Yeshe Tsogyal: Encountering Vast Open Space as the Dakini
December 30, 2024–January 5, 2025
Experiential Retreats, Hybrid Program, On Land Festivals & Conferences, On Land Retreats, Personal Transformation, Special Events
Start the new year with a revitalizing retreat that explores the wisdom and blessings of the dakini who dances in open space!
We spend much of our day trying to keep up, fit in, and get through the daily grind. How do we disrupt the cycle and outgrow the limited view of ourselves as isolated beings with limited time and resources? One answer is to make a relationship with space. Making space for our needs, gifts, well-being, and the spectrum of who and how we are moment by moment, including the ups and downs, joys and sorrows of life.
The dakini is an expression of space and dances freely in the vast open sky. She is a symbol of unfettered wisdom in Buddhism and can be contacted through experiential exercises and specific practices that invoke the dakini within. In this retreat we will engage in Mudra Space Awareness practices alongside the sadhana (liturgy) of the dakini, Yeshe Tsogyal, a female figure central to the mythology of Buddhism’s transmission to Tibet.
In the stillness of winter in the Rocky Mountains, we’ll enjoy silent mornings for meditation, contemplative movement, and embodied exercises. The afternoons will feature discussions about space, the feminine principle, and the dakini as we journey into the profound sadhana, “The Brilliant Light of the Blessings of Great Bliss: A Guruyoga based on Khandro Yeshe Tsogyal,” by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. This program is open to anyone with a strong foundation in the Mahayana and an inspiration to connect with Yeshe Tsogyal.
You are warmly welcome to attend the lung (reading transmission) for the Yeshe Tsogyal practice on November 17th through Shambhala Online. The lung will also be given during the retreat.
https://shambhala.org/event/
To learn more about Yeshe Tsogyal, visit:
https://www.lionsroar.com/the-many-lives-of-yeshe-tsogyal/
Presenters
Dr. Holly Gayley
Holly Gayley is a scholar and translator of Buddhist literature in contemporary Tibet and associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research explores gender and sexuality in Buddhist tantra, literature by and about Tibetan and Himalayan women, ethical reform in contemporary Tibet, and theorizing translation, both literary and cultural, in the transmission of […]
Carla Burns
Carla Burns is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Naropa University and Director in the MA Contemplative Psychotherapy residential retreat programs. In addition, she designs and implements programming for Naropa’s Compassion Initiative. Her specialties include the integration of corporeal, elemental, and spatial knowledge into everyday awareness. Her research and teaching explore embodied practices to close the […]
