🎁 Dec 20th (Tue) Solstice Eve Venerable Karma Lekshe Tsomo Mini-Pilgrimage Visit to Dhammadharini
❧ Dhammadharini Monastery
Dear local NorCal Venerables and Dhamma friends,
We are very fortunate! 🎀🎁✨ One of our international Buddhist women great elders and living legends, Sakyadhita International Buddhist Women's Association founder and president emeritus Venerable Bhiksuni Karma Lekshe Tsomo, will be stopping by our Dhammadharini Monastery on a "mini-pilgrimage" visit tomorrow afternoon, Tues, December 20th. We've learned that she's very kindly agreed to meet with our monastic community and any friends who may like to join us, as well as to have a recorded interview conversation with Ayya T (and possibly others present) about the progress of the revival of full ordination for women in the Himalayan and Theravada Buddhist traditions, as work Ven Lekshe has been actively engaged with for the past 30+ years. As some of you may know, 2022 has been a watershed year in this movement, with the revival of the Early Buddhist Mulasarvastivada Vinaya bhikshuni ordination lineage in Bhutan in June of 2022, with full Bhutanese Royal and State support. This is the Vinaya ordination lineage of the vast majority of Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist monastic communities, which originally had bhikshunis (bhikkhunis) long ago but, up till 2022, had been offering higher ordination exclusively for male monastics - bhikshus (bhikkhus). Bhikshu/bhikshuni is the Sanskrit form of the Pali bhikkhu/bhikkhuni. Local friends are warmly welcomed to come and join in meeting and greeting and to be present for this mini-pilgrimage visit to our monastery and conversation between these great leading women in Buddhism, who have made such a difference.
Venerable Karma Lekshe Tsomo, courtesy of: facebook.com/karma.l.tsomo.
Venerable Lekshe, now in her dynamic late 70s, was ordained as a Buddhist monastic forty-five years ago, with the only ordination then available to her in Tibetan Buddhism, as a novice. She studied Buddhism with the Tibetan community in exile in Dharamsala, India, for fifteen years, and with HH the Dalai Lama's encouragement, she went on to fully ordain as a bhikshuni in South Korea. She's now been a bhiksuni for 40 years. Together with Ayya Khema, and with the support of HH the Dalai Lama, she founded Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women back in 1987, and has served repeated terms as its president. Ven Lekshe is also the founding director of the Jamyang Foundation "Changing Perceptions of Women's Potential," an innovative education project supporting female Buddhist monastics in the Himalayas and South Asian developing countries.
Venerable Lekshe la went on to earn a doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Hawaii, and is a professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego, where she teaches Buddhism, World Religions, and Comparative Religious Ethics, with a focus on Women and Buddhism, Death and Dying, and Buddhist Philosophy & Ethics. She's authored and/or served as editor for an amazing number of important publications:
Sakyadhita: Daughters of the Buddha(1988), Buddhism Through American Women's Eyes (1995), Sisters in Solitude: Two Traditions of Buddhist Monastic Ethics for Women. A Comparative Analysis of the Chinese Dharmagupta and the Tibetan Mulasarvastivada Bhiksuni Pratimoksa Sutras (1996), 'Buddhist Women Across Cultures: Realizations (1999), Innovative Buddhist Women: Swimming Against the Stream(2000), Buddhist Women and Social Justice: Ideals, Challenges, and Achievements (2004), Out of the Shadows: Socially Engaged Buddhist Women in the Global Community (2006), Into the Jaws of Yama, Lord of Death: Buddhism, Bioethics, and Death (2006), Eminent Buddhist Women (2014), Buddhist Femininisms and Femininities (2019), and Women in Buddhist Traditions (2020).
Ven Lekshe's latest project is with Sakyadhita Hawaii, where she is currently developing the rural La’i Peace Center, with opportunities in Permaculture gardening and simple rustic Buddhist hermit living.
We're planning to welcome Ven Lekshe at our Dhammadharini Monastery in Penngrove sometime around or not so long after 1pm this Solstice Eve Tuesday Dec 20th, and to meet together in our open air Sala pavilion. You're welcome to come and go when you need to. Please RSVP to the monastery by tel/text to 707-583-9522 or email if you would like to join us.
Please bring ample warm wear. We'll put out our patio heaters and have hot water available for tea and coffee (welcome to bring your favorites or any you would like to share). Allowable but not required to bring holiday treats to share.
As Covid levels rise again with winter, Dhammadharini remains committed to offering a safe environment for our monastic and lay community and friends. We ask everyone’s loving-kindness, generosity of heart, mindfulness and care in doing so. We ask all friends to wear masks and maintain social distance from those not in your family "pod." Thank you very much for your mettā and abhaya-dana in offering this gift of loving-kindness and safety to one another.
Please park mindfully in the monastery neighborhood - there is abundant street parking. The speed limit is 15 mph. No parking within 50 feet of a stop sign, or in front of a neighbor's driveway. You can pull in front of the monastery entrance to briefly drop off people and things, but please don't park there. We look forward to seeing you!
Warm welcome to share this message with anyone who you feel would very much wish to be here.
With much metta,
the Dhammadharini Community.
❧ Dhammadharini Monastery
We hope you had a good Solstice!
*Buddhistdoor Global has recently, in the past week, published two articles on these two correlated topics:
"A New Era for the Women’s Order: UTBSI’s First International Bhikkhuni Ordination in Bodh Gaya" "Buddhistdooor View: New Theravada Bhikkhuni Ordinations A Cause For Joy"