Tsultrim Allione and Tara Mandala

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Tsultrim Allione at A Glance

Tsultrim Allione has a masters in Buddhism/Womens Studies from Antioch University. She is one of the first Western women to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun. She has been practicing Buddhism for over thirty years and has taught all over the world. She is Director of Tara Mandala, a retreat center in SW Colorado near the 4 corners, in Pagosa Springs. Tsultrim founded Tara Mandala in 1993 and she is now the resident teacher there. She is the author of Women of Wisdom, and has several audio CDs as well.

This story took place over a number of years starting in 1995. That year I attended a Sufi retreat at Lama Foundation in Questa, NM. During the retreat we had some quiet times and I wandered into the library. For some reason a book titled Women of Wisdom jumped off the shelf and I decided to do some quiet reading. They would not let you remove the books from the library, so every time there was a break I would go to the library to read this book. Unfortunately, the camp came to a close before I finished the book. In 1996 there was a huge fire in Questa and many of the buildings at Lama Foundation burned to the ground, therefore they did not have any camps in 1997 due to the clean up efforts. I returned to Lama in 1998 the first retreat season after the fire and I went straight to the library and started reading Women of Wisdom again. I really loved this book! I couldn't put it down. I had so much respect for the author Tsultrim Allione, and I assumed she lived in Italy, or Nepal, or India.

How I Encountered Tsultrim Allione 

In 2000 I had a friend who committed suicide. I attended a sweat lodge to pray for her and in the lodge was a woman also praying for someone dear to her who had committed suicide. Deborah Birr and I became friends and we decided to go to Red Feathers Lake to the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, which was under construction at the time and to volunteer there. I discovered from Deborah that Tsultrim was living in Colorado. Boy was I shocked! Later that fall I attended my first retreat at Tara Mandala in Pagosa Springs, Colorado and I finally met Tsultrim Allione.

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Kwannon Meditating on Human Life


Selected Tsultrim Allione Quote 

"My favorite thing to study was the biographies of the great teachers of Tibetan Buddhism. Since I was trying to follow the same path I found the stories of their struggles and the ensuing realizations that they gained tremendously helpful and inspiring. I found tidbits of stories of women here and there and I reread them many times, but there was nothing very substantial. Now it is obvious to me why I longed for stories of women and amazing that I did not consciously wonder about the lack of women's biographies. I guess it was part of my conditioning to accept that all the important saints were men, but I think that unconsciously the roots of the research for this book began at that time. "

You can now benefit from Tsultrim's extensive research finding the stories of women in Buddhism in her book Women of Wisdom

Try this gift for your Buddhist loved one.

Listen to Tsultrim's CDs 


Mandala of the Enlightened Feminine:
Awaken the Wisdom of the Five Dakinis



This CD set is absolutely wonderful! It explains soooo much about Vajrayana Buddhism, the role of the dakini and the mandala.

Well worth owning!

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    Feeding Your Demons 

    Tsultrim Allione brings an eleventh-century Tibetan woman's practice to the West for the first time with FEEDING YOUR DEMONS, an accessible and effective approach for dealing with negative emotions, fears, illness, and self-defeating patterns. Allione, one of only a few female Buddhist leaders in this country and comparable in American religious life to Pema Chodron, bridges this ancient Eastern practice with today's Western psyche. She explains that if we fight our demons, they only grow stronger. But if we feed them, nurture them, we can free ourselves from the battle. Through the clearly articulated practice outlined in FEEDING YOUR DEMONS, we can learn to overcome any obstacle and achieve freedom and inner peace.


    Feeding Your Demons:
    Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict



    Wonderful book, very transformative, April 9, 2008
    By B. Lee-Herbert

    I found this book to be incredibly powerful and transformative. A captivating and smooth read with a great message. The technique outlined in the book is simple yet profound, and was really effective for me. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in shedding old patterns and becoming happier in general (and who isn't!).

    Women of Wisdom 

    In the first book of its kind, Allione brings together the biographies of six women mystics in this strong but little known Tibetan tradition. Make that seven women, as Allione expands her own spiritual autobiography into 80 pages in this new printing. The dakini principle, the principle of feminine transformation, pervades each of these stories. A woman is beaten by her husband and father-in-law and has her son taken from her but later comes face-to-face with the boddhisattva Tara and becomes a great teacher. A wife who has always dreamed of practicing the dharma splits from her husband and travels the land receiving teachings. A poor cow herder is given a long-hidden sacred text and becomes a dakini herself. A spiritual biography embodies a teaching, and these stories enchant while transmitting wisdom.

