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00:00:00 Introduction 00:02:00 On translating Sera Khandro's autobiography and what makes her particular autobiography so unique. 00:05:00 Human creativity coming out of interdependence and inter-relationality. 00:13:00 Prophetic visions with dakinis, khandro-ma and non-human consorts, and significance of tendrel in terma, treasure revelation. 00:18:00 More on earth and mind treasure including an example from Sera Khandro's autobiography. 00:25:00 Climate crisis and relating with the earth. 00:28:00 Metaphors in Sera Khandro's writing on joy and grief, and great love. 00:38:00 Linguistic universes of Tibetan and English, and how that affects the interpretations of translations, including words like enlightenment, lord, sin, inseparability and equality. 00:45:00 A story Chatral Sangye Dorje Rinpoche told about his first hand experience with his teacher Sera Khandro. LINKS Previous conversation with Dr. Jacoby on Love & Liberation, Writings of Sera Khandro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUmr0pBJd70 Lecture with Dr. Jacoby through Boston University on Interdependent Personhood and Relational Ethics: A Tibetan Perspective https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg745EOXzcQ Podcast https://oliviaclementine.com/podcasts Support Enjoy these episodes? Please leave a review here. Scroll down to Review & Ratings. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/love-liberation/id1393858607
Christina Monson is a Buddhist practitioner and teacher and Tibetan language translator, and interpreter with over 30 years of study, translation and practice experience in Buddhism. Some of what Christina shares today: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:42 Meeting self-made Buddha Chatral Rinpoche 00:09:15 Recounting moments with Rinpoche. 00:13:00 Realization energy 00:17:44 Mountain retreat 00:21:00 Guru Yoga and releasing hope and fear 00:27:00 Retreat schedule 00:36:00 Illness, grief and this year being the most transformational for Christina 00:50:00 A reading and elaboration on "A Song of Amazement Inspired by Practice Experience" by Uza Khandro (Sera Khandro). 01:00:00 Uniqueness of Sera Khandro as a human and realized being. 01:02:00 Reading and reflections on “Spontaneous Advice, Connected with a Prayer,” by Chatral Rinpoche 01:07:00 Challenges in translation and specifically this prayer. 01:12:00 Conclusion Links: Spontaneous Advice Connected with a Prayer https://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/chatral-rinpoche/spontaneous-advice-connected-with-prayer A Song of Amazement Inspired by Practice Experience https://www.lotsawahouse.org/tibetan-masters/sera-khandro/song-of-amazement Podcast https://oliviaclementine.com/podcasts Support Enjoy these episodes? Please leave a review here. Scroll down to Review & Ratings. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/love-liberation/id1393858607
Episode highlights: Sarah and Olivia sharing why both this podcast and Sarah's book are called Love & Liberation Sera Khandro's autobiography (namtar) as a pathway of correcting our view around dharma, enlightenment and relationship Sera's transparency on her humanity Motherhood and Vajrayana Buddhism Female body denigration Meaning and purpose of khandromas Consortship 5 attributes for a successful revelation Issues with consortship and sex abuse in Buddhism Chatral Rinpoche about his connection and parallels with Sera Khandro Sarah Jacoby's experience with Chatral Rinpoche Passage from Sera Khandro on love and liberation.
