50 BUDDHADHARMA: THE PRACTITIONER’S QUARTERLYcurrent teacher told me ahead of time,
“This is what I would like to do, but why
don’t you go and think about it? Espe-
cially talk to your husband.” Because he
understood very well that devoting my
life to the dharma at this level would
affect my family as well as my relation-
ship with my husband.
I feel like it’s not so much people
having ill will or opposing me being a
teacher but rather we’re experiencing the
effects of a long history of a patriarchal
institution. People are used to seeing a
teacher in a certain form—mostly mon-
astic men—and here’s this non-monas-
tic, non-man teacher. What do we do
with this person? That’s a great part of
my experience. I’m here. I’m a woman.
That’s going to shape other people’s
response to me. So rather than making it
a problem, how do I practice?PEMA KHANDRO RINPOCHE: I really
resonate with that. For so long, I was a
young female teacher and a tulku, which
is someone enthroned as the reincarna-
tion of a predecessor, and I didn’t quite
fit in people’s boxes. People would often
ask me, “Who’s the lama of your cen-
ters?” And I would say, “Well, I am.” I
think it’s important to highlight what
it’s like for women—or people who are
underrepresented in these communities—
to come into the role of the teacher. Howshe was really sexy. She was ninety-four,
but she was really sexy and powerful
and juicy, and there was zero sense
that she had to become like a man or
embody masculine qualities. She was just
expressing a raw, playful, sexy energy
at ninety-four. It showed me so much—
not only about aging but also about the
possibility of playing with the idea of
what it means to be a woman and using
that play as a vehicle of transmission.
Everyone regarded her as this enlightened
dakini, this enlightened female master,
so there was room, I think, for her to
play joyfully and be sassy. It was also so
potent to receive instructions pointing
out the nature of mind in the vehicle of
a woman’s body. That was especially
because in so many of the portrayals I
had seen before of female Buddhist teach-
ers, and in Buddhism generally, there was
an implicit dropping of sexuality.REBECCA LI: I’m part of an organization
that has both laypeople and a monastic
community, and my key challenge is
that there is no one like me in the whole
institution. I’m a lay teacher, a woman
with full dharma transmission. When my
current teacher gave me dharma trans-
mission, he did it very differently from
Master Sheng Yen. Master Sheng Yen just
said, “I’m going to give you a dharma
transmission. Make three bows.” MySYLVIA BOORSTEIN CHIMYO ATKINSON AYYA SUDDHAMA JAIME MCLEOD CHRISTINA FELDMAN