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    Women of Wisdom



    In 2007, Allione was recognized in Tibet as an emanation of Machig Lapdron. So, Women of Wisdom contains a book within a book of books, and tracings of a particular life within a much larger lifestream-- teachings brought forward for our times that encourage us to not be afraid! to dive directly into those things we fear most! and to join with each other in the quest to discover our own truths, and express them by art and ritual and service and fully experiencing the life of the body. This is a book to take to bed with you, to let seep into your dreams. Read it, and take heart.

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    Lama Tsultrim Allione Receives the Outstanding Woman in Buddhism Award for 2009 

    Lama Tsultrim AllioneLama Tsultrim Allione has been selected by the Outstanding Women in Buddhism Committee's panel of distinguished Buddhist scholars and practitioners as an Outstanding Woman in Buddhism 2009. She will be honored at The Outstanding Women in Buddhism Awards Ceremony held in honor of the United Nations' International Women's Day. The Ceremony will be held at the Association for the Promotion for the Status of Women in Don Muang, Bangkok , Thailand on Friday, March 6th, 2009.

     

    Cutting Through Fear - Audio CD 


    Cutting Through Fear



    Based on the traditional Tibetan practice of Chod (literally "to cut"), this method was developed by a legendary Tibetan yogini, Machig Lapdron, almost 1,000 years ago and is practiced within all schools of Tibetan Buddhism. To this day, Chud is still used in Tibet to treat mental and physical illness and as a path to awareness. On Cutting through Fear, Tsultrim Allione shares the fascinating history of this practice, and interprets it especially for Western students of meditation and psychology. Drawing from root visualization practices, Tsultrim Allione shares a four-step process that can help you meet and release what the ancient Tibetans called "demons" - the fears, obsessions, illnesses, and hopes that can be faced and dissolved with this powerful meditation technique. We all encounter the demons of addiction, compulsion, anger, and other difficult emotions, too often as a daily event. Now we have a rare and useful tool to stop struggling against them, and instead liberate them, with Cutting through Fear.

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    Visit Bhutan - Highly Recommended 

    King Wants Gross National Happiness

    Bhutan is a small Buddhist country in the Himalayas. It sits between China (Tibet) and Nepal. It is a very pristine, agricultural country with many beautiful places to visit including Taksang - the Tigers Nest.

    I highly recommend going to this destination rather than to Tibet. Why? Because going to Tibet supports the Chinese who are the enemy of Tibetan people and of Tibetan Buddhism. So please DO NOT support the Chinese when you can go to this beautiful country which I would describe at a little like Tibet was in the late 1950s - really especially if you leave the capital city of Thimpu.


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    Learn More About Me 

    RinchenChodron, aka Marsha Camblin, has been a member since December 17 2007, has rated 891 lenses, favorited 343, and has created 102 lenses from scratch. Marsha Camblin donates their royalties to Squidoo Charity Fund and Women's Peace Campaign. This member's top-ranked page is "Essential Oil Diffusers". See all my lenses

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    More Useful Links 

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    Tara Mandala Retreat Center
    This is the website for Tsultrim Allione's retreat center in Pagosa Springs, CO.
    His Holiness the Dalai Lama
    This is the Dalai Lama's home page.
    Karmapa Visits Us for First Time
    This site sells tickets to HH the Karmapa's talks in the US, coming soon!
    The Five Rituals
    Discover how to look 30 years younger in just 10 minutes a day!
    Message to the Chinese from HHDL
    Go here to read an open letter from His Holiness to the People of China Dated March 2008

    Reader Feedback on Tsultrim Allione 

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    • Reply
      poddys poddys Aug 23, 2009 @ 7:40 am
      Very nice lens, and I love learning more about Buddhism and your works. 5*****
    • Reply
      papawu papawu Aug 22, 2009 @ 8:13 pm
      That's truly amazing! To be a westerner and a woman and be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun! That in itself is highly impressive without thought to everything else she has accomplished. A fantastic read on a fantastic human being! =)
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