
          live in a world of daydreams and fantasy, and ponder deep
          metaphysical subjects at the expense of everyday "taking
          care of business?"

     6.   Are you unable to accept the dark side of life?  Do
          death, disease and violence completely "throw you for a
          loop?"  Do you assiduously avoid any contact with them?

     If you find that you have problems in several of these areas
severe enough to interfere with the quality of your life, then you
should reconsider whether you are ready to undergo a serious
spiritual discipline.  Perhaps it would be wiser to start with a
psychological discipline such as Jungian analysis or journal
therapy, to get the requisite support necessary to master the small
self while pursuing the larger self in spiritual practice.

     The next step in development is choosing the path that one
will follow.  The knowledge gained in self-introspection and/or
therapy should be used as a guide in choosing the spiritual
discipline.  Of course, one should not want to enter a discipline
with which one did not have a heartfelt rapport, but one should be
certain that this attraction is not just an aesthetic preference,
but a decision grounded in understanding.  One should not, for
instance, enter a tradition that requires strict and strenuous
self-discipline from the onset if one's self-analysis has shown a
lack of discipline.  It is not the role of spiritual training to
cure character flaws; that is the role of counseling.  If a person
should attempt this discipline before they are ready, they would
surely fail.  In doing so, they would cause a good deal of
disruption in their spiritual community as well.  It would be
better to find a spiritual tradition which is demanding but allows
a steady progression of the individual through the discipline.

     While it is often necessary to place questions on hold while
taking instruction, we still must be able to use common sense.  In
my experience, any discipline which requires you to violate common
sense consistently is a discipline to avoid.  While it is true that
some traditions do use non-rational techniques such as Zen Koans in
training, these traditions do not advocate abandoning the use of
reason in daily life.

     One should also determine which aspects of spiritual practice
are essential to spiritual growth and which are peripheral.  Those
aspects of practice which are of peripheral importance should be
treated as such.  Many forms and manners of spiritual traditions
are merely remnants of cultural tradition instead of essential
elements of spiritual practice.

     It is not unusual for people to value the trappings of a
spiritual tradition more than its content.  In this bland and
amorphic culture we live in, the experience of ancient forms of
worship, which are often rich in ritual, and full of brocade,
incense, and antiquity, can be quite intoxicating.  While there is
nothing wrong with drinking in the sensuality of life, we do not
want to get so drunk that we lose perspective.  Another thing to
consider is that it is much easier to put on a colored robe and
shave your head than it is to change what is inside you.  Self-
transformation is not always self-evident, and it carries no
requisite external reward sufficient to hold the attention of
weaker students.

     I always try to remind my students that they should become
practitioners, not "true believers."  True Believers tend to get
lost in doctrine at the expense of practice.  If one spends all day
reading the maps, one will not have time to take the trip.  And if
one gets caught up in the infinite realms of potential, one can
spend an extraordinary amount of time dealing with fantasy and
arcane esoteric doctrines that would take all three Buddhas and a
rabbi a millennia to sort out.

     If I might offer some further advice for students planning to
engage in spiritual discipline, it would be in the choice of a
teacher.  It is better to look for a teacher who is extraordinary
not in personality, but in conduct.  Look for a person who is
centered!  A gentle person, humble, open and compassionate with
firm self-discipline. This person also should not have an extensive
attachment to money.  Spiritual instruction should never be
expensive.  It is also true that a spiritual tradition that has a
temple or church needs the support of its members.  Therefore, you
should invest your finances with the same intelligence as you
invest your time and energy in your practice.  To put it simply,
don't be cheap, and don't be stupid, either.

     The qualities of enlightenment are not the magical powers or
psychic sideshow of the fakir.  The magical is a window between the
numinous realm and our practice.  A good definition of magic is the
penetration of the phenomenal realm by the numinous that reveals
the significance of life.  Such experiences have great potential
for giving personal spiritual illumination, but if one attaches
oneself to *external magic* (the phantasmagoria itself) one will
become lost in it.  Spiritual practitioners, after all, will be
required to live their own lives in this world, and in this time
and place.  The value of practice is in the here an now, no in
ancient Egypt, Tibet, China or Atlantis.  Without question, the
person we look to for guidance in the spiritual realm should be
able to live in this same modern world with us, in freedom and
power, without rejecting any of it.

     Among the teachings of Tibet's great sage Milarepa, there is
a listing of ten signs of the Superior Person.  I do not think one
can find a better guide for choosing a spiritual preceptor than
these:

     1.   To have little pride and envy is the sign of the superior
          person.

     2.   To have few desires and satisfaction with simple things
          is the sign of the superior person.
     3.   To be lacking in hypocrisy and deceit is the sign of the
          superior person.
     4.   To regulate one's conduct in accordance with the law of
          cause and effect as carefully as one would guard the
          pupils of one's eyes is the sign of the superior person.
     5.   To be faithful in one's engagement and obligations is the
          sign of the superior person.
     6.   To be able to keep alive friendships while regarding all
          beings with impartiality is the sign of the superior
          person.
     7.   To look with pity and without anger upon those who live
          evilly is the sign of the superior person.
     8.   To allow others the victory, taking on the defeat, is the
          sign of the superior person.
     9.   To differ from the multitudes in every thought and deed
          is the sign of the superior person.
     10.  To observe faithfully and without pride one's spiritual
          vows is the sign of the superior person.

     If you can find a teacher with these qualities, then you will
have certainly found a rare gem.  Polish it brightly be completing
your Work.  Then the coal of your own ego will transform it to the
diamond of truth, and you and your teacher will become one.  Like
Zen Master Zenrin Kokushu you will be able to say:

Sitting Quietly
Doing Nothing
Spring Comes
and the grass grows by itself

-----
Stephen Echard-Musgrave Roshi is a Zen master in the Soto tradition
of Japan, and has also received teaching sanction from the Korean,
Vietnamese, and Chinese traditions of Zen Buddhism.  Echard Roshi
teaches at the Zen Institute of San Diego (619) 582-9888.
--------

Gary Ray
---
 * QMPro 1.50 42-0864 * Why has the Western Barbarian no beard?  MUMONKAN4

EOF


From tyagi@HouseofKaos.Abyss.com  Fri Nov 11 04:47:28 1994
From: tyagi mordred nagasiva <tyagi@HouseofKaos.Abyss.com>
Subject: tantrwmn.nc.txt
To: ceci@lysator.liu.se (Ceci Henningsson)
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 1994 19:46:41 -0800 (PST)
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL0]
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 75592     

To: Internet
From: Dharma Publications 'Gassho' (dharma@netcom.com)
Subject: Tantra/Women (Ngakpa Chogyam Rinpoche)



                          THE MOTHER ESSENCE LINEAGE
                          by Ngakpa Chogyam Rinpoche

                              - Yeshe Tsogyel -

  The greatest inspiration and role model for women, in terms of Tibetan 
  Buddhism, is the enlightened yogini Yeshe Tsogyel (Ye-shes mTsho-rGyal).  
  Yeshe means 'primordial wisdom', and Tsogyel means 'queen of the ocean- 
  like quality of Mind'.  She is the female Buddha of the Nyingma School. As 
  an historical figure she is mother of all Nyingma Lineages. Yeshe Tsogyel, 
  together with her incarnation and emanations are an inspiration to women 
  as role models, and to men as teachers.

  According to the teachings of the Mother Essence Lineage, there are three 
  styles of teacher-student relationship; according to mDo (Sutra), rGyud 
  (Tantra), and rDzogs-chen (Mahasandhi). According to Sutra one needs a 
  teacher of the same gender. According to Tantra one needs a teacher of the 
  other, or inverse gender. According to Dzogchen the gender of the teacher 
  is irrelevant. From the perspective of Tantra, therefore, female teachers 
  are role models for women and teachers for men -- whereas male teachers 
  are teachers for women and role models for men.  Within the Mother Essence 
  Lineage, the practice of everyday life is approached from the View of 
  Tantra, and formal practice is approached from the View of Dzogchen. This 
  account of the Mother Essence Lineage is written in a style that 
  emphasizes View rather than practice; and so it emphasizes the perspective 
  of Tantra.  There is tremendous emphasis on what is called living the View 
  in the Mother Essence Lineage, and this is a style of practice that is 
  particularly suited to women.

  Yeshe Tsogyel was the sang-yum or spiritual consort of Padmasambhava.
  Padmasambhava is known in the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism as the
  second Buddha. Padmasambhava was the founder of Buddhism in Tibet, and the
  Nyingma (Ancient) School represents the first spread of Buddhism in Tibet 
  when it surged with the spiritual dynamism provoked by Padmasambhava and 
  Yeshe Tsogyel. Padmasambhava's birth and activity were predicted by Buddha 
  Shakyamuni, who said that a being of tremendous power and compassion would 
  appear after his death, who had the capacity to transmit the teaching and 
  practices of Tantra. The two primary aspects of the practice of Tantra 
  consist of wisdom and active-compassion, and these are regarded as being 
  female and male qualities respectively. Wisdom and active-compassion are 
  fundamentally the enlightened human qualities of Emptiness and Form -- the 
  ornaments of non-duality. (This is a teaching that is also fundamental to 
  the Sutric teaching. It is found in the Heart Sutra, in which it is stated 
  that Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form.) With regard to Tantra, 
  Padmasambhava is Form or active-compassion, and Yeshe Tsogyel is Emptiness 
  or wisdom. From this perspective, the whole of reality is seen as the 
  dance of Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyel. Within the Ngakphang Sangha of 
  the Nyingma School, every Lama and her or his spiritual consort are 
  Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyel as far as their disciples are concerned.