Sarah H. Jacoby‘s recent monograph, Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro (Columbia University Press, 2014), focuses on the extraordinary life and times of the Tibetan laywoman Sera Khandro and uses her story to examine a number of important issues in the study of Tibetan Buddhism. Sera Khandro was born in 1892 to well-off parents in cosmopolitan Lhasa, but ran-away to eastern Tibet at the age of fifteen, hoping to fulfill her religious aspirations. After enduring various hardships, she eventually became the consort of a monk at the age of twenty. After a tumultuous nine years during which she was subjected to the ill-will of many residents of the monastery where she resided and during which time she bore two children, she moved in with the lama under whom she had originally studied, a man whom she considered her original teacher, whose consort she became (attaining spiritual liberation in the process), and whose biography she would eventually write after his death. After three years, her spiritual partner died, and Sera Khandro spent the last sixteen years of her life teaching widely throughout eastern Tibet and engaged in writing. She died in 1940. Jacoby's study is based in large part on two previously unexamined sources: a biography that Sera Khandro wrote of her male teacher, and Sera Khandro's own autobiography. There are very few pre-1950s' Tibetan primary sources authored by women, and these two documents allow Jacoby a unique view of a period usually seen through male eyes. In her discussion of Sera Khandro's writings, Jacoby locates the aforementioned autobiography in the context of Tibetan literature, on the one hand, and explains autobiography's role in the construction of religious identity in Tibet, on the other. Related to this issue is what Jacoby calls “autobiographical ventriloquy”: claims that one makes about ones own spiritual attainments by putting words in the mouth of another character. In the case at hand, Sera Khandro records conversations that she has with dakinis in which these celestial beings, in response to Sera Khandro's expressions of doubt about her own progress along the Buddhist path, assert that she has in fact attained a high level of spiritual attainment. In addition to her interactions with dakinis, Sera Khandro established relationships with the semi-legendary Yeshe Tsogyel and with autochthonous deities in eastern Tibet. Drawing on the theory of “relational selfhood,” by which an autobiographical subject's identity is constructed through that subject's depiction of his or her relationships with other social actors, Jacoby shows that Sera Khandro's own identity as a treasure revealer depended on the relationships she had with both those in her immediate environment (e.g., the local deities) and those in the mythic past (e.g., Yeshe Tsogyel). In this way, religious legitimacy–at least in the case of Sera Khandro–depended on both local and pan-Tibetan associations. In the final two chapters of the book Jacoby discusses Sera Khandro's role as a consort. She looks at the various ways in which Sera Khandro herself understood such practices and in which she used men as consorts for practices aimed at furthering her own spiritual progress. This close analysis provides the reader with a much more nuanced view of Tibetan Buddhist attitudes towards sexual practices. And in the final chapter Jacoby shows that while we usually think of such practices as thoroughly impersonal and soteriological in character, in the case at hand Sera Khandro's own feelings of affection for her partner Drime Ozer cannot be easily disentangled fr... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sarah H. Jacoby‘s recent monograph, Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro (Columbia University Press, 2014), focuses on the extraordinary life and times of the Tibetan laywoman Sera Khandro and uses her story to examine a number of important issues in the study of Tibetan Buddhism. Sera Khandro was born in 1892 to well-off parents in cosmopolitan Lhasa, but ran-away to eastern Tibet at the age of fifteen, hoping to fulfill her religious aspirations. After enduring various hardships, she eventually became the consort of a monk at the age of twenty. After a tumultuous nine years during which she was subjected to the ill-will of many residents of the monastery where she resided and during which time she bore two children, she moved in with the lama under whom she had originally studied, a man whom she considered her original teacher, whose consort she became (attaining spiritual liberation in the process), and whose biography she would eventually write after his death. After three years, her spiritual partner died, and Sera Khandro spent the last sixteen years of her life teaching widely throughout eastern Tibet and engaged in writing. She died in 1940. Jacoby's study is based in large part on two previously unexamined sources: a biography that Sera Khandro wrote of her male teacher, and Sera Khandro's own autobiography. There are very few pre-1950s' Tibetan primary sources authored by women, and these two documents allow Jacoby a unique view of a period usually seen through male eyes. In her discussion of Sera Khandro's writings, Jacoby locates the aforementioned autobiography in the context of Tibetan literature, on the one hand, and explains autobiography's role in the construction of religious identity in Tibet, on the other. Related to this issue is what Jacoby calls “autobiographical ventriloquy”: claims that one makes about ones own spiritual attainments by putting words in the mouth of another character. In the case at hand, Sera Khandro records conversations that she has with dakinis in which these celestial beings, in response to Sera Khandro's expressions of doubt about her own progress along the Buddhist path, assert that she has in fact attained a high level of spiritual attainment. In addition to her interactions with dakinis, Sera Khandro established relationships with the semi-legendary Yeshe Tsogyel and with autochthonous deities in eastern Tibet. Drawing on the theory of “relational selfhood,” by which an autobiographical subject's identity is constructed through that subject's depiction of his or her relationships with other social actors, Jacoby shows that Sera Khandro's own identity as a treasure revealer depended on the relationships she had with both those in her immediate environment (e.g., the local deities) and those in the mythic past (e.g., Yeshe Tsogyel). In this way, religious legitimacy–at least in the case of Sera Khandro–depended on both local and pan-Tibetan associations. In the final two chapters of the book Jacoby discusses Sera Khandro's role as a consort. She looks at the various ways in which Sera Khandro herself understood such practices and in which she used men as consorts for practices aimed at furthering her own spiritual progress. This close analysis provides the reader with a much more nuanced view of Tibetan Buddhist attitudes towards sexual practices. And in the final chapter Jacoby shows that while we usually think of such practices as thoroughly impersonal and soteriological in character, in the case at hand Sera Khandro's own feelings of affection for her partner Drime Ozer cannot be easily disentangled fr...
