I am an Assistant Professor at Georgia State University, and the Director of Graduate Studies. I specialize in the history of Tibet, Buddhist literature, women, and sexuality.
My sources include literature developed within transnational concerns across India, Nepal, and Tibet. I am currently completing a book, Yoginīs in Tibet: A History of Women in The Great Perfection (rdzogs chen).
My research focuses on Tibetan literature about women and meditation in the fourteenth century, a period of the formation of canons in Tibet as they received and reinterpreted Indian Buddhist literary traditions. My areas of research include:
As a Native American woman and multi-cultural person, I foreground issues of diversity and inclusion in my teaching and research. My concern is with alterity, especially in terms of how to facilitate bridges for students to empathetically engage with the worldview of other times and cultures.
My research has been funded by the Tsadra Foundation, the Ford Foundation Fellowship, Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, the Buckner W. Clay Award in the Humanities, Ellen Bayard Weedon Grant and three Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowships. I have also received the University of Virginia Diversity Program Professional Development Award, the University of Virginia Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences Summer Research Award and the Project on Lived Theology Research Award.
My work as a scholar began after fifteen years living as a Tibetan Buddhist nun (rnal ‘byor ma) teaching Buddhist philosophy. During this time I was embedded in Tibetan Buddhist communities of India, Nepal, Tibet, and North America. During this time, I ran an international non-profit organization and trained Buddhist teachers.
Driven to my graduate research by my interest in Tibetan history and women in Buddhism, I earned my MA from University of Virginia in the History of Religions, specializing in Tibetan Buddhism. I then entered the Ph.D. program in Religious Studies. I finished my Ph.D. at University of Virginia in 2023. There, my research focused on women and sexuality in esoteric Tibetan contemplative literature, also known as Great Perfection (rdzogs chen).
I have taught courses as a primary instructor at Dickson College and I taught classes at the University of Virginia, teaching Buddhism in Tibet, Modern Tibetan Language, Tibetan Buddhism Introduction and Buddhism and Gender, and serving as a Teaching Assistant for courses on Hinduism and East Asian Religions. Currently I am an Assistant Professor at Georgia State University, where I have taught courses on historical and literary perspectives on Buddhism. In 2024, I will taught Theories and Methods in the study of Religion, Applied Religions, and the History of Buddhist Meditation in the Modern World.
I am currently preparing a manuscript for publication based on my dissertation research. It is entitled, Yoginīs in Tibet, A History of Women in The Great Perfection (rdzogs chen). This focuses on a Study of The Heart Essence of the Ḍākinī (mkha’ ‘gro snying thig), analyzing scriptures of pivotal importance to Tibetan Buddhist contemplative movements in the fourteenth century. These revealed scriptures were redacted and presented by Tibetan luminaries such as Longchenpa (klong chen rab ‘byams pa, 1308-1363), the Third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje (1284-1339) and later, the Fifth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso (1617-82). Today, the scriptures continue to define the contemplative curriculum in two of the largest Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the world. These scriptures are significant as a major early source advocating inclusion of women and dispensing instruction on religious sexuality in Tibetan esoteric culture known as Great Perfection (rdzogs chen).
My research focuses on the missing history of Tibetan yoginīs, non-celibate female adepts in esoteric communities focused on Great Perfection (rdzogs chen) literature. One of Tibet’s own most distinctive contributions to Buddhist philosophy, Great Perfection represented novel post-tantric reinterpretations of key elements of Buddhist philosophy and praxis, producing an extensive body of literary masterpieces that constituted an indigenous Tibetan reinvention of Buddhist tantra. However, how these innovations extended to yoginīs is a question yet to be answered, leaving a gap in understanding how the most influential post-tantric movement in Tibet factors in the history of Buddhist women and sexuality. My research fills that gap.
That missing history is also glaring for global Buddhism in the post #metoo era. Although public debates allude to these traditions, scholars have yet to identify what those traditions were, what were the rules, practices, and tensions in canonical research featuring consorts. My research contributes important context to these conversations.
Therefore, this research addresses that missing history by analyzing prescriptions for yoginīs, the non-celibate female adepts described in The Heart Essence of the Ḍākinī, (mkha’ ‘gro snying thig), a scripture that came to define Great Perfection in Tibet. I draw on Foucauldian discourse theory, to highlight issues of representation and contestation, to point out how post-tantric taxonomies and consort instructions are constitutive of new forms of ideal Buddhist women. I also show developments in ideals for consorts across Heart Essence scriptures from the twelfth to the fourteenth century by using artificial intelligence tools to track intertextual relationships.
I have published three articles and one book chapter on this research, “Anatomy of a Ḍākinī; Female Consort Discourse in a Case of Fourteenth-Century Tibetan Buddhist Literature,” in The Journal of Dharma Studies (2020) and “Sexuality in Buddhist Traditions,” for The Cambridge World History of Sexualities Vol 2 (2024). I have two articles published this year, “One Desires You, One Cries; A Taxonomy of Tibetan Consorts,” in Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, and “Non-duality as Yab Yum in Tibetan Great Perfection,” in The Journal of Dharma Studies. Two more articles are in progress, one on the lives of Princess Pemasel (eighth century) who is cited as the reincarnated revealer of The Heart Essence of the Ḍākinī and Interview with a Consort, analyzing the multiple editions of The Heart Essence of the Ḍākinī from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. This research has been presented at major conferences including the American Academy of Religions, the International Association of Buddhist Studies, and International Seminar of Young Tibetologists and it has been funded by the Tsadra Foundation, the Ford Foundation and Fulbright-Hays Fellowship.
I have presented my research at several major conferences including the upcoming presentations at the American Academy of Religions and at the International Association of Buddhist Studies. I am a regularly invited speaker for both academic and public audiences on topics concerning women in Buddhism, Buddhist sexualities, sexual abuse in Buddhism, the history of Buddhist meditation, and Buddhism outside the monastery in Tibet.