  In the Mother Essence Lineage, Yeshe Togyel and her incarnations and 
  emanations are of primary importance, because she is the Mother of Vision, 
  and therefore the Mother of non-dual experience. Tantra contains methods 
  that are particularly valuable for women, because of their emphasis on the 
  development of Vision. It is said, within the Tantric teachings, that 
  women have greater capacity for realization than men because of their 
  greater natural resonance with the sphere of Visionary practice. The most 
  inspirational example in the Tantric tradition of the profound capacity of 
  women is Yeshe Tsogyel. She was the first Tibetan woman to achieve 
  Buddhahood and has had numerous incarnations and emanations in Tibet and 
  the other Himalayan countries. The Visionary origin of the Mother Essence 
  Lineage is Yeshe Tsogyel, and her influence can be traced forward to the 
  twentieth century through her incarnations. The incarnations of Yeshe 
  Tsogyel include: Machig Lapdron; Jomo Menmo; Jomo Chhi-'med Pema; and, 
  Jetsunma Khandro Yeshe Rema -- the women who gave birth to the pure-vision 
  revelations that are called the Aro gTer of the Mother Essence Lineage.

  Those interested to learn more about the life of Yeshe Tsogyel are 
  referred to Keith Dowman's excellent book 'Sky Dancer', which chronicles 
  her birth, life and realization -- along with a marvellous commentary on 
  the nature of the three inner Tantras. Because this text is easily 
  available, there is no need to discuss the life of Yeshe Tsogyel in this 
  account of the Mother Essence Lineage.

  Machig Lapdron (Ma-gChig Lap-sGron) 'Unique Mother Torch of Practice' was 
  the incarnation of Yeshe Tsogyel. Machig Lapdron was the great Tibetan 
  yogini who was the originator of the practice of Chod -- the Visionary 
  practice of cutting attachment to one's corporeal form (in terms of the 
  dualistic proclivity to relate to ones corporeal form as a reference-point 
  that proves one's existence). Machig Lapdron too, is quite well chronicled 
  in various texts that are currently available. Jomo Menmo is regarded 
  generally as an emanation of Yeshe Tsogyel; but specifically, in the 
  Mother Essence Lineage, as the incarnation of Machig Lapdron. Jomo Menmo, 
  however, is not very well known to Western audiences, and so I will give a 
  short account of her life that was given to me orally by Jetsunma Khandro 
  Ten'dzin Drolkar, a great hidden yogini of the Nyingma School whom I have 
  had the good fortune to know as a friend and mentor since 1975.

                                - Jomo Menmo -

  Jomo Menmo Pema Tsokyi (Jom-mo sMan-mo Padma mTsho-sKyid) was born in the 
  Earth Male monkey year (1248 CE) and passed into the sky-dimension in 1283 
  CE. She was born in the magical vicinity of the cave in which both 
  Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyel once stayed. The place was called 
  Zarmolung which was located in an area of Tibet called E-yul, which means 
  'primordial-awareness country'. Her parents named her Pema Tsokyi which 
  means 'Lotus of the Ocean'. Her childhood was relatively uneventful and 
  her parents were fairly ordinary people. She spent her childhood helping 
  with the general work of living in a family and also helped with herding 
  the yaks and dris.  At the onset of puberty (in the Spring of 1261), 
  whilst she was grazing the yaks and dris in the high pasture lands, she 
  fell asleep in a meadow. The alpine meadow was overlooked by the Dewachen- 
  puk -- the cave of great ecstasy, in which Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyel 
  had demonstrated attainment. The place was known as Kyungchen-ling -- the 
  place of the great Garuda. The Garuda is the 'Space-eagle', which 
  demonstrates, in its being:  the unborn, unceasing, ever present state of 
  enlightenment that is the fundamental ground of the Dzogchen teachings and 
  practices. Whilst asleep, she had a dream of clarity in which she 
  experienced a profound Vision. A sonorous voice awoke her from the 
  unconscious dream state into a state of pure and total presence. She found 
  herself standing in front of the entrance to a secret cave in the mountain 
  side. She entered the cave immediately and with a sense of keen 
  enthusiasm. She did not know what she would find there, but she was 
  consumed with a sense of immanence without hope or fear. Once inside the 
  cave a Vision unfolded in which Yeshe Tsogyel manifested in a 
  phantasmagorical variety of guises. These Visions melted into each other 
  until they coalesced into the form of Yeshe Tsogyel as Dorje Phagmo. Dorje 
  Phagmo means 'indestructible sow' or 'thunderbolt sow'. Dorje Phagmo is 
  the ecstatically fierce Dakini, whose head is surmounted by the head of a 
  sow whose screech shatters illusion. The sound of the screech obliterates 
  all concepts and sharply confides the direct meaning or ro-chig -- the one 
  taste of Emptiness and Form. At the moment in which she apprehended Yeshe 
  Tsogyel as Dorje Phagmo, a complete body of teaching was revealed to her. 
  She understood its meaning in the instant of its appearance. This teaching 
  named itself as 'The Gathered Secrets of Sky dancers'. She realized this 
  teaching was something that she should practice in complete secrecy until 
  its results were obtained. She knew immediately that there would be no 
  obstacle to her fulfilment of these practices. With the arising of this 
  knowledge the Vision of Dorje Phagmo dissolved into Cho-nyi (Chos-nyid -- 
  Dharmata, the Space of reality).

  Pema Tsokyi awoke from the Vision, and went about her daily life. But 
  wherever she went she gave teachings as the spontaneous expression of her 
  Mind, voice and body. She gave Mind-to-Mind teaching as the natural 
  expression of her presence. She sang teaching-songs as the natural 
  expression of her conversation, and performed vajra-dance as the natural 
  expression of her deportment. This had both fortunate and unfortunate 
  consequences. Many ordinary people were astounded by her and recognized 
  that she was a realized yogini, but the ecclesiastics of that place made 
  people afraid of her. She was slandered as a psychotic, a mad-woman who 
  had been possessed by a demon. Once fear had been stirred up by the 
  jealous male ecclesiastics, people became nervous of Pema Tsokyi. The 
  ordinary people lost their natural faith in Pema Tsokyi. They found 
  themselves unable to have confidence in their own spontaneous devotion, in 
  opposition to the ecclesiastical conservatism that styled her as a 
  demoness. The people then began to make accusations against her as well; 
  saying that she had gone to sleep in the mountains and been possessed by a 
  Menmo -- a demonic female being from another dimension. It was then that 
  she became known as Jomo Menmo -- the Demonic Lady.

  Because of the ill feeling that the bigoted and narrow-minded 
  ecclesiastics showed toward her, she decided to leave her home and family 
  and never return to the area. It would seem to be a common problem faced 
  by religious ecstatics and wisdom eccentrics, that they are attacked by 
  religious moralists, academics, and philosophers. From the view of the 
  gradual path it is regarded as highly threatening for a simple country 
  girl to gain realization over-night, and it is often the case that the 
  'uneducated' have a better appreciation of naturally-born wisdom, than 
  those who have studied for long years in search of the same wisdom. It is 
  also the case that men, especially ecclesiastic men, are threatened by 
  female wisdom eccentrics.  For those who study to attain wisdom there is 
  often the problem of becoming hide-bound by conventional or traditional 
  religious semantics, and then bigotry and anger usually arise.

  After a period of ecstatic wandering, she reached a place called La-yak- 
  pang-drong in the western part of Lho-drak, where she met a great Nyingma 
  Visionary -- the gTerton (gTer-ston) Guru Rinpoche Cho-kyi Wang-chuk (Gu- 
  ru Rin-po-che Chos-kyi dBang-phyug). Guru Cho-wang (as his name is 
  commonly contracted) was one of the five sovereign Nyingma Visionaries, 
  and one of the three major emanations of Padmasambhava. As soon as Guru 
  Cho-wang saw Jomo Menmo he knew that she was the perfect sang-yum or 
  spiritual-wife with whom he could bring his realization to fulfilment. 
  Through her relationship with him, Jomo Menmo was able to clear his 
  Spatial-nerves (tsa) of subtle dualistic eddies and currents with in the 
  Spatial-winds (rLung). Once his tsa-lung system flowed with complete 
  freedom he found himself with the capacity of realizing the meaning of 
  every symbolic device within the Visionary teaching he had discovered, but 
  which he had been unable to translate. (The Innermost Secret Heart Essence 
  Tantra of the Eight Wrathful Awareness-beings -- bKa'a-brGyad gSang-ba 
  yong-rDzogs man-ngak-gi rGyud chen-po.)

  They stayed a brief time with each other, in which they shared songs of 
  realization, and the quintessential instructions according to their 
  individual Vision. When Jomo Menmo decided to take her leave of Guru Cho- 
  wang, he advised her that the time was not right to divulge the Visionary 
  teaching cycle that she had received from Yeshe Tsogyel. He said that it 
  would be better if her Visionary teaching benefited people at a future 
  time.  He advised her, instead, to travel throughout Tibet benefiting 
  people in a secret manner. To 'benefit people in a secret manner' is an 
  activity that is particular to women, and does not involve any kind of 
  describable method.  Secret activity can comprise any human possibility, 
  and can be utterly unobservable to anyone unless they are open to that 
  style of transmission and teaching. An enlightened woman (or more rarely, 
  an enlightened man) can simply appear to live in the style of an ordinary 
  person with no outer sign of accomplishment, wisdom or even knowledge. 
  Such a woman is of profound influence merely in the ways in which her 
  everyday life causes the innate enlightenment of others to sparkle through 
  the fabrications of their dualistic conditioning.