Sarah H. Jacoby‘s recent monograph, Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro (Columbia University Press, 2014), focuses on the extraordinary life and times of the Tibetan laywoman Sera Khandro and uses her story to examine a number of important issues in the study of Tibetan Buddhism. Sera Khandro was born in 1892 to well-off parents in cosmopolitan Lhasa, but ran-away to eastern Tibet at the age of fifteen, hoping to fulfill her religious aspirations. After enduring various hardships, she eventually became the consort of a monk at the age of twenty. After a tumultuous nine years during which she was subjected to the ill-will of many residents of the monastery where she resided and during which time she bore two children, she moved in with the lama under whom she had originally studied, a man whom she considered her original teacher, whose consort she became (attaining spiritual liberation in the process), and whose biography she would eventually write after his death. After three years, her spiritual partner died, and Sera Khandro spent the last sixteen years of her life teaching widely throughout eastern Tibet and engaged in writing. She died in 1940. Jacoby’s study is based in large part on two previously unexamined sources: a biography that Sera Khandro wrote of her male teacher, and Sera Khandro’s own autobiography. There are very few pre-1950s’ Tibetan primary sources authored by women, and these two documents allow Jacoby a unique view of a period usually seen through male eyes. In her discussion of Sera Khandro’s writings, Jacoby locates the aforementioned autobiography in the context of Tibetan literature, on the one hand, and explains autobiography’s role in the construction of religious identity in Tibet, on the other. Related to this issue is what Jacoby calls “autobiographical ventriloquy”: claims that one makes about ones own spiritual attainments by putting words in the mouth of another character. In the case at hand, Sera Khandro records conversations that she has with dakinis in which these celestial beings, in response to Sera Khandro’s expressions of doubt about her own progress along the Buddhist path, assert that she has in fact attained a high level of spiritual attainment. In addition to her interactions with dakinis, Sera Khandro established relationships with the semi-legendary Yeshe Tsogyel and with autochthonous deities in eastern Tibet. Drawing on the theory of “relational selfhood,” by which an autobiographical subject’s identity is constructed through that subject’s depiction of his or her relationships with other social actors, Jacoby shows that Sera Khandro’s own identity as a treasure revealer depended on the relationships she had with both those in her immediate environment (e.g., the local deities) and those in the mythic past (e.g., Yeshe Tsogyel). In this way, religious legitimacy–at least in the case of Sera Khandro–depended on both local and pan-Tibetan associations. In the final two chapters of the book Jacoby discusses Sera Khandro’s role as a consort. She looks at the various ways in which Sera Khandro herself understood such practices and in which she used men as consorts for practices aimed at furthering her own spiritual progress. This close analysis provides the reader with a much more nuanced view of Tibetan Buddhist attitudes towards sexual practices. And in the final chapter Jacoby shows that while we usually think of such practices as thoroughly impersonal and soteriological in character, in the case at hand Sera Khandro’s own feelings of affection for her partner Drime Ozer cannot be easily disentangled fr... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sarah H. Jacoby‘s recent monograph, Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro (Columbia University Press, 2014), focuses on the extraordinary life and times of the Tibetan laywoman Sera Khandro and uses her story to examine a number of important issues in the study of Tibetan Buddhism. Sera Khandro was born in 1892 to well-off parents in cosmopolitan Lhasa, but ran-away to eastern Tibet at the age of fifteen, hoping to fulfill her religious aspirations. After enduring various hardships, she eventually became the consort of a monk at the age of twenty. After a tumultuous nine years during which she was subjected to the ill-will of many residents of the monastery where she resided and during which time she bore two children, she moved in with the lama under whom she had originally studied, a man whom she considered her original teacher, whose consort she became (attaining spiritual liberation in the process), and whose biography she would eventually write after his death. After three years, her spiritual partner died, and Sera Khandro spent the last sixteen years of her life teaching widely throughout eastern Tibet and engaged in writing. She died in 1940. Jacoby’s study is based in large part on two