Yeshe Tsogyel, Sera Khandro, and Sarah Jacoby; Centering women within the story of Vajrayāna Buddhism

by Farley Urmston

It is easy to begin a discussion of sex and religion with the problematic aspects of the combination, with a list of the myriad ways that religious leaders from all traditions have misused power through sexual predation, with a declaration any religion that explicitly (even if in a very limited fashion) condones sexual religious practice should be rejected flat out. Of course, to draw this hard line would be to create two categories—problematic religion on one side, unproblematice on the other. Among the former would be Vajrayāna Buddhism, a school of Buddhism born in Tibet that includes within its nature “technologies of sexuality,” or “tantric sex.” Among the latter would be most other religions, none of which have been spared the taint of sexual abuse as misuse of power. In this light, then, the drawn line wavers and, at the very least, becomes less helpful. Still, one asks: given the ubiquitous nature of sexual abuse in religious institutions, shouldn’t we dismiss the ones that explicitly condone sex across power differentials? Isn’t this an obvious first step? In her article “She said no: toward a survivor-centered history of Vajrayāna Buddhist sexuality,” the scholar Sarah Jacoby argues that, no, to dismiss Vajrayāna Buddhism for this reason is misguided. A better idea, she insists, than turning away from this particular Buddhist vehicle is to turn towards it, to look at the ways in which patriarchal norms and male-oriented manipulation have been far more powerful in inviting abuse than centuries-old highly controlled (ideally) sexual practices, however worthy of scrutiny those practices may be.

In this essay, I intend to take Jacoby up on her challenge by not turning away from a tradition (the sexual aspects of Vajrayāna) I know next-to-nothing about. As I do this I will welcome as my guides three women: Jacoby herself; Sera Khandro, the Tibetan woman and Buddhist visionary who is the subject of Jacoby’s scholarship; and Yeshe Tsogyel, the eighth-century Tibetan woman revered as the mother of Tibetan Buddhism and as a Buddha incarnate.

Sera Khandro was born in 1892 and died in 1940. She was born into a wealthy family from which she fled as a fifteen-year-old into the Golok region of eastern Tibet. Through years of struggle, she grew to become a renowned guru and treasure revealer (visionary receiver of sacred texts) who, despite being a victim of sexual violence herself and someone well acquainted with the pervasive presence of sexual abuse, became an eminent teacher and practitioner of non-celibate tantric sexuality. Khandro’s own narration of her story is presented in Jacoby’s 2014 compilation, Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro.

 Yeshe Tsogyel lived a thousand years before Sera Khandro. She too was born to a wealthy family; she too rejected the idea of marriage and claimed the pathway of celibacy. She too nevertheless became a legendary figure of great power within Tibet who was understood to wield great sexual power. Like Sera Khandro (indeed, like millions of women in Tibet and elsewhere, in the past and in the present), Yeshe Tsogyel was a survivor of physical and sexual abuse, abuse which—significantly--did not end with her ascent to a position of power, fame, and influence. Most notable in her story—and most shockingly for many, myself included, given how casually it is mentioned (one could almost miss it)—is a post-enlightenment multi-penetrator rape. As I prepare myself to be guided into Vajrayāna Buddhism by these three women of different eras, I will choose this as a starting place: the rape scene/non-scene of Yeshe Tsogyel.

The section in question takes place about two-thirds of the way into The Secret Life and Songs of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel, an account written in the eighteenth century by Taksham Nuden Dorje based on his own revelation (spiritual receiving) of Yeshe Tsogyel’s eighth-century story. What was jarring for me and others, I believe, is the tone of the narration. Yeshe Tsogyel—the revelation is told from her point of view—mentions the rape almost, it seems, in passing. The sentences concerning the violence and immediate aftermath read as follows: “Then I went to live in Shampo Gang, and it was there that seven bandits robbed me of my possessions and raped me. Afterwards I sang them this song of introduction to the four joys [a song which causes them to] gain simultaneous spiritual maturity and release. They gained energy control and knowledge of the evolution of the four joys. Without leaving their bodies these seven Mahāsiddhas, who were thieves, arrived in the Land of Orgyen and served other beings to immeasurable purpose.”[1]

To modern day readers, the absence of any descriptive or reflective language about the fact of a group rape may indeed suggest an untenable nonchalance. But to interpret this section in this way is, I have come to understand, to miss the point. The point is not that a bad thing happened to Yeshe Tsogyel and she handled it in a certain way that made it ok; the point is that this woman, through years of training, of austerity and struggle, of treasure revelation and transmission, of complete dedication of herself to the benefit of others, was able to summon the power of her body and mind not just to survive a terrible assault, but to use it to the world’s benefit by turning --through her tantric powers (somehow)--seven rapists into seven Mahāsiddhas, nearly-enlightened figures whose purpose is to further the welfare of other sentient beings. 

