Girls Who Don't Listen

spiritual lessons from Yeshé Tsogyal’s early life

[Yeshé Tsogyal thangka from the yurt temple]

Dear Dharma friends,

When I was in wilderness retreat, I walked into the yurt temple and saw a beautiful thangka of Yeshé Tsogyal hanging on the wall. It reminded me of a thangka of her that I’ve spent about 12 years admiring— the one made by Leslie Nguyen Temple, which hangs in my teacher’s temple in California (pictured at the end of the newsletter). It seemed that everywhere I looked, there was this enlightened woman, this female Buddha, but I didn’t really know who she was. Luckily, I had brought Yeshé Tsogyal’s autobiography with me on retreat. I love a good moment of synchronicity

The book is called a namthar, which means “complete liberation” in Tibetan. It’s a guide to inner awakening. I’m less interested in the historic record contained in the book than in studying the story as a spiritual map. You might notice that the ego gets a little nervous when we commit ourselves to a route on the spiritual path. When we say that we want to transcend hope and fear, our mind throws intellectual games at us. There might be questions like, “But did this really happen?” In my view, that’s not important. We want to ask, “Why are these episodes on the map? What is in it that I can use?” 

Yeshé Tsogyal was born a princess in 8th century Tibet, when it had already become a Buddhist kingdom. You’d think that such a high birth would be favorable circumstances to practice Buddhism, but no. Her path to the dharma was exceptionally hard. Her family tried to marry her off, first to Prince Bhijara of India, then Prince Bright White in Tsepo Podrang, Tibet. The Princess thinks, “My parents are good to me, / so I have to do all I can / to insistently seek their permission.” She says, “I beg you to grant me permission/ to freely undertake spiritual practice. / … Please allow me to endure the hardship/ of living in an empty, desert valley.”

To her surprise, her parents and brothers are furious. The state officials say, “… it is a grave offense if you refuse to go. / If you had a brain, / you would look seriously at your decision. / Girls who don’t listen / are a graveyard for their fathers and brothers.”

That’s a wonderful line. Can’t you imagine Taylor Swift singing, 'Girls who don’t listen are a graveyard for their fathers and brothers?' 

The Princess offers her family and the state officials her jewelry and embroidered gowns, her treasure chests and silks. She’s trying to ransom her freedom, stripping herself of the trappings of her rank. 

It doesn’t work. The Princess is told she’ll have an escort of 500 young women to take her to the Tibetan prince. 

She refuses for the third time. Like all good tales, three refusals have consequence. The state officials declare: “If she refuses to go where she is sent, / we will cut off her head, / flay her skin, and dismember her. / That is the suitable and lawful course of action.” They bind her arms, strip her naked, fasten a rope around her neck, and whip her with thorns before parading the Princess around the palace’s perimeter. 

Yes. This is one more story of female subjugation. The violence continues with the Princess’s banishment to the “Haunted Land of Ominous Jungles.” There, the Tibetan prince finds her and entreats her to marry him. There are some flirtatious exchanges. When she politely declines, his officials abduct her. She’s beaten, chained to an elephant’s back, and taken to the prince’s land, where him and his courtiers congratulate themselves on obtaining such a beautiful bride. They feast and fall asleep. 

It can be tempting to read the text as hagiography, or to disregard it because the events happened long ago. To my surprise, I found modern resonances with Yeshé Tsogyal’s story.

It was hard for me to read the opening of the Princess’s life. The brutality was too familiar. Think of modern women struggling to educate themselves; women who want to marry whom they choose, or women who don’t want to marry and are forced to. Amazingly enough, in the US and many other places, women do not have the right to decide if they want to make babies in their own bodies. 

And women definitely can’t always practice the dharma. I know this personally. When I was in my early twenties, I used to joke that in another life I would have been a nun. That’s funny on a couple of levels: first, I could have been a nun! It just never occurred to me to actually be ordained because I grew up in Thailand, a Buddhist country that doesn’t accept nuns. We don’t ordain nuns and we don’t recognize them. It’s quite the orthodox religion. 

