“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
“Other women merely speak of longing for Dharma
She has faith from the core of the heart!
Other women have faith in ornaments and decoration,
She has longing for the essence of the three times, absent of good and bad.
My reasoning is inferior but determination is huge!” —Yeshe Tsogyel’s song
“At first, a smiling, divine man,
In the middle, a black-faced demon,
At the end, a bull ready to beat you.
Thinking thus, melancholy arises.
So, this girl shall practice divine Dharma, and
Be a companion of vajra-sibling friends!”–excerpt from Saley O’s song to Milarepa
“..not only are the Buddhist past and Western scholarship on Buddhism thoroughly androcentric; contemporary Buddhism itself, both Asian and Western, is unrelenting in its ongoing androcentrism.” –Rita M. Gross in Buddhism After Patriarchy (1995)
For International Women’s Day (March 8th) today am re-posting a translation and article I wrote about the great female Mahasiddha, Yeshe Tsogyel (2024). For my musical rendition of the Yeshe Tsogyel song , see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgR-y8rrY58.
Also, the song of Saley O one of Milarepa’s remarkable female students. The article gives an overview of the main female disciples of Milarepa, and life and songs of one of these women, Saley O (Sa-le-‘od, which literally means ‘Brilliant Light’). who from the age of sixteen years old told Milarepa she wanted to abandon household life, and then spent the rest of her life in solitary mountain retreats.
Another story and song, Fifteen Realisations by another female disciple, Rechungma, is translated here . Considering the times in which these women lived, the songs reveal how Milarepa actively welcomed and guided female students, with the requisite dedication and faith, in the same way as his male students. He was a feminist and a vegetarian well before his time!
In 2023, I envisioned and commissioned a new Tibetan Buddhist thangka to make women more visible such as Saley-O and Rechungma, with the Kagyu forefather teachers and students. For more on that thangka, and images of it, see here
Three women have been interviewed so far for the Dakini Conversations podcast: Prof Janet Gyatso, Dr. Jue Liang and Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo. I plan to interview more. Also, I was interviewed about women, celibacy, sexuality, bliss and tantra in for Olivia Clementine’s podcast, see here.
There are two pages on the Dakini Translations website which list all the links to research and translations on women:
Articles about women and female deities/masters continue to be the most read articles on the website. For a recent speech I gave at the Bhutan Vajrayana conference 2022, on the Female Yogic (non-monastic roots) of Vajrayana and its monastic takeover, which was effectively ‘censored’ and not published by the organisers without any good reason, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKpzv_8ztb4.
Interestingly, despite the Treasury of Lives launching a project to make women’s stories more visible and numerous on their website, (including those translated by female scholars who have written about Sera Khandro and her first-person testimony) they are actually ignoring (not reporting) the first person testimonies and experiences of women, such as June Campbell, in their new 1st Kalu Rinpoche biography. Yet TOL say their biographies are not biased and objective, and peer-reviewed. At the very least, such a testimony should be reported as existing, regardless if correct or not. After all, other men’s testimonies and stories are reported in their biographies all the time, without fact-checking them. For more on the sexist bias in some TOL biographies, see here regarding their biography of the ‘cruel’ Tibetan queen and the derogatory and sexist language used in it by the white, male biographer.
The image I designed for International Women’s Day uses the classic symbol for women (and their private part) the lotus. The colour purple is one of the colours used for the internationally recognised day and the Venus symbol with a cross has also been incorporated in the number 8.
Music? Boys Wanna Be Her by Peaches, A Woman’s Worthby Alicia Keys , I’m A Lady by Santigold , Survivorby Destiny’s Child, Rebel Girlby Bikini Kill, 50 ft Queenieby PJ Harvey , I’m Every Womanby Chaka Khan and Womanby John Lennon. So many to choose!
May women and girls be supported, loved, cherished and flourish as Dharma practitioners, teachers, scholars, practitioners and more!
Adele Tomlin, 8th March 2025