Rather than a message along the lines of rape is what you make of it (untenable indeed), the message of this section of Tsogyel’s Life seems more that there is great potential power in the body, power that cannot be matched by other instruments. Take the case of the rapists, for example. Here were seven men perpetrating a violence upon a woman, the extremity of which cannot be overstated. Other instruments of justice or so-called justice might have restricted or eliminated the capacities of these men; they could have been jailed or killed or otherwise disempowered. If plopped into today’s context, they might have been compelled into rape treatment; over time they might have—some of them might have—learned and healed and accepted the nature of the harm they perpetrated. But in this narrative, as Karma would have it, they encounter the body and soul of Yeshe Tsogyel, great tantric teacher, and are instantly transformed into instruments of peace and generosity, into disciples; Yeshe Tsogyel does not just eliminate seven rapists with her tantric powers; she replaces them with seven Bodhisattvas.

The rape of Yeshe Tsogyel offers an example of sexual practice as the exercise of power. This can be put in contrast to a general feeling--mostly among those of us who not do know much about Tantric Buddhism and who are, at the same time, greatly concerned by the abuse of power within religious contexts--that sexual practices within religions is a virtual invitation to the abuse of power. But what kind of power is not an invitation to the abuse of power? Might an investigation of this type of religious practice, this type of power, this context for abuses of power be a useful one? Is it possible that to scrutinize something so admittedly complicated is to force a recognition that all power is incredibly complicated, nuanced, and fraught?

In “She Said No,” Jacoby wades right into the complications with her discussion of Vajrayāna Buddhism as seen through the lens of Sera Khandro. Jacoby is careful to acknowledges the problem of sexual abuse within Vajrayāna Buddhist communities and urges scholars to face and seek to understand Vajrayāna “technologies of sexuality,”[2] in part because to do so will necessarily reduce abuse within that context, and in part because she is making the case that Sera Khandro is the appropriate lens through which to see not only Vajrayāna Buddhism but, somewhat surprisingly, Tibetan history as a whole. 

Separated from each other by centuries, Yeshe Tsogyel and Sera Khandro shared the experience of being women in a highly patriarchal world. Interestingly, the lives of each can be held against the temporal microcosm of the rape of Yeshe Tsogyel who was, within one story, both the victim of extreme sexual trauma and the wielder of extreme sexual power. Through the course of their lives, Yeshe Tsogyel and Sera Khandro experienced this duality on a large scale. Both women were offered in marriage to men they did not know or desire. Both refused these men, sometimes again and again. Both suffered as a result. Through years of discipline and austerity and commitment, both women became masters of Vajrayana Buddhism and its (somewhat) secret sexual practices. Both were able (again, through work and discipline) to counter the violence perpetrated against them with a power that grew from their own unlimited access to their own female bodies. In this way, as Jacoby makes the case, to study tantric practices is to hold two very different but related stories in one, and to seek to understand where and how discernment between them is essential.

That the “counter-stories” of women must challenge the phallocentric narrative behind tantric sexual practices is the basis of Jacoby’s argument. She argues that Sera Khandro, in her autobiography, “rewrites the familiar agent-object/male-female (yab-yum) sexual relation valorized in much of Vajrayāna Buddhism, instead portraying men as the potential consorts to be evaluated and summoned for mutually beneficial encounters.”[3] Jacoby goes further than simply drawing story and counter-story into side-by-side position, however; she brings Sera Khandro’s narrative to the center, arguing that it “casts the history of Vajrayāna sexuality in a new light, one centered on women’s prerogatives, including her consent to as well as refusal of male lamas’ solicitations.”[4] Vajrayāna Buddhism, Jacoby argues, must be understood as not simply a type of religious practice, but a type of religious practice that—like all religious practices—must be understood as balancing precariously between doing good and causing harm.