previously unexamined sources: a biography that Sera Khandro wrote of her male teacher, and Sera Khandro’s own autobiography. There are very few pre-1950s’ Tibetan primary sources authored by women, and these two documents allow Jacoby a unique view of a period usually seen through male eyes. In her discussion of Sera Khandro’s writings, Jacoby locates the aforementioned autobiography in the context of Tibetan literature, on the one hand, and explains autobiography’s role in the construction of religious identity in Tibet, on the other. Related to this issue is what Jacoby calls “autobiographical ventriloquy”: claims that one makes about ones own spiritual attainments by putting words in the mouth of another character. In the case at hand, Sera Khandro records conversations that she has with dakinis in which these celestial beings, in response to Sera Khandro’s expressions of doubt about her own progress along the Buddhist path, assert that she has in fact attained a high level of spiritual attainment. In addition to her interactions with dakinis, Sera Khandro established relationships with the semi-legendary Yeshe Tsogyel and with autochthonous deities in eastern Tibet. Drawing on the theory of “relational selfhood,” by which an autobiographical subject’s identity is constructed through that subject’s depiction of his or her relationships with other social actors, Jacoby shows that Sera Khandro’s own identity as a treasure revealer depended on the relationships she had with both those in her immediate environment (e.g., the local deities) and those in the mythic past (e.g., Yeshe Tsogyel). In this way, religious legitimacy–at least in the case of Sera Khandro–depended on both local and pan-Tibetan associations. In the final two chapters of the book Jacoby discusses Sera Khandro’s role as a consort. She looks at the various ways in which Sera Khandro herself understood such practices and in which she used men as consorts for practices aimed at furthering her own spiritual progress. This close analysis provides the reader with a much more nuanced view of Tibetan Buddhist attitudes towards sexual practices. And in the final chapter Jacoby shows that while we usually think of such practices as thoroughly impersonal and soteriological in character, in the case at hand Sera Khandro’s own feelings of affection for her partner Drime Ozer cannot be easily disentangled fr... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sarah H. Jacoby‘s recent monograph, Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro (Columbia University Press, 2014), focuses on the extraordinary life and times of the Tibetan laywoman Sera Khandro and uses her story to examine a number of important issues in the study of Tibetan Buddhism. Sera Khandro was born in 1892 to well-off parents in cosmopolitan Lhasa, but ran-away to eastern Tibet at the age of fifteen, hoping to fulfill her religious aspirations. After enduring various hardships, she eventually became the consort of a monk at the age of twenty. After a tumultuous nine years during which she was subjected to the ill-will of many residents of the monastery where she resided and during which time she bore two children, she moved in with the lama under whom she had originally studied, a man whom she considered her original teacher, whose consort she became (attaining spiritual liberation in the process), and whose biography she would eventually write after his death. After three years, her spiritual partner died, and Sera Khandro spent the last sixteen years of her life teaching widely throughout eastern Tibet and engaged in writing. She died in 1940. Jacoby’s study is based in large part on two previously unexamined sources: a biography that Sera Khandro wrote of her male teacher, and Sera Khandro’s own autobiography. There are very few pre-1950s’ Tibetan primary sources authored by women, and these two documents allow Jacoby a unique view of a period usually seen through male eyes. In her discussion of Sera Khandro’s writings, Jacoby locates the aforementioned autobiography in the context of Tibetan literature, on the one hand, and explains autobiography’s role in the construction of religious identity in Tibet, on the other. Related to this issue is what Jacoby calls “autobiographical ventriloquy”: claims that one makes about ones own spiritual attainments by putting words in the mouth of another character. In the case at hand, Sera Khandro records conversations that she has with dakinis in which these celestial beings, in response to Sera Khandro’s expressions of doubt about her own progress along the Buddhist path, assert that she has in fact attained a high level of spiritual attainment. In addition to her interactions with dakinis, Sera Khandro established relationships with the semi-legendary Yeshe Tsogyel and with autochthonous deities in eastern Tibet. Drawing on the theory of “relational