  On her wandering throughout Tibet she met many yogis who gained powerful 
  realizations simply by meeting her. The most famous of these was Ling-je  
  Repa (gLing-rJe ras-pa), who experienced the same profound purification of 
  his Spatial-nerves and Spatial-winds as Guru Cho-wang.

  Jomo Menmo spent her life this way, as a wandering yogini; changing 
  people's lives irredeemably merely through the fact of their 
  adventitiously finding themselves in her presence. In this way she 
  engendered many lineages of female practitioners, two of whom entered the 
  sky-dimension with her at the time of her disappearance from the world. At 
  the age of thirty-six, she climbed to the summit of Tak-lha-ri (Mountain 
  of the Sky Tiger), and on the tenth day of the seventh month (4th of 
  August 1283) she and her two female disciples entered the Sky-dimension 
  and were never seen again. Her extraordinary Visionary teaching returned 
  to the Mind of Yeshe Tsogyel, and was later re-discovered by Rig'dzin Pema 
  Do-ngak Lingpa; who was the incarnation of Guru Cho-wang.

                               - Pema 'o-Zer -

  Jomo Menmo had various emanations in Tibet, but in 1901 her incarnation 
  was recognized by Gomchenma Pema 'o-Zer. Gomchenma Pema 'o-Zer was raised 
  by Jomo Chhi-'med Pema (who was herself an emanation of Yeshe Tsogyel). 
  Pema 'o-Zer was recognized by her aunt Jomo Chhi-'med Pema, to be an 
  emanation of Tashi Chi-dren. Tashi Chi-dren was the consort of 
  Padmasambhava who manifested in Vision as the Tigress upon which he rode 
  in his manifestation as Dorje Trollo -- the most wrathful of the eight 
  manifestations of Padmasambhava.

  Pema 'o-Zer's mother father and older brother died of small pox when she 
  was about four years old, and she was left to be brought up by her ageing 
  aunt Jomo Chhi-'med Pema, who was regarded as being a very eccentric old 
  woman.  Jomo Chhi-'med Pema lived alone and herded a few goats, but she 
  was however a powerful yogini, and someone who could converse with the 
  local Mountain Protectress and give people answers to questions about 
  their lives and futures. There were heaps of stones all around her 
  dwelling; mounds of pebbles from the river which she had arranged in 
  circles and other shapes.  She would carry stones, sometimes quite large 
  ones, for many miles, because she felt that they were in the wrong place. 
  She had some special knowledge, connected with the Protectors, about where 
  certain stones should be. She treated them very much as living beings, and 
  would read meaning into the positions in which she found them. One day, 
  young Pema 'o-Zer fell over and hit her knee whilst she was playing 
  outside her aunts dwelling. When Jomo Chhi-'med Pema heard her crying, she 
  came out immediately with a large stick a gave the rock a severe 
  thrashing, warning it to take very good care of young Pema 'o-Zer in 
  future. Pema 'o-Zer was very moved by this. She felt very sorry for having 
  got the rock into trouble by her stupidity, and thereafter treated the 
  rock with kindness and respect. She would make offerings to the rock, and 
  everyday apologize for the beating that it had to receive. Jomo Chhi-'med 
  would often give young Pema 'o-Zer teaching in this style and the young 
  girl seemed to be able to take advantage of her aunt's style with very 
  powerful effect. She learnt a great deal from her aunt.

  Jomo Chhi-'med knew the positions of the larger rocks in the river very 
  well, and made predictions about the weather and when to sow or harvest, 
  according to what she saw. If the rocks moved, she would know immediately 
  and it would usually portend some change in weather. The local people 
  would always ask her advice on the weather. Sometimes they would ask her 
  to intervene, in terms of the weather, and she had notable power as a 
  controller of weather. This wisdom-eccentric became the adoptive mother of 
  Pema 'o-Zer, and gave her many instructions on how to practise. She taught 
  her the Dzogchen Long-de and many other kinds of very essential practice.  
  She never chanted texts or used any kind of ritual implements. She had no 
  shrine, and no thangkas in her home. People assumed that she was very 
  poor, and ignorant of religious conventions, but always asked for her help 
  when personal misfortunes overtook them. She did have some disciples who 
  visited her, but they always came secretly and gave no outer sign of 
  'coming to visit a Lama'.

  Jomo Chhi-'med would attend teachings when important Lamas came to the 
  area, but she would sit in a state of non-conceptual equipoise rather than 
  listening in an intellectual style. She would never make mudras of any 
  kind, or join in the recitations when empowerments were given. Because of 
  this many people assumed that she was a pious simpleton. When the 
  teachings or empowerments were over she would walk away giggling. She 
  would smile at people very broadly, and laugh very loudly, which monks in 
  particular found rather disconcerting. When asked any question she would 
  often only reply 'Yes!' over and over again, whilst nodding her head 
  vigorously and grinning in an insane manner. This usually had the effect 
  of dissuading people with intellectual pretensions from asking her 
  questions.

  One day when Pema 'o-Zer was in her late teens, her aunt Jomo Chhi-'med 
  left the house and never returned. (It is not known where she went or what 
  happened to her.) Pema 'o-Zer lived at the house of Jomo Chhi-'med Pema 
  for a while, but one day she had a Vision during her meditation in which 
  Jomo Chhi-'med appeared to her. Jomo Chhi-'med Pema told her to begin a 
  life of wandering in which she would find a suitable sang-yab. Pema 'o-Zer 
  left her aunt's house, which had almost fallen into ruins, and wandered 
  for several years as an itinerant yogini before meeting Rang-rig Togden, a 
  wandering Chodpa (practitioner of Chod). After wandering together through 
  Eastern and Central Tibet, they settled in Mar-Kham where they found a 
  cave called 'Tiger Space of Rainbow Light'. They remained there for the 
  rest of their lives as practitioners of Dzogchen Long-de, the 'Space' or 
  'Vast Expanse' series of Dzogchen.

  Gomchenma Pema 'o-Zer's Sangyab and disciple, Rang-rig Togden, was a 
  powerful yogi, especially of the subjugation practices of Chana Dorje 
  (Vajrapani), Tamdrin (Hayagriva) and Khyung (Garuda) a practice he had 
  received from Azom Drukpa. They practiced all their lives and spent almost 
  all their elder years in retreat. When they were in their sixties, 
  Gomchenma Pema 'o-Zer had a Vision of Yeshe Tsogyel that lasted for seven 
  days. When the Vision dissolved back into Cho-nyi (dharmata) she was left 
  with the knowledge that she was going to give birth to a daughter who 
  would be the incarnation of Jomo Menmo, the great female Nyingma gTerton. 
  Jomo Menmo was the consort of Guru Chowang -- one of the gTerton Kings. 
  Sang-ngak-cho-dzong holds the nine prong meteorite iron Vajra made by 
  Padmasambhava and discovered by Guru Chowang through the inspiration of 
  Jomo Menmo, and also the Dorje and Drilbu of Jomo Menmo.

                       - Jetsunma Khandro Yeshe Rema -

  The birth of Jetsunma Khandro Yeshe Rema was a remarkable event. She was 
  born with great ease and without making any sound. The first thing she did 
  was to making a very long drawn out hiss with her lips drawn up into 
  Wrathful aspect, as if she were performing a Tsa-lung breathing exercise. 
  A great number of eagles appeared in the sky at her birth. They swooped 
  and glided very close to her parents' Retreat Cave entrance. All manner of 
  sky phenomena appeared at her birth, including clouds shaped like 
  yungdrungs and gakyils. Strong gusts of wind sprang up and subsided very 
  quickly. The sun and moon were clearly visible in the sky at the same 
  time. Her mother remained in a state of Vision through the birth, in which 
  she was physically assisted by Rang-rig Togden.

  Khandro Yeshe slept a great deal as a child but always with her eyes wide 
  open. It was not always easy to tell whether she was asleep or awake 
  because often she would sleep sitting up without any support. She didn't 
  speak until she was five years old but then spoke fluently and without 
  effort. Up until that point she simply listened to her mother and father 
  practising or giving her instruction on practise. She was brought up 
  entirely in retreat and never saw another child until she was an adult 
  woman. As a young girl, she would wander widely in the mountains around 
  her parents meditation cave.  She would disappear whenever patrons came to 
  visit and bring food and offerings to the couple. She expressly did not 
  want anyone to see her apart from her parents, and they were quite happy 
  to go along with her in this wish. They never questioned anything that she 
  did or wanted. She wanted very little and was mostly quiet apart from 
  peals of loud and unexpected laughter. She would sometimes be gone for 
  several days and come back with accounts of having visited other realms 
  and of having met Yeshe Tsogyel and Padmasambhava. Her parents instructed 
  her in Trul-khor (Yantra yoga) from a very early age and she had mastered 
  gTu-mo by the age of nine. She could not endure to wear clothes for most 
  of the year until she was an adult and left the retreat cave. This is why 
  she had the name Rema or cotton wearing lady, because she had the power to 
  generate her own inner heat.