In offering Sera Khandro as the centerpiece of Vajrayāna sexuality, Jacoby is embarking on a complicated and nuanced undertaking that entails three main elements. First, in centering Sera Khandro’s story, Jacoby is insisting that the narrative must be the entire narrative—not just one detailing Sera Khandro’s power and listing her consorts and disciples, but one that acknowledges her status as a “survivor of sexual predation,” a phrase Jacoby uses intentionally and pointedly. “Applying the term ‘survivor’ to Sera Khandro,” Jacoby writes, “does not pertain to whether or not she succeeded in resisting unwanted male predation but instead attends to the fact that she needed to resist in the first place, which is a deeply familiar experience for many young female Vajrayāna Buddhist practitioners in particular.”[5] In other words, Jacoby refuses to deny the sexual predation part of the nature of Vajrayāna Buddhism; it is, she suggests, just as important as sexual prowess parts. Second, Jacoby’s centering of the Sera Khandro narrative is not just a centering of the story, per se, it is a centering of the story-telling, ie, the act of writing. Jacoby positions the work as “a form of counter-storytelling, following Blossom Stefaniw’s claim that ‘the act of telling, archiving, collecting, and persistently repeating counter-stories must be the central act of feminist historiography.’”[6] The counter-stories, argue both Jacoby and Stefaniw, like the women who tell them, do not just flesh out the original, male-oriented stories; on the contrary, they resist them. In writing her story, Sera Khandro is not just offering a woman’s point of view on Vajrayāna Buddhism, she is resisting the male definition of it. In making her own arguments, furthermore, Jacoby is doing the same.

The third thing that Jacoby is doing in her project of centering Sera Khandro’s story/storytelling is challenging, as she puts it, the “tired binary of medieval misogynist Tibet and modern egalitarian liberal democracy.”[7] The irony in the binary, of course, is that sexual predation exists now just as it existed in medieval times, that it does not discriminate between the west and the east, and that modern democracies remain firmly rooted in the patriarchy, just in a subtler way. Additionally, Jacoby makes clear that the western critique of Buddhist sexual practices is not the first such critique; as is the case in other religions, the complicated problems of this one have been known for centuries: “Tibetan and Sanskrit texts record a depth and richness of analysis about the purposes and problems associated with Vajrayāna sexual practices that can inform newer anglophone analysis.”[8] By offering the story of Vajrayāna Buddhism through that of a woman who both suffered sexual trauma and found renown as a sexual practitioner, Jacoby is projecting another counter-story, one in which Vajrayāna Buddhism cannot be dismissed on the basis of “an orientalist fantasy of ‘tantric sex.’”[9] Finally, by centering Sera Khandro’s story, Jacoby is also centering—for a moment—Vajrayāna Buddhism within “Religion” itself and challenging her readers to pursue even the most complicated ways that power, sex and religion intersect. Indeed, one look no further for complications than that which has occurred within the context of celibate populations, celibacy being—on the surface anyway—the polar opposite of tantric sexual mores.

Interestingly, as Jacoby stresses and as Janet Gyatso discusses in her paper on monastic celibacy within Vajrayāna Buddhism entitled “Sex,” the sexual practices of Vajrayāna do not necessarily involve another person. Indeed, it seems to be roundly acknowledged that—for women especially—to engage with a man in this way (Vajrayāna is heterosexual in its historical orientation) is a dangerous undertaking. Sera Khandro, as her writing attests, blatantly resisted the idea of involving a man in her tantric practices, choosing instead the sexual technology of celibacy. When a dakini (a female deity) appears before her in a vision and urges her to engage with another so as to be on a more efficient path to Buddhahood, she is firm:

I have no doubt

In the reality of the quick result one will attain….

Nevertheless, in these degenerate times,

people’s lustful desire burns like fire.

Under the pretext of Mantra, they practice nonvirtue.