It’s one thing to learn that the Buddha taught a system of dharma that involved male and female monastics, and male and female lay people. I was taught that. It’s another thing to grow up inside a culture where monks have to keep three feet distance from women because they can be polluting. Anyone in a girl body would internalize shame. 

I grew up going to temples on the weekends as my mom questioned abbots about dharma. Some abbots would answer her questions; some would dismiss her. I believe some were angry at her for asking. I was clear in the knowledge that the Buddha taught people to question the teachings and the teachers. What I experienced, though, was a culture of gendered hierarchy. 

We can laugh that the 22-year-old making jokes about becoming a nun is the same person teaching dharma today. It’s a good thing there’s more than one way to be devout. 

The first spiritual lesson I draw from Yeshé Tsogyal’s secret biography is Renunciation. Look at the lengths the Princess goes to practice. Like Prince Siddhartha, her renunciation is huge. She keeps trying to get out of the golden prison of the palace. She turns away from family, belonging, class, comfort, from being situated in her life. Prince Siddhartha is allowed to walk out of his palace—because he was a man? The Princess is beaten for it. 

Many of us embark on a journey of liberation because we have suffered. If we’re younger, it’s because life has front-loaded our circumstances to help us realize suffering. (Hello, Sacred Life!) We understand, in our bodies, that concerts and new restaurant openings, Instagram-perfect travel and boogie fashion are all fun, but don’t bring lasting happiness. There is some extent to which we say, Enough. I opt out. I am ready to take refuge in something more stable. 

This results in using vacation time to do retreat, as one dharma friend recently told me she did. Even in modern life, we have to make a renunciation when we start on the spiritual path. You don’t get something for nothing. You have to give something up. 

The energy of exploitation is rampant in America. We’re often trying to cheat a clean exchange. We want to “get a good deal.” The Buddha taught about dana, generosity, because when you give, you’re sincere. You’re open. You’re forgoing so you can be on a spiritual journey. You can’t just say you understand dana but not drop any money in the bowl, hoping no one will notice. Entering the path has to be precious to you. 

The next lesson is, Taking Responsibility for Ourselves. Early in the story, Yeshé Tsogyal says: “This princess’s past karma / led the king to reproach me/ and the officials to punish me. / Though it’s unbearable / I have to shoulder the burden of my own faults.”

The Princess bears no anger toward the people who treat her poorly. The biography is astonishing for its lack of vindictiveness and recrimination. The Princess lets go of all the suffering that she could stir up with a cycle of blame. She stays focused. She keeps moving towards freedom. 

Many of us come to Buddhism because we’ve decided to grow up. We’ve decided to stop using our hard childhood, our differently-abled bodies, the color of our skin as an excuse for the toxicity of our minds. This is distinct from acknowledging the conditions that have shaped us. I mean that at some point or another, we arrive at a place where we are ready to take responsibility for ourselves. We are tired of blame, shame, and negativity. It’s time to sit in the driver’s seat of our life. 

We’re trained to intellectualize. Sometimes this results in us holding and even revering the stories of our harm. We might ask instead if we can drop our spirals and angst. We can refuse to perpetuate that karma.

Let’s go back to the Princess’s story. She’s been abducted from the Haunted Jungle. She’s chained to the elephant. Things look bad. I was sure she’d have to marry the Tibetan prince and have 16 babies, half of whom don’t make it past five. We know this story.  

Instead, the text says that the Princess’s mind was utterly clear when she goes, “Although I think of spiritual practice, I have no agency to pursue it. Why must all of this land on me? I am defeated. Lamas [teachers] and dakinis [sky dancers], do you have any compassion? Is it possible that just one thing could happen according to my wishes?” 

A white-colored man appears. I picture him hovering in the sky. His hair is bound in a knot around a crystal, a sign of yogic achievement. He says, “faith is an ally that carries you along the path,” and gives the Princess spiritual instruction.

The man turns out to be Padmasambhava, who is called Guru Rinpoche (precious teacher) by Tibetans. He’s beloved as a second Buddha. He brought tantric Buddhism and Dzogchen to Tibet. The appearance of Guru Rinpoche isn’t the end of the Princess’s struggles, but it is the beginning of her spiritual journey. She has found her teacher. 

The rest of the text deals with the Princess’s spiritual evolution. Eventually the Princess will come back from the visionary realms with a new name, Yeshé Tsogyal. She becomes the Great Wisdom Queen, the holder of the wisdom of emptiness. Yeshé Tsogyal, with Guru Rinpoche, is the founder of the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. 

The third lesson is Supplication. The Princess’s teacher appears when she can go no further. She can do no more. She turns her face to the sky and asks for help. 

There’s a point when we’re done with our defenses and justifications. We’re done running away from the hard stuff with a juicy story about why we’re in the right. That’s the story we tell our girlfriends over wine, the next time we get together. Supplication is different. It’s a state of openness that contains an exhaustion with samsara, the wheel of suffering. You’re done crawling through the desert. You want to study the map and find the oasis. You’re ready to pray, which is nothing more than being willing to ask for help. 

In my new role, I hear from people interested in Tibetan Buddhism because of the Vajrayana’s reputation as 'a shortcut to Enlightenment.' These can be the same people who express, in the same sentence, their disdain for religion. This makes me laugh. It’s that energy of exploitation again, of wanting something for nothing. Are we trying to cheat awakening? Get it at a bargain price?

I’m going to be teaching from all three vehicles of Buddhism at Heart Sangha. We’ll touch on the Way of the Elders (Theravada); the Greater Vehicle (Mahayana); and the Diamond Vehicle (Vajrayana). This, by the way, is a Vajrayana talk for non-Vajra practitioners. 

Tibetan Buddhism is specific in teaching that devotion is the door. Having genuine devotion to a deity, to a teacher, or as one person in the room on Sunday shared, to emptiness— can open the heart to such an extent that the teachings drop right in. Supplication is the moment of opening the door. It’s a crack in the edifice of your carefully-curated life. With devotion, you don’t have to reason your way to awakening. You don’t have to argue your way up the mountain. Those are both good and true paths, by the way. The route I’m speaking about here, and the one where my heart is most at home, is a bit more radical than that. 

You bow to your ego and make it a little space inside your body. You say: thank you for protecting me all these years. We went through a lot— sometimes a hell of a lot— together. You kept me safe. I’m safe now. We’ve found a place to land. 

And then you walk the path with big devotion. It will light your way like a beacon in the night. 

Yeshé Tsogyal endured wave after wave of hardship because of her devotion to Buddhism. Devotion is your accelerator. It is your “quick fix.” 

Thank you,

Sunisa

Postscript: It’s still very hard to be a nun! There are not enough spaces for the women who want to ordain. The basic needs of nuns are often not met. In Asia, people often prefer to donate to monks. In the West, there’s little understanding of how to support monastics. Let me be explicit: nuns are a beacon of peace and practice. They can be amazing dharma teachers, like Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo. Enlightened women enlighten others. It is a gift for girls to see models of devotion that are available to them. 

Here are some organizations that support women in the dharma that inspire me:

• the Tsoknyi Nuns, to support Himalayan schools for girls and nunneries

• the Alliance of Non-Himalayan Nuns, to support Western women who ordain. Western women often work until they have retirement savings to fund their ordination and the rest of their life. Truly, we can do better. This is a beautiful article about what life is like for Western nuns: A Radiance of Nuns.

• The Treasury of Lives is raising funds for a Woman Initiative, to provide records of the lives of enlightened women.
  

And—I hear from so many of you about these newsletters privately! Would you consider hitting Comment on Substack and dropping your thought here? Would you like (heart icon) the newsletter?

I’d love to build our community on the platform and help more people discover us.

[Leslie Nguyen Temple’s thangka of Yeshé Tsogyal