  Khandro Yeshe Rema was about sixteen or seventeen years old when her 
  parents took rainbow-body ('ja'-lus) together. She sewed them in a white 
  tent together after receiving final advice, instructions, and predictions 
  from them; and retired to a distance of twenty one paces to begin her 
  practice.  Seven days later she opened the tent and all that was left were 
  their respective clothes, hair, finger nails, toe nails and nasal septum. 
  They had taken rainbow body together. It is a highly unusual event for two 
  people to achieve rainbow body together at the same time, but it was 
  something that had her mother had predicted many years before. This event 
  had a profound impact on Jetsunma Khandro Yeshe Rema and ripened many 
  latent faculties.  She gathered the relics of her parents and set out 
  toward Northern Kham and Golok where her Mother had predicted she would 
  find a suitable Sang-yab for the realization of a gTerma cycle that would 
  come into being in the future for the benefit of beings in distant lands. 
  Her mother had given indications that this gTerma cycle would be of 
  immense benefit in the future if certain conditions were met, but that 
  there would also be many circumstantial obstacles to overcome.

  Khandro Yeshe travelled from place to place practising and living as a 
  wandering yogini. She had the opportunity on several occasions to join up 
  with other groups of practitioners but was intent on travelling alone. She 
  sometimes pretended to be dumb, in order to avoid speaking with people -- 
  especially if they were religious people. She would always speak to 
  children and ordinary people -- especially if they appeared to have 
  difficulties; but she always avoided religious people whenever she could. 
  It took Jetsunma Khandro Yeshe Rema about year to reach Northern Kham and 
  Golok where it was predicted that she would meet her Sang-yab. It was 
  there that she met 'a-Shul Pema Legden who was a monk and a disciple of 
  Khalding Lingpa. She recognized 'a-Shul Pema Legden immediately as having 
  the potential to realize Visions, and so they travelled together to 
  Southern Tibet. 'a-Shul Pema Legden gave up his monk's vows and became her 
  sang-yab. During their journey to Southern Tibet Jetsunma Khandro Yeshe 
  Rema experienced several profound Visionary experiences of Yeshe Tsogyel 
  in which she realized the cycles of Teachings and practice that her mother 
  had predicted. These cycles of teachings and practice came to be known as 
  the Aro gTer -- the teaching of the Mother Essence Lineage. These 
  teachings survive today as a very essentialized and 'very non-elaborate' 
  body of teachings and practice.

                     - The Mother Essence Lineage Today -

  Tibetan Buddhism is known in the West largely in terms of monasticism. 
  With regard to the monastic sangha, the teaching of the schools of Tibetan 
  Buddhism, and Bon, are accessed mostly completely through the teaching of 
  monks. It is a small minority of Western Buddhists who are aware of 
  Tibetan Lamas who are nuns. At present the only Tibetan nun to teach in 
  the West is Khandro Rinpoche, a female Lama of the Kagyud School. The 
  dominant spiritual culture of Tibet appears to be male as far as most 
  people are aware.  Although this is not an entirely inaccurate portrayal 
  of the dominant spiritual culture of Tibet, it does not convey the 
  spiritual dynamism that existed in terms of women, and the very small 
  family lineages that existed -- in which women were very spiritually 
  influential indeed.

  Contrary to the overt cultural impression, there were many women in Tibet 
  who were teachers of the most profound level, and many of them had male 
  disciples numbering amongst the highest monastic dignitaries. Some 
  practised as ordained nuns, but many more practised both as ordained 
  Ngakmas and lay yoginis. The Ngakmas and Ngakpas (the male equivalent) 
  were those ordained into the Tantric Ngakphang sangha and tended to live 
  as married couples.  Both Ngakmas and lay yoginis are still to be found in 
  the Himalayan countries that surround Tibet; but it is not an easy or 
  simple endeavour to meet them, or even find them. One such remarkable 
  woman is Jetsunma Khandro Ten'dzin Drolkar -- the remarkable yogini who 
  gave me the account of the life of Jomo Menmo. I have the immense good 
  fortune of knowing her both as a teacher and vajra-sister; and as such, 
  have introduced several of my students to her. Jetsunma Khandro Ten'dzin 
  Drolkar is a hidden yogini. Very few people in the West have heard of her, 
  and even in India and Nepal she is not widely known. She is 
  indistinguishable from any other elderly Tibetan woman you might pass on 
  the streets of McLeod Ganj, Dharamsala where she currently lives. Despite 
  her anonymity, she is a close friend of Ven. Sonam Sangpo Rinpoche, Ven. 
  Tharchin Rinpoche and His Holiness Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche -- and 
  highly respected by them for the profundity of her practice and 
  realization. She is a Dzogchen yogini who has spent most of her life in 
  and out of retreat. She has also raised a family, and survived a somewhat 
  difficult husband. One of her sons Trulku Ten'dzin was recognized as an 
  Nyingma incarnation, and currently lives in semi-open retreat with Kyabje 
  Chatral Rinpoche in Yang-le-shod in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal.

  Apart from the many individual women practitioners and teachers in Tibet, 
  there were also small lineages that existed along-side the major Nyingma 
  lineages. These were the minor lineages of mountain recluses both male and 
  female; and also, hidden female lineages that passed down from through 
  children rather than through incarnation lines. The Mother Essence Lineage 
  is one such lineage of teachings and practices. The Mother Essence Lineage 
  is primarily a lineage of very unusual women, wisdom-eccentrics who were 
  either solitary or married recluses. They were either itinerant Nyingma 
  yoginis and their partners, or those who lived in communities such as the 
  Aro Gar, where the Mother Essence Lineage was disseminated. The Mother 
  Essence Lineage passed initially from aunt to niece, and then from mother 
  to daughter. With this daughter, began the direct daughter-line which was 
  destined to pass down through a succession of women, but due to the 
  vagaries of circumstance and the intervention of the Chinese invasion, the 
  blood line was broken. The daughter was an extraordinary Visionary by the 
  name of Yeshe Rema (Jetsunma Khandro Yeshe Rema) who passed her teachings 
  on to a small group of men and women who gathered around in the final 
  phase of her life.  Amongst this small group of no more than a hundred 
  disciples there was a predominant number of accomplished yoginis, nine of 
  whom had remarkable yogic abilities. A-ye Khandro and A-she Khandro in 
  particular manifested yogic powers such as telepathy, clairvoyance and the 
  ability to converse with animals and beings in other dimensions.

  Yeshe Rema was a pure-vision gTerton, that is to say a discoverer of 
  spiritual treasures. She received several cycles of practice directly from 
  Yeshe Tsogyel the female Buddha and consort of Padmasambhava. These 
  practices were unique and extraordinary, as they consisted of Awareness- 
  being (meditational deity) forms that were all manifestations of 
  Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyel. Together with these practices were 
  methods of the three series of Dzogchen and their ancillary psycho- 
  physical practices. Yeshe Rema was advised by her mother to practice these 
  in secret, and only to teach the practices to her daughter. It would then 
  be her daughter who would transmit these teachings to the world.

  Unfortunately, due to inauspicious circumstances, Yeshe Rema gave birth to 
  a son, and the blood-line was broken. Her Sang-yab (spiritual husband) 
  died, and she never took another consort. Her mother had advised that she 
  should only have one Sang-yab. She also advised that she should only have 
  one child; otherwise her life would be considerably shortened, and she 
  would thus have little time to make sure of her daughter's spiritual 
  training.  Her Sang-yab, 'a-Shul Pema Legden, was an old Lama. He died 
  whilst Yeshe Rema was still quite young, and before she had conceived a 
  daughter. This could have meant that Yeshe Rema's cycles of Visionary 
  teaching would have disappeared from the world, but through her yogic 
  power she was able to conceive shortly before 'a-Shul Pema Legden's death. 
  She guided him through the Bardo visions of the intermediate state between 
  lives, and gave birth to him as her own son. It was not possible, for 'a- 
  Shul Pema Legden to be re-born as a woman due to his own remaining karmic 
  obscurations, and so the opportunity was lost in terms of these teachings 
  being made widely known.  Yeshe Rema's mother had given her advice about 
  the inauspicious advent of giving birth to a son, and as a result of 
  maintaining these instructions very exactly was able to pass the teaching 
  on to her son by appearing to him in Visionary form after her own death, 
  and whilst he was in solitary retreat at the age of eight.

  The son of Yeshe Rema was called Aro Yeshe, and she left instructions that 
  the Visionary practices that he would give would be called the Aro gTer.  
  Aro Yeshe was the name that she would have given to her daughter, had she 
  been able to give birth to a girl. During the childhood of Aro Yeshe he 
  was kept away from other boys and from men in general. He was brought up, 
  after the death of his mother, by five yoginis that she had appointed to 
  attend to his education. His childhood friends were two sisters called A- 
  ye Khandro and A-she Khandro who later becomes his Sang-yums. These two 
  girls were the two first disciples to whom he transmitted the Aro gTer, 
  and it was they who actually passed the teachings on to the other 
  disciples of Jetsunma Khandro Yeshe Rema. Aro Yeshe himself taught very 
  rarely because the transmissions were seen as more powerful if they were 
  received from women.

  Since the death of Yeshe Rema, the tradition was continued by a male 
  lineage holder, supported by two powerful female consorts. This became 
  called the indirect son line. It was called indirect because it came 
  through a male lineage holder, and in this tradition male practitioners 
  have less power of lineal blessing. There is a prediction however, that 
  the direct daughter line will re-emerge with greater power if sufficient 
  women become accomplished in the Visionary methods of the Mother Essence 
  Lineage.

  My work as a Lama is dedicated to ensuring that such lineages as the 
  direct daughter line can re-emerge. To that end Sang-ngak-cho-dzong has 
  been established as a spiritual organization dedicated to the creation of 
  opportunities for women. Special emphasis is placed on practice in the 
  context of family life, and on encouraging women to engage in teacher- 
  training within this lineage. There are now a group of significant women 
  practitioners within Sang-ngak-cho-dzong who have had inspirational 
  contact with Jetsunma Khandro Ten'dzin Drolkar, three of whom have been 
  ordained into the Vajra commitment of the Ngakphang Sangha.

  Of the three, one is called Khandro Dechen Tsedrup Yeshe; she is my wife 
  and Sang-yum. She is a great inspiration to me, and we work together as a 
  'teaching couple'.  As a 'teaching couple', an important aspect of our 
  role is to provide an example of the dance that exists as the marriage of 
  two Tantric practitioners. This is one of the most crucial and fundamental 
  features of the Mother Essence Lineage, and one which I will describe at a 
  later point in this essay. Khandro Dechen specializes in the practice of 
  sKu-mNye, a system of psycho-physical exercises which are unique to the 
  Mother Essence Lineage. She is currently preparing a three volume series 
  of the one hundred and eleven exercises that comprise the cycle that stems 
  from the Dzogchen Long-de system.

  Another of the three ordained women, is Ngakma Nor'dzin Rang-jung Pamo. 
  She is a mother of two, whose husband has also taken ordination. Ngakma 
  Nor'dzin is a craft potter who makes gTer-bums (treasure vases), wonderful 
  drums, and other practice artifacts for Sang-ngak-cho-dzong. She is also a 
  healer and a woman whose simplicity and directness of explanation touches 
  all those who come to her for advice in their lives and practice.

  The third ordained woman is Ngakma Pema Rig'dzin Zangmo. She is the 
  thangka painter, or visionary artist, of Sang-ngak-cho-dzong. She is 
  responsible for making the visualization practices of this Lineage 
  possible by bringing them into existence through her remarkable talent. 
  She is an extraordinarily gifted artist, who has the unusual capacity to 
  continue to improve at a rate that her Vajra sisters and brothers find 
  surprising. Her husband is also an ordained Ngakpa.

  All three women are experienced practitioners who have engaged in retreats 
  and accomplished signs of practice. At present, Ngakma Nor'dzin and Ngakma 
  Pema Zangmo do not have students of their own, but they give regular 
  teaching input on the 'Open Teaching Retreats' that are held in Britain.  
  When these two yoginis begin to take their own students (at some point in 
  the future) they too will work as teaching couples along with their 
  husbands. This was very much the style in which the Mother Essence Lineage 
  functioned in Tibet, and my female and male students all share the hope 
  that it will develop in this way in the West.

                         - Khandro/Pawo Mirroring, or
                    Cutting Through Spiritual Chauvinism -

  Central to the Aro gTer is a teaching on practising as couples, in order 
  to realize the hidden female and male qualities within men and women. In 
  order to have some understanding of how such teachings function, it is 
  necessary to have some understanding of duality and non-duality and of the 
  functioning of the psycho-physical elements. To this end some explanation 
  of the idea of Pawo and Khandro in Tibetan Tantra are crucial.

  When the beginningless Empty essence of what we are gives rise to the 
  vibrant display of our nature; we manifest a physical form -- the energy 
  that shimmers between wonderment and bewilderment. Bewilderment is the 
  momentary loss of confidence in the open dimension of our being. If we try 
  to 'return' to the open dimension of our being (rather than finding 
  confidence in the recognition that we've never moved from that 
  Spaciousness) we create the illusion of duality. As soon as the illusion 
  of duality is coaxed into illusory existence, 'groundless anxiety' arises 
  -- like wind from an empty sky. 'Groundless anxiety' is the root of 
  paranoia; and when paranoia becomes the pattern of perception, the sense 
  of 'isolation' is sparked -- and fanned into flames. 'Isolation'; is the 
  root of 'clinging' to focuses of comforting proximity -- and when this 
  'clinging' and 'attachment' becomes the pattern of our perception, we 
  experience our reality as flooded by 'fear' of loss. 'Fear' is the root of 
  'anger' which freezes our perception -- dividing substance from 
  substancelessness. Experiencing this division, we evolve elaborate 
  divisive strategies in order to align ourselves with ground, and reject 
  groundlessness. These strategies are the root of 'obduracy', the need to 
  fix, control and concretize everything within our sense fields. Everything 
  within this array of perceptual horizons is then manipulated as a 
  reference-point, in order to prove that we are: 'defined', 'continuous', 
  'separate', 'permanent' and 'solid'.

  In this web of growing confusion and alienation, we continuously cling to 
  whatever momentary pattern arises as a perception. We then try to force 
  these perceptions into fixed definitions of 'what we cannot be'. Because 
  we wish to accept and prolong certain definitions, (and wish to reject and 
  curtail others) it becomes impossible to relax into the true nature of 
  what we are. We become increasingly divided against ourselves (which is 
  not actually possible) through the struggle to deny our Spacious nature.  
  Because it is not actually possible to be divided against ourselves (or to 
  split Emptiness and Form) we find ourselves engaged in a potentially never 
  ending struggle to remain unenlightened.

  Through our struggles to deny our Spacious nature we experience the pain 
  of illusion (of being divided against ourselves). From this illusion all 
  divisions and divisiveness arise! When we manifest human form we 
  experience Form-reality in terms of gender. We become female or male. In 
  our 'physical frames of reference' as women and men, we experience the 
  division that always stems from dualistic perception. In order to feel 
  whole, we have to experience separation and distinction in order to re- 
  unite with what we sense that we have lost. This is where it gets 
  complicated. Our relationships with each other as women and men, reflect 
  the complexities of our estranged relationships with our own Spaciousness. 
  Our Beginningless Enlightenment is continually inviting us to be the 
  enlightened beings that we actually are; but we're very ambivalent about 
  this kind of invitation.  From the perverse perspective of 
  'unenlightenment', this sort of invitation seems to betoken annihilation.

  Our primary dualistic intention is to distract ourselves from the Spacious 
  nature of being; because, somehow, that doesn't seem like a condition in 
  which we could survive. We want to snuggle down into a dim cosiness where 
  the whole idea of Spaciousness might disappear. But however horribly snug 
  we try to make our experiential environment, our innate wisdom always 
  sparkles through. Enlightenment continually sparkles through the fabric of 
  our distracted-being, unravelling the threads of our contrived perception, 
  and making it difficult for us to obscure what we really are. The 
  difficulties involved in playing this game of hide-and-seek with 
  Spaciousness, constitute the pain that we experience. These difficulties 
  are the patterning of our conditioning -- our karmic vision.  Within the 
  sphere of karmic vision we are cut off from our own wholeness. This 
  wholeness, according to the Vision of Tantra, can be described as the 
  interplay of outer and inner qualities.  These manifested qualities of 
  being are the twin aspects of realization -- wisdom and active-compassion. 
  Wisdom is the realization of the clear self-luminous nature of all 
  phenomena, and active-compassion is the energy or spontaneous arising of 
  enlightened activity.

  The primary difference between women and men from this perspective, lies 
  in the reversal of the outer and inner manifested qualities of Being. 
  Women have outer wisdom qualities and inner compassion qualities. Men have 
  outer compassion qualities and inner wisdom qualities. When women and men 
  realize these qualities they dance together as Khandros and Pawos; and 
  their energies brilliantly mirror each other. But when this realization is 
  not present women and men teeter and clump, as beings distracted from 
  Being. In this kind of confused dancing; the man usually wants to lead, 
  and the woman usually wants to be led. However, the man can become unsure 
  of where he is leading and feel resentful at having to lead, and the woman 
  can feel dominated and cease to want to be lead. Whichever way there is no 
  freedom for either.

  The word Khandro is the phonetic adaptation of what is transliterated from 
  the Tibetan as mKha'-'Gro.  mKha' means 'sky' and 'Gro means 'going' and 
  signifies 'movement' or 'unobstructedness' can be loosely rendered into 
  English as Sky-Dancer. This word has a very special meaning in Tibetan, 
  because it suggests the ability to experience the innate freedom of the 
  Sky-like Cho-ying (Spatial dimension or dharmadhatu). This term signifies 
  the unobstructed play of wisdom-Mind in the limitlessness of wisdom-Space. 
  The quality of unobstructed play, is the Wisdom-activity that 
  spontaneously arises from the unconditioned state of our beginningless 
  enlightenment. Within the Tantric Vision, all women are secretly Khandros, 
  and men are secretly Pawos. Pawo means hero or warrior, and signifies the 
  pure appropriateness that has no need for the illusory security of firm 
  ground.  The word Pawo is the phonetic adaptation of what is 
  transliterated from the Tibetan as dPa-bo. The Sanskrit origin of this 
  word is Daka as the counterpart to the female Dakini; but in Tibetan, 
  rather than there being Khandroma and Khandropa, there are Khandro and 
  Pawo. The idea here is that rather than speaking of a male Sky-dancer, we 
  speak of a hero or warrior in order to emphasize activity and power. The 
  warrior is fearless, not because death has been objectified into a future 
  event which is regarded with nonchalance, but because death is experienced 
  with every moment. For the warrior the Birth and Death of every Mind- 
  moment are fully experienced -- enabling him to live with totality in the 
  present moment. (The word Khandropa applies to a Daka who manifests his 
  inner wisdom-display in the external dimension. There is also the female 
  aspect of Pawo, which is Pamo.  The word Pamo applies to a Khandro who 
  manifests her inner method-display in the external dimension.)