Ruining themselves and others, they teach false Treasures

…throwing away their bodhicitta like spit in the dust.[10]

Sera Khandro’s response to the Dakini (a vision and conversation that exists in her own head, as Jacoby is careful to point out; this is hardly institutional pressure) is firm. Yes, she says, she sees that to couple with another is to be on a more efficient path to enlightenment. But she is not sure that it is worth the risk, that to remain on the celibate path is not the best choice; there are too many who misuse their own bodies and thus the bodies of others. As Jacoby explains about this passage, Sera Khandro’s use of the word bodhicitta holds two meanings. On one level, it refers to the “intention one cultivates to realize enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, which is the underlying motivation for accomplishing the Buddhist path.” On another level, within Vajrayāna Buddhism, bodhicitta also refers to bodily fluids, and Sera Khandro has no wish to engage with men who, as Jacoby writes, waste their own vital essence “by releasing it through ordinary, lustful sex instead of gaining mastery over the circulation of vital essence through sexual yoga.”[11] Thanks but no thanks, is Sera Khandro’s initial and reasonable response to the very idea of consorting with a man.

For Yeshe Tsogyel, too, the hesitation to engage with men is powerful. As a child, she is offered by her parents in marriage to two aristocratic men and asked to choose between them. Yeshe Tsogyel chooses neither, opting for celibacy and, if not celibacy, death:

This body is the result of ten thousand years of effort;

If I cannot use it to gain enlightenment

I will not abuse it with the pain of samsaric existence.

You may be the noblest and most powerful in Kharchu

But you lack the equipment to gain a day of wisdom.

So kill me; I care not.[12]

Like Sera Khandro, Yeshe Tsogyel, born a deity incarnate, has no interest in engaging in any way (marital, sexual) with these rich men. She would rather die than submit herself to the samsara (suffering) that life as a noblewoman would entail. As a result of her resistance, she is almost killed; she is stripped naked, tortured, made to cry tears of blood. Even when her father rescinds his gift (her, his daughter) from both men, she is locked by one of them in chains. She, a woman in the feudal world of eighth century Tibet and thus a person of no power, is finally saved by the dharma-oriented Tibetan King who takes her as his wife and provides Buddhist scholars for her education. When Guru Pema Rinpoche (the “father” of Tibetan Buddhism) visits, the King asks him for initiation in the Tantra but is denied. The Guru explains:

Listen, the tantric mysteries are said to be secret

Not because the Tantra is immoral but because it is closed,

Closed to the narrow-minded adherents of lesser paths.”[13]

One need not extrapolate far to see that from the very start of Vajrayāna Buddhism in Tibet, the dangers of non-celibate sexual practices were understood, acknowledged, and protected against. Yeshe Tsogyel, from childhood, aims to follow a celibate path. That she actively and blatantly disobeys her parents in order to avoid marriage and sex surely points to what she instinctively knew those things would entail. That she undergoes extensive physical abuse in her attempts to remain alone certainly points to a powerful understanding of herself and her desires, an understanding that she brings into her tantric training and subsequent life as a renowned teacher and practitioner. Finally, that she conveys the fact of her rape despite her powerful status is an acknowledgement on her part that sexual violence and those who perpetrate it remain. That the rape incident is included in the narrative offered by Tacksham Nuden Dorje is an important recognition on his part that sexual violence will persist until the world itself changes.

For both Yeshe Tsogyel and Sera Khandro, the non-celibate path of Vajrayāna Buddhism was possible only because both women were afforded the education of great teachers (both human and dakini) and the freedom (won through great hardship) to follow their own minds. Sera Khandro is especially insistent that the non-celibate path is not worth the complications; it is only through multiple visionary conversations with the dakini Dorje Zungma that she recognizes the value in taking the riskier path, that she internalizes Dorje Zungma’s call to

…energize all men with bliss,

and show desirous ones the desireless clear light.

Find a way to lead them to the ground of union.

By this, you will bring about benefit for self and others, yogini.[14]

When Jacoby centers the story of Sera Khandro, she is centering (and repeating, and establishing as fundamental) the whole story—not just the quick account of a famous female practitioner of Vajrayāna Buddhism, but the complications, the hesitations, the reluctance, the concerns that have—since as far back as the beginning of Tibetan Buddhism—existed part and parcel with the practices themselves. Importantly, by allowing Sera Khandro’s story to fill the “Vajrayāna Buddhism” space, Jacoby is also demanding an adherence to a set of moral principles that are “defined not by the virtue of celibate monasticism or the expedient means of serving male subjectivity, but rather as an ethic of mutual benefit for male and female consorts; in short, Sera Khandro comes to understand that associating with a consort can be valuable if and when it brings ‘benefit for self and others,” as Dorje Zungma phrases it.”[15] Importantly, Sera Khandro’s relationship with Vajrayāna sexual practices is built completely on her own experiences, on her own considered choice between risk and potential, on her own history and knowledge of the world in which she lives. Thus, this “centered” story is one of both female agency and power, period, rather than that of a woman thrust into a questionable religious tradition who then somehow survives it.

