Sera Khandro

A renowned Buddhist visionary who was recognized as a reincarnation of Tibet’s preeminent female saint, Yeshé Tsogyel, Sera Khandro Dewé Dorjé (1892–1940) was also a prolific writer with remarkable literary gifts. This book presents the unabridged translation of her extraordinary autobiography—one of only a handful of life stories written by women in Tibetan literature. Sera Khandro’s chronicle intersperses the story of her spiritual awakening with candid accounts of the difficulty, misogyny, and injustice of everyday life in the nomadic pastoral culture of eastern Tibet. Even as she enters otherworldly realms and encounters deities and spirits, she endures the sufferings typical of women’s lives in this time and place. In vivid detail, she relates prophecies and celestial visions alongside deeply human emotions like joy and sorrow, depression and rage, passionate love and fathomless grief. Brimming with spiritual insight, eloquent figurative language, and forthright storytelling, the book intermingles genres such as poetry, songs, and vernacular dialogue. It features evocative portrayals of Tibetan landscapes and culture, redolent of alpine pastures and grazing livestock, together with intricate descriptions of transcendent experiences. Sera Khandro’s autobiography is not only an invaluable resource for understanding the lives of Tibetan Buddhist women but also a beautiful and poignant work of literature. The book features forewords by Sogen Rinpoche Pema Lodoe, spiritual director of Tupten Osel Choling and holder of Sera Khandro’s spiritual lineage, and Lama Jabb, lecturer in Tibetan language at the University of Oxford.

Translated here for the first time, a collection of heartfelt and intimate advice for Buddhist practice from the modern female Buddhist teacher Sera Khandro Dewe Dorje (1892-1940), revealing her firsthand experiences as a mother, wife, consort, and spiritual teacher of the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Sera Khandro Dewe Dorje was a rare example of a well-known Tibetan woman renowned as a teacher in the modern era. While there are many notable female figures in Tibetan Buddhist history, very few left a collection of poetic, autobiographical, and devotional writings as extensive as Dewe Dorje. Both biographical and instructional, this is a collection of advice, prayers, dreams, prophecies, and treasures (terma) from within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of Dzogchen, a Buddhist practice on resting in the nature of mind. Typically seen as high level practices, these Dzogchen and other instructions are presented in Dewe Dorje's highly personal and accessible voice. This collection of practice instructions is a window into the inner experience of a beautiful woman in love who single-pointedly pursued a life of Dharma. Born to a wealthy and powerful father in Lhasa, she left home and became a dedicated Dharma practitioner living as an unaccompanied female in the wilds of eastern Tibet in the early 1900s. She became a wife, mother, and then consort and wrote of both highly spiritual and highly personal experiences, from spiritual realization to grief.