  The Khandro quality of women, manifests as outer wisdom-Space in which her 
  internal compassion plays. In relative terms, outer wisdom/sensitivity 
  reflects itself in both the overt and subtle appearance of women as 
  displayed through: intuition; fluidity; flexibility; resilience; 
  adaptability; versatility; reflexiveness; empathy confluence; allowance; 
  facilitation; resonance; sensitivity; receptivity; harmony; euphony; 
  ideation; sensibility; delicacy; softness; obliqueness; devotion; 
  laterality of apprehension; plurality of perception; inchoate 
  understanding; radiance and openness. But when the connection with inner 
  compassion/power is obscured through dualistic perception, the outer 
  wisdom/sensitivity becomes weak, aimless and prey to manipulation.

  The Pawo quality of men manifests as outer compassion/power, which arises 
  energetically from inner wisdom/sensitivity. In relative terms his outer 
  compassion/power, reflects itself in the overt and subtle appearance of 
  men displayed through: strength; intellect; objectivity; productivity; 
  capacity; performance; durability; angularity; acuteness; accuracy; 
  precision; sympathy; steadfastness; methodology; systematization; drive; 
  skillfulness; inventiveness; resourcefulness; creativity; persuasiveness; 
  directiveness; conclusiveness; linearity of apprehension; singularity of 
  perception; constructiveness; reductivity; discrimination; discernment; 
  exertion; capability and rationality. But when the vital connection with 
  inner wisdom/sensitivity is obscured through clinging to dualistic 
  perception, the outer compassion/power stiffens into aggression, 
  intolerance and manipulation.

  Unless a man is a true warrior, he finds the Sky-dancer terrifying because 
  she completely undermines him with her inchoate Spaciousness. Unless a 
  woman recognizes her Sky-dancing potential she finds the Pawo overpowering 
  because she is utterly overawed by his unending effectiveness.

  We need only examine our own sexual fears of penetration and engulfment to 
  get some inkling of how pervasive these qualities are in all our 
  existential interactions. Emptiness and Form are continually performing 
  within the fabric of our psychologies. The 'self preservation instinct' 
  and the 'death-wish' go hand in hand -- we are continually riding the 
  energy of duality; whether we do so with Awareness or through distraction 
  is a matter of commitment to the raw texture of the moment. 

  The assertion sometimes made within Sutric Buddhism, that women cannot 
  attain Enlightenment until they are re-born as men, can be looked at in 
  two ways. At face value such a statement is reflection of male delusion 
  which springs from the neurotic need for protection against the threat of 
  Spaciousness. Men are afraid of the inchoate or that which lies beyond 
  rationality. But at a deeper level -- in order to attain Enlightenment, 
  not only do women have to be re-born as men, but -- MEN MUST BE RE-BORN AS 
  WOMEN. What needs to be re-born or discovered is the secret male in women, 
  and the secret female in men. Both men and women need to re-discover their 
  beginningless connection with their inner qualities -- in order to be 
  complete. From this perspective, women and men are either a constantly 
  available source of teaching for each other -- or, a constant source of 
  conditioning. This is the reason for monasticism within the Sutrayana.  
  Because the goal of the Sutrayana is Emptiness, its principle is 
  renunciation. The method of renunciation is to work with attachment to the 
  world of form through celibacy, non-ownership, and many forms of 
  abstinence.  Within Tantrayana however, there is no insistence on celibacy 
  or any form of abstinence with regard to engaging with the world of form 
  -- because the basis of Tantra is Emptiness. There is no insistence on 
  celibacy or abstinence unless you are a monk or nun who practices Tantra 
  as an internal discipline, whilst maintaining the monastic vows.

  The principle of Tantra is transformation and its method is one of 
  achieving the realization of the innate purity of all phenomena. With 
  realization of Emptiness, there is no need for celibacy, because the Pawo 
  and Khandro principles are emergent -- they're no longer occluded through 
  fear of Emptiness. It is very important to understand this distinction 
  between Sutrayana and Tantrayana, because otherwise there can be confusion 
  over why celibacy is advocated in one vehicle and not by another.

  In Sutra men and women are seen as being sources of conditioning for each 
  other, whereas in Tantra women and men are seen as sources of inspiration 
  for each other. So in Tantra, relationships are definitely described as 
  being a support for practice rather than as a distraction. However, there 
  needs to be the experiential basis of Emptiness. This is the fundamental 
  qualification. If women and men reflect their true outer and inner 
  qualities they provoke each other into relaxing their habits of division 
  and divisiveness. When these habits are relaxed, through the practice of 
  Tantric View -- men and women can realize their completeness. The practice 
  of Tantric View entails the maintenance of pure-vision. Pure-vision is 
  experienced through receiving Empowerment from the Lama, and maintaining 
  that experience in everyday life by hearing all sound as Awareness-spell 
  (mantra) and all phenomena as the radiated quality-sphere of the 
  Awareness-being (mandala of the deity). But if men and women only reflect 
  their outer qualities, divorced from their inner qualities, then 
  inequalities arise.  Then all that is provoked are patterns of dependency 
  and domination, with the woman as the 'sex object', and the man as the 
  'success object'.

  Men need to be in contact with their sensitivity, and women need to be in 
  contact with their power. Without this contact we forget what we are and 
  become distracted from Awareness in the continuity of our essential 
  nature.  From this condition of dualism, our Energies become distorted and 
  we flounder in the fog of forgetfulness with which we have all become so 
  tediously familiar. We become confused and out of balance with ourselves, 
  so that our outer qualities become, discordant and harmful to each other. 
  The man or woman who could be our opportunity for liberation merely 
  becomes our co-dependant imprisoned prisoner.

    When a man loses contact with his inner-quality sensitivity, his outer- 
  quality becomes distorted. Disconnected from his inner Khandro (his secret    
  Wisdom), his outer-quality of Being which should spontaneously manifest    
  active-compassion, manifests assertiveness. This assertiveness then ranges  
  from force to brutality and violence; depending to what extent the inner    
  Khandro has become occluded.  With regard to his spiritual life, he could  
  'grow' into some kind of 'cosmic gorilla'. The 'cosmic gorilla' is some 
  man who has developed 'spiritual muscles', someone who has learnt a few 
  tricks and knows how to win bananas with his performance. He has some sort 
  of 'power of his own', derived from being very linear, which is then 
  bolstered by the power he is lent by others. The 'cosmic gorilla' might 
  even be in search of Siddhis -- extra-normal powers, through which he 
  could expand his carefully sharpened and polished ego, until it looked 
  like a bullet.

  When a woman loses contact with her inner quality power, her outer quality 
  becomes distorted. Disconnected from her inner Pawo (her secret 
  compassion) her outer quality of Being which should spontaneously manifest 
  as encompassing wisdom, manifests decorativeness. This decorativeness then 
  ranges from the inconsequential to superficial obsession with surface 
  appearance, depending to what extent the inner Pawo has been occluded. 
  With regard to her spiritual life, she dwindles into insignificance and 
  insipidity, satisfied to arrange the flowers in the shrine room. She 
  becomes a mindless devotee -- the kind of delicate presence who hovers 
  around the teacher. At the teacher's discourse, she continually fills his 
  glass of water; but she does so in such a way as to be noticed by 
  everyone. There is no sense that she will ever practice, but she is always 
  there as a very obvious and omnipresent nonentity. If she does meditate 
  she wants to cultivate 'beautiful experiences' with which to ornament her 
  psyche. She may consider herself to be a 'sensitive', and 'feel' things 
  that are 'deeply mysterious'. She may sit attempting to feel serene and 
  very special in a way that she would not define.

  This is a depressing picture; but, in the Tantric Vision, no matter how 
  far we wander into the intricacies of duality -- we're just toying or 
  torturing ourselves with endless distortions of what we actually are. This 
  means that whatever our perception is, it is not removed from 
  Enlightenment. So, however our Energies have become distorted we simply 
  need to allow them to relax into their natural condition. To allow our 
  Energies to relax into their natural condition is the purpose of 
  meditation -- we simply need to stop producing unenlightenment. As soon as 
  we let go of our fear of our own Spacious nature our inner qualities 
  manifest spontaneously.

  Men and women are attracted to each other; this is not an unusual 
  statement to make, but that attraction is composed of the openness to our 
  innate Enlightenment and our fear of our innate Enlightenment. Attraction 
  is both a very simple fact and a very complex issue. This is always the 
  condition in which we find ourselves. As long as we attempt to create a 
  division between Emptiness and Form, everything we do has this dual 
  quality; there is always attraction in our aversion and aversion in our 
  attraction. This is why the love-hate relationship can manifest, and why 
  ambivalence is one of the prime keys to understanding the nature of 
  Tantra.

  Women are attracted to the distorted male image because they seek to 
  reconnect with power in some way. Women have a natural relationship with 
  power. But if they fail to realize that their inner quality is the very 
  nature of power, they will find no other solution but to seek it 
  externally.  However, women are also attracted to men through the 
  recognition of the reflection of their own inner Pawo. Both happen 
  simultaneously -- enlightenment and unenlightenment flicker.

  Men are attracted to the distorted female image because they seek to 
  reconnect with sensitivity in some way. Men have a natural relationship 
  with sensitivity; but, if they fail to realize that this is because their 
  own inner quality is the very nature of sensitivity, they will find no 
  other solution but to seek it externally. However, men are also attracted 
  to women through the recognition of the reflection of their own inner 
  Khandro. Both happen simultaneously -- enlightenment and unenlightenment 
  flicker.

  As long as a woman attempts to find her inner Pawo vicariously through 
  seducing (or making herself available to) a man by means of her distorted 
  outer sensitivity, she is likely to lose even what small conventional 
  power she had. She stands the chance of being dominated by an insensitive 
  emotionally inarticulate aggressor. As long as a man tries to obtain his 
  inner Khandro through wooing or coercing a woman by means of his distorted 
  outer power, he is likely to trap himself with some fading glamour-puss 
  with little on her mind but demands for the provision of endless chintz 
  and tinsel.

  These are obviously extreme examples -- caricatures of how people can be 
  if they work very hard to obscure their inner qualities. But everyone 
  finds themselves on the continuum that includes these caricatures, and it 
  is possible that everyone could see some dim reflection of themselves in 
  this pattern of dissatisfaction and incomprehension. This is a situation 
  in which nobody gets what they want. Nobody gets 'what they want', because 
  'what they want' is not possible to obtain through getting 'what they 
  want'. We see 'what we want'; but, when we get it -- it turns out to be 
  something else.  It turns out to be something that seems almost entirely 
  different from what we initially saw.

  Men and women need to look within themselves for completion, rather than 
  trying to find it in an-other incomplete person. Men and women fail to get 
  what they want from each other, because it's not actually there to be had; 
  unless, they have it already anyway. Another paradox. It is only possible 
  to get what we want if we have it already. If we already have the 
  connection with our inner Pawo or inner Khandro then we no longer need to 
  find anything outside ourselves. But it is just at this point when the 
  need is no longer there that we can really begin to dance with each other. 
  Something else arises, which replaces our unrequitable neurotic need. Once 
  this need (which is born of disassociation with our own inner qualities) 
  dissolves into its own Empty nature; a tremendous appreciation for each 
  other can arise. 

  This sense of appreciation arises, because people catch glimpses of their 
  completeness and can begin to relate to each other in an authentic way. No 
  matter how distanced we are from our inner qualities, our enlightened 
  nature continually sparkles through. The frequency of sparkling depends on 
  how much we cooperate with the sparkling or how much we resist it. The 
  nature of this cooperation is our practice of the Inner Tantras. For a 
  Ngakpa, one of the most important vows is never to disparage women. For 
  Ngakpas women are the source of wisdom, and their practice is to See the 
  phenomenal world as female -- as wisdom-display; the dance of the 
  Khandros. When the world is Seen as the scintillating sparkling dance of 
  the Khandros, the inner Khandro is incited. When the inner Khandro is 
  incited, the elements begin to relax into their own condition and the 
  fabric of duality begins to dissolve.

  The vow for a Ngakma is to regard the entire phenomenal world as male -- 
  as method-display as the powerfully direct dance of the Pawos. When the 
  world is seen in this way, the inner Pawo is incited. When the inner Pawo 
  is incited, the Elements begin to relax into their own condition and the 
  fabric of duality begins to dissolve. Men and women who can enter into 
  this kind of reality have the capacity to relate with each other; not 
  through neurotic need, but through a fundamental appreciation of each 
  other's inner qualities and outer qualities. When we waken to the nature 
  of our inner qualities, we are able to mirror each other in a delightful 
  manner. In this way we are able to undermine each other's conditioning 
  rather than entrenching each other further in our respective patterns of 
  conditioning. It is not possible to describe or explain how it is possible 
  to See the world in this way, because fundamentally this capacity itself 
  arises from realization of Emptiness.

  For relationships to have any spiritual meaning, or even any worthwhile 
  purpose, it is essential to maintain the View of one's partner as either 
  Pawo or Khandro. Some remote sense of this is often artificially arrived 
  at through creating mystery or by absence (which makes the heart grow 
  fonder); but, both these are simply reflections of Emptiness. Any 
  authentic glimpse of the Inner Pawo or Khandro can only come through 
  meditative experience and Openness to the insecurity or fundamental chaos 
  of each moment.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------


                                   GLOSSARY
                                   ~~~~~~~~
  'a-Shul Pema Legden::
     The sang-yab of Jetsunma Khandro Yeshe Rema, and the father of Aro Yesh
     'a-Shul Pema Legden was a monk-yogi who was a gTer scribe and Visionary
     artist for Khalding Lingpa the previous incarnation of His Holiness
     Kyabje Khordong gTerchen Tulku Chhi'm.d Rig'dzin Rinpoche

  Aro Gar::
     The Aro Gar, was the encampment where the Mother Essence Lineage was
     received in Vision by Aro Yeshe from his mother Jetsunma Khandro Yeshe
     Rema. These teachings were first taught at the Aro Gar by Aro Yeshe who
     transmitted the teaching to his two sang-yums -- the sisters A-ye
     Khandro and A-she Khandro

  Aro gTer::
     The Visionary Teaching cycle of Aro Yeshe, which was received directly
     from Jetsunma Khandro Yeshe Rema, the incarnation of Jomo Menmo

  Aro Yeshe::
     Ngakchang Drupchen Aro Yeshe was the son of Jetsunma Khandro Yeshe Rema
     and discoverer of the Aro gTer. The incarnation of 'a-Shul Pema Legden

  Bon::
     The shamanic systems that existed in Tibet before Buddhism. Bon in
     Tibet within the last five hundred years is theoretically
     indistinguishable from Tibetan Buddhism. Both Buddhism and Bon
     incorporated each others practises to such a degree that there are only
     superficial differences between them. These differences exist at the
     symbolic level, and at the level of Lineage. Bon lays historical claim
     to a lineage of Dzogchen that pre-dates the entry of Buddhism into
     Tibet.

  Chatral Rinpoche::
     Kyabje Chatral Rinpoche is an important Nyingma Lama who lives in Yang-
     le-shod in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal. He is one of the teachers of
     Lama Tharchin Rinpoche.

  Chod::
     The charnel ground practice in which the practitioner severs attachment
     to his or her corporeal form. The practice originated by Machig
     Labdron, the great Tibetan yogini. See Machig Labdron

  Cho-nyi::
     Chos-nyid -- Dharmata, the Space of reality.

  Cho-ying::
     Spatial dimension or dharmadhatu. This term signifies the unobstructed
     play of wisdom-Mind in the limitlessness of wisdom-Space

  Dorje Phagmo::
     Indestructible sow' or 'Thunderbolt sow'. She is the ecstatically
     fierce Dakini, whose head is surmounted by the head of a sow whose
     screech shatters illusion

  Dorje Trollo::
     Indestructible Rage - the most wrathful of the eight manifestations of
     Padmasambhava

  Dri::
     Large Tibetan ox -- the dri is the female of the yak

  Dzogchen::
     The Great Completion. The innermost Tantra, which transcends ritual and
     symbol

  Dzogchen Long-de::
     One of the three series of Dzogchen -- the 'Space' or 'Vast Expanse'
     series. It deals with subtle-sensation as the focus of meditative
     absorption, and employs a great variety of yogic postures and
     corresponding physical pressure-points that stimulate the rLung, prana,
     or Spatial-winds of the vajra-body. Details of such practices are kept
     highly secret and can only be received through transmission from a
     qualified Lama

  E-yul::
     Land of primordial awareness

  Gar::
     Encampment. The place where Jetsunma Khandro Yeshe Rema settled in
     Southern Nepal was called the Aro Gar. See Aro Gar.

  Garuda::
     See Khyung

  Golok::
     Northern Kham, a very wild area of Tibetan which is notorious for
     brigandry. There are many nomads in this area, and yogic encampments as
     well as tent monasteries.

  Gomchenma::
     Gomchenma means 'greatly accomplished female meditator'

  rGyud::
     Tantra, Tantrayana, Vajrayana or Secret Mantrayana. The vehicle which
     derives from Long-ku (Sambhogakaya) Visionary transmission. The path of
     transformation -- in distinction to the Sutric path of renunciation.
     See Sutra

  Ja-lu::
     'Ja'-lus -- the rainbow body. Dzogchen practitioners who have mastered
     the Trek-chod phase of Dzogchen in which pure and total presence is
     stabilized, are able to practice To-gal. To-gal is the final practice
     of Dzogchen, which enables the yogi or yogini to dissolve his or her
     physical body into the essence of the elements at the time of death.
     The yogi or yogini then disappears into a body of light, leaving only
     hair toe & finger nails, and nasal septum behind

  Jetsunma Khandro Ten'dzin Drolkar::
     A great living Dzogchen yogini who lives in Himachal Pradesh North
     India

  Jetsunma Khandro Yeshe Rema::
     The incarnation of Jomo Menmo whose Visionary teachings are called the
     Mother Essence Lineage or the Aro gTer. Jetsunma Khandro Yeshe Rema was
     the daughter of Gomchenma 'o-Zer Pema and the niece of Jomo Chhi-'med
     Pema who was an emanation of Yeshe Tsogyel

  Jomo Chhi-'med Pema::
     Emanation of Yeshe Tsogyel who was the aunt and adoptive mother of
     Gomchenma Pema 'o-Zer. See Gomchenma Pema 'o-Zer

  Jomo Menmo::
     The incarnation of Machig Lapdron, and emanation of Yeshe Tsogyel who
     was the consort of Guru Chowang. The previous incarnation of Jetsunma
     Khandro Yeshe Rema, mother of Aro Yesh See Aro Yeshe, Yeshe Tsogyel and
     Machig Lapdron

  Kagyud::
     One of the four Schools of Tibetan Buddhism. One of the three Sarma, or
     New Translation Schools, that is closest in practice to the Nyingma
     School

  Karmic vision::
     The way, or style, in which we see things. The karmic vision of every
     type of being is distinct. Every being's Karmic vision is comprised
     according to the particular style in which they maintain the illusion
     of duality.

  Khalding Lingpa::
     The incarnation of Nuden Dorje Drophang Lingpa whose incarnation line
     goes back to Kye-chung Lotsa, one of the twenty-five siddhas of
     Chhimphu -- the twenty-five disciples of Padmasambhava. He was the twin
     incarnation, with Dudjom Lingpa of the line that came from Nuden Dorje,
     Shariputra, Hungkara, Gagasiddhi, and Kye-chung Lotsa. H.H. Dudjom
     Rinpoche was the incarnation of Dudjom Lingpa, and His Holiness Kyabje
     Khordong gTerchen Tulku Chhi'med Rig'dzin Rinpoche is the incarnation
     of Khalding Lingpa

  Khandro::
     Literally 'sky-goer'. Either the outer quality of a women or the inner
     quality of a man. A wisdom-display manifestation

  Khandropa::
     A man who has recognized his 'inner Khandro' and manifests this
     realization in terms of his external activity in the world

  Khandro Dechen Tsedrup Yeshe::
     The sang-yum of Ngakpa Chogyam Rinpoche

  Khandro Rinpoche::
     A female incarnate Lama of the Kagyud School, currently teaching in
     Europe

  sKu-mNye::
     Literally -- 'subtle-dimension massage'. sKu-mNye in the Aro gTer
     system, is associated with the Dzogchen Long-de teachings (see Dzogchen
     Long-de). The Aro gTer sKu-mNye comprises of exercises that stimulate
     the tsa-lung system (see rLung and Tsa-lung). These exercises are
     divided into six animals that relate with the elements. There are one
     hundred and eleven exercises --  twenty-one for each elemental animal:
     lion / earth; vulture / water; tiger / fire; eagle / air; and garuda /
     space. These add up to one hundred and five.  The remaining six
     exercises belong to the dragon, which represents the unified sphere of
     all the elements

  Khyung::
     The Space-eagle. An Awareness-being (meditational deity) who embodies
     the unborn nature of the Dzogchen teachings. The Khyung is born from
     its egg full grown, symbolizing the self-existent maturity of the
     enlightened state, which is the natural unfabricated condition of all
     beings.

  Lama::
     Teacher, especially of Tantra. The word Lama pertains not only to the
     external teacher, but to the inner teacher or enlightened nature. The
     Lama, therefore, is one who reflects the beginningless enlightened
     nature of their students.

  La-yak-pang-drong::
     The western part of Lho-drak, where Jomo Menmo met Guru Cho-wang

  Ling-je Repa::
     A gTerton of the Nyingma School who gained profound spiritual
     experience from his meeting with Jomo Menmo. See gTer and Jomo Menmo

  rLung::
     Spatial-wind or prana in Sanskrit.

  Machig Lapdron::
     'Unique Mother Torch of Practice', the incarnation of Yeshe Tsogyel who
     originated the practice of Chod. See Chod

  Ngakma Pema Rig'dzin Zangmo::
     The thangka painter of Sang-ngak-cho-dzong. A female disciple of Ngakpa
     Chogyam Rinpoche who has taken ordination into the Vajra commitment of
     the Ngakphang sangha

  Ngakma Nor'dzin Rang-jung Pamo::
     A female disciple Ngakpa Chogyam Rinpoche who has taken ordination into
     the Vajra commitment of the Ngakphang sangha

  Ngakphang Sangha::
     The White Sangha, or non-monastic Sangha.  Ngakphang means 'Mantra-
     holding' and applies to those who have taken Tantric ordination rather
     the Sutric ordination of monks and nuns

  Nyingma::
     The Ancient School of Tibetan Buddhism -- the 'early spread' of
     Buddhism in Tibet which grew under the enlightened inspiration of the
     second Buddha -- Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyel

  Pema Tsokyi::
     The name given to Jomo Menmo by her parents

  Padmasambhava::
     The second Buddha who brought the Tantric teachings to Tibet

  Pamo::
     A woman who has recognized her 'inner Pawo' and manifests this
     realization in terms of her external activity in the world

  Pawo::
     Literally 'warrior' or 'hero'. Either the outer quality of a man or the
     inner quality of a woman. A method-display manifestation

  Rang-rig Togden::
     The yogi who became the sang-yab of Gomchenma Pema 'o-Zer. He practised
     the subjugation practices of Chana Dorje (Vajrapani), Tamdrin
     (Hayagriva) and Khyung (Garuda) a practice he had received from Azom
     Drukpa

  Rema::
     Cotton wearer. The female of Repa, as in Milar.pa. A Rema, or Repa, is
     one who is accomplished in the practice of gTu-mo -- the practice of
     Spatial-heat, one of the Naro-cho-drug (six yogas of Naropa). These
     practitioners wear white cotton and often live naked above the snow-
     line

  Rinpoche::
     Literally 'precious one'. Rinpoche is used as a respectful form of
     address to one's teacher. It is a mistaken assumption that the term
     Rinpoche indicates an incarnate Lama; although all incarnate Lamas are
     called Rinpoche by their students

  Sang-ngak-cho-dzong::
     The spiritual association dedicated to the preservation of the Mother
     Essence Lineage and the Ngakphang sangha. It was founded by Ngakpa
     Chogyam Rinpoche, and named by H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche.

  Sang-yab::
     Secret Father - spiritual-husband or consort

  Sang-yum::
     Secret Mother - spiritual-wife or consort

  Sonam Sangpo Rinpoche::
     The Nyingma Lama who is the abbot of the Vajrayana Retreat Centre in
     Yang-le-shod, Nepal. He is the friend of Ngakpa Chogyam Rinpoche,
     Jetsunma Khandro Ten'dzin Drolkar, and Lama Tharchin Rinpoche of Pema
     Osel Ling in Santa Cruz

  Sutra::
     The teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha: Sravakabuddhayana;
     Pratyekabuddhayana; and Boddhisattvabuddhayana. Known in the New
     Translation Schools as the Hinayana and Mahayana

  Tak-lha-ri::
     Mountain of the Sky Tiger. The place from which Jomo Menmo and her two
     female disciples entered the Sky-dimension.

  Tantra::
     Continuum, continuity or thread, see rGyud

  Tashi Chi-dren::
     One of the spiritual consorts of Padmasambhava

  Tharchin Rinpoche::
     Nyingma Lama and current Holder of the Repkong Ngakpa Lineage. Friend
     of Ngakpa Chogyam Rinpoche, Jetsunma Khandro Ten'dzin Drolkar, and Lama
     Sonam Sangpo Rinpoche. Tharchin Rinpoche is a married Lama who is an
     ordained member of the Ngakphang sangha

  gTer::
     gTer is the shortened form of the word gTerma, which refers to a cycle
     of teaching and practices that have been discovered in visionary form

  gTerton::
     A discoverer of gTerma

  Thinley Norbu::
     His Holiness Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche is the elder son of His
     Holiness Kyabje Jigdrel Yeshe Dorje, Dudjom Rinpoche, and one of the
     most important living Lamas of the Nyingma School.

  Trul-khor::
     Literally 'apparitional circle' or 'magical-wheel'. Called yantra yoga
     in Sanskrit, it is a system which resembles hatha yoga combined with
     pranayama and linked by movement. The Trul-khor of the Aro gTer is
     allied to the practice of Dzogchen Sem-de (see Dzogchen). In this
     practice, one moves between different physical postures in a rhythmic
     manner linking the movement with the breath. This system is designed to
     purify the rLung (see rLung)

  Togden::
     Possessor of accomplishment.  A yogi or yogini with matted hair

  Tsa-lung::
     Yogic exercises involving breath and visualization. The Tsa-lung system
     is the Vajra-body of Spatial-nerves and the Spatial-winds that move
     within them

  Yak::
     Large Tibetan ox - the yak is the male of the dri

  Yeshe Tsogyel::
     The female Tantric Buddha, and sang-yum of Padmasambhava


    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
                                    NOTES
                                    ~~~~~
  1. Sang-ngak-cho-dzong is spelt with an umlaut over the "o" in "cho" this 
  has been removed in this version as have various other accent marks.

  2. For more information about Sang-ngak-cho-dzong, please contact:
  the Secretary, Sang-ngak-cho-dzong, 5 Court Close, Whitchurch, Cardiff, 
  CF4 1JR, Wales, U.K. tel: 0222 620332.

  3. Sang-ngak-cho-dzong is a Registered UK Charity, No. 1019886.
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------


  NGAKPA CHOGYAM RINPOCHE is the Spiritual Director of Sang-ngak-cho-dzong.  
  An English-born Lama of the Nyingma Tradition, Ngakpa Rinpoche was 
  recognized by H.H. Chimed Rigdzin Rinpoche as the rebirth of 'a-Shul Pema 
  Legden. He is the author of //Rainbow of Liberated Energy// and //Journey  
  into Vastness// (published by Element Books). Rinpoche is a Tantric 
  artist, poet, singer, healer, and Doctor of Tibetan Tantric Psychology.

EOF