            The same can be said of Yeshe Tsogyel, Sera Khandro’s spiritual benefactor and emanating spirit, who eventually lives a life based on her own direction and understanding of herself. Yes, she is a woman in a world in which men hold power; she is vulnerable. But, according to Guru Rinpoche, she is also in possession of a greater power than that of the men she encounters, and it is this power that allows her to exist in the world as fully and forcefully as she does. “O yogini who has mastered the Tantra,” Rimpoche remarks upon her elevation to the status of a tantric “Knowledge Holder,”

The human body is the basis of the accomplishment of wisdom

And the gross bodies of men and women are equally suited,

But if a woman has strong aspiration, she has higher potential.

From beginningless time you have accrued merit from virtue and awareness,

And now, faultless, endowed with a Buddha’s Qualities,

Superior woman, you are a human Boddhisattva…

Work for others, for the sake of other beings.[16]

            When Jacoby casts the stories of Sera Khandro and Yeshe Tsogyel as lenses through which to understand Vajrayāna Buddhism, she is demanding that female agency (whether it comes in the form of sexual decision-making or in the form of the telling of one’s story) be not only recognized as an important part of the tradition, but valued as a corrective force. Through her tantric powers, Yeshe Tsogyel corrected the very existence of seven violent men. Though great consideration and the eventual, intentional nurturing of her full tantric powers, Sera Khandro put herself in a position of changing the lives of both herself and the men she was with—in full recognition of the risks involved.

            Thus does Jacoby’s centering of these women within the context of Vajrayāna Buddhism become a feminist project in a general sense, a project that demonstrates the centering of survival and resistance of the marginalized, the de-marginalizing effect of telling/writing stories, and the resulting establishment of the counter-story (with all of its complications, traumatic and triumphant) as the story. That the “case” of Vajrayāna Buddhism is a complicated one should, if nothing else, offer an opportunity to wrestle with the not-simple. After all, this is what we are all doing anyway, whether we realize it or not.  

Bibliography

Dowman, Keith. Sky Dancer: The Secret Life and Songs of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1996.

Gyatso, Janet. "Sex." In Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism, edited by Donald S. Lopez Jr., 271–290. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Jacoby, Sarah H. Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.

Jacoby, Sarah H. “She Said No: Toward a Survivor-Centered History of Vajrayāna Buddhist Sexuality.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 92, no. 1 (2024): 110–129.

[1] Sarah H. Jacoby, “She Said No: Toward a Survivor-Centered History of Vajrayāna Buddhist Sexuality,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 92, no. 1 (2024): 119.

[2] Sarah H. Jacoby, “She Said No: Toward a Survivor-Centered History of Vajrayāna Buddhist Sexuality,”  110.

[3] Sarah H. Jacoby, “She Said No: Toward a Survivor-Centered History of Vajrayāna Buddhist Sexuality,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 92, no. 1 (2024): 114.

[4] Jacoby, 114.

[5] Jacoby, 113.

[6] Sarah H. Jacoby, “She Said No: Toward a Survivor-Centered History of Vajrayāna Buddhist Sexuality,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 92, no. 1 (2024): 114.

[7] Jacoby, 112.

[8] Jacoby, 113.

[9] Jacoby, 112.

[10] Sarah H. Jacoby, Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 218.

[11] Sarah H. Jacoby, “She Said No: Toward a Survivor-Centered History of Vajrayāna Buddhist Sexuality,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 92, no. 1 (2024): 117.

[12] Keith Dowman, Sky Dancer: The Secret Life and Songs of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1996), 16.

[13] Keith Dowman, Sky Dancer: The Secret Life and Songs of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1996), 24.

[14] Sarah H. Jacoby, Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 218.

[15] Jacoby, “She said no.” 119.

[16] Dowman, Sky Dancer, 86.