selfhood,” by which an autobiographical subject’s identity is constructed through that subject’s depiction of his or her relationships with other social actors, Jacoby shows that Sera Khandro’s own identity as a treasure revealer depended on the relationships she had with both those in her immediate environment (e.g., the local deities) and those in the mythic past (e.g., Yeshe Tsogyel). In this way, religious legitimacy–at least in the case of Sera Khandro–depended on both local and pan-Tibetan associations. In the final two chapters of the book Jacoby discusses Sera Khandro’s role as a consort. She looks at the various ways in which Sera Khandro herself understood such practices and in which she used men as consorts for practices aimed at furthering her own spiritual progress. This close analysis provides the reader with a much more nuanced view of Tibetan Buddhist attitudes towards sexual practices. And in the final chapter Jacoby shows that while we usually think of such practices as thoroughly impersonal and soteriological in character, in the case at hand Sera Khandro’s own feelings of affection for her partner Drime Ozer cannot be easily disentangled fr... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sarah H. Jacoby‘s recent monograph, Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro (Columbia University Press, 2014), focuses on the extraordinary life and times of the Tibetan laywoman Sera Khandro and uses her story to examine a number of important issues in the study of Tibetan Buddhism. Sera Khandro was born in 1892 to well-off parents in cosmopolitan Lhasa, but ran-away to eastern Tibet at the age of fifteen, hoping to fulfill her religious aspirations. After enduring various hardships, she eventually became the consort of a monk at the age of twenty. After a tumultuous nine years during which she was subjected to the ill-will of many residents of the monastery where she resided and during which time she bore two children, she moved in with the lama under whom she had originally studied, a man whom she considered her original teacher, whose consort she became (attaining spiritual liberation in the process), and whose biography she would eventually write after his death. After three years, her spiritual partner died, and Sera Khandro spent the last sixteen years of her life teaching widely throughout eastern Tibet and engaged in writing. She died in 1940. Jacoby’s study is based in large part on two previously unexamined sources: a biography that Sera Khandro wrote of her male teacher, and Sera Khandro’s own autobiography. There are very few pre-1950s’ Tibetan primary sources authored by women, and these two documents allow Jacoby a unique view of a period usually seen through male eyes. In her discussion of Sera Khandro’s writings, Jacoby locates the aforementioned autobiography in the context of Tibetan literature, on the one hand, and explains autobiography’s role in the construction of religious identity in Tibet, on the other. Related to this issue is what Jacoby calls “autobiographical ventriloquy”: claims that one makes about ones own spiritual attainments by putting words in the mouth of another character. In the case at hand, Sera Khandro records conversations that she has with dakinis in which these celestial beings, in response to Sera Khandro’s expressions of doubt about her own progress along the Buddhist path, assert that she has in fact attained a high level of spiritual attainment. In addition to her interactions with dakinis, Sera Khandro established relationships with the semi-legendary Yeshe Tsogyel and with autochthonous deities in eastern Tibet. Drawing on the theory of “relational selfhood,” by which an autobiographical subject’s identity is constructed through that subject’s depiction of his or her relationships with other social actors, Jacoby shows that Sera Khandro’s own identity as a treasure revealer depended on the relationships she had with both those in her immediate environment (e.g., the local deities) and those in the mythic past (e.g., Yeshe Tsogyel). In this way, religious legitimacy–at least in the case of Sera Khandro–depended on both local and pan-Tibetan associations. In the final two chapters of the book Jacoby discusses Sera Khandro’s role as a consort. She looks at the various ways in which Sera Khandro herself understood such practices and in which she used men as consorts for practices aimed at furthering her own spiritual progress. This close analysis provides the reader with a much more nuanced view of Tibetan Buddhist attitudes towards sexual practices. And in the final chapter Jacoby shows that while we usually think of such practices as thoroughly impersonal and soteriological in character, in the case at hand Sera Khandro’s own feelings of affection for her partner Drime Ozer cannot be easily disentangled fr... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices