Sera Khandro and Vajra Romance

Jetsünma Sera Khandro Rinpoche (1892-1940) achieved Buddhahood, together with her consort Kyabjé Drimé Özer Rinpoche, through their practice of vajra romance. She wrote a biography of her consort, and an autobiography, that are the topic of a remarkable 2007 doctoral dissertation by Sarah Jacoby.

Vajra romance was the central theme of Sera Khandro Rinpoche’s life, her liberation, and Jacoby’s dissertation. Jacoby writes that:

“Sera Khandro’s relationship with Drimé Özer as her consort and her guru is the centerpiece of her story of spiritual liberation. She represents her love for him in quintessentially Buddhist ways through the terminology of the gendered dyad of method and wisdom.

Love is the power that transcends the illusory divides between conventional and ultimate truth, life and death, and samsara and nirvana. Hers is a Buddhist model of enlightenment built not on solitary renunciation, but on the divinization of love between a man and a woman as both the Buddhist path and its ultimate goal.

Rather than being a source of attachment to the sufferings of cyclic existence as it is in monastics’ writing, the passionate love between herself and Drimé Özer provides the energy that enables Sera Khandro to cut through her delusion and gain spiritual realization.”

(The English term “vajra romance” was coined by Ngak’chang Rinpoche. It is not used by Jacoby, but as you can see, the subject matter is the same.)

Her life

Sera Khandro Rinpoche was born into a wealthy aristocratic Lhasa family. She discovered a terma first at age eight, and increasingly often in her teens. Marriage to a Chinese aristocrat was arranged for her at fifteen. She was distraught because this would have precluded her work as terton (terma discoverer). She attempted suicide, but was prevented by a miraculous dakini, and instead decided to run away. By chance, Drimé Özer Rinpoche visited her brother at this time, and she fell in love with him. He was a son of Dudjom Lingpa, who was the first terton of the Dudjom Tersar and previous incarnation of Kyabjé Dudjom Rinpoche. Drimé Özer Rinpoche was a major terton himself.

She climbed out of her third-story bedroom window late at night and joined Drimé Özer Rinpoche’s group of pilgrims. They were returning to their homeland, Golok, east of Tibet. Her life in Golok was extremely hard at first. She could not understand the Golok dialect. She had no skills or ability to support herself, having been a pampered daughter of aristocratic wealth. She eventually formed an expedient marriage with Gyalsé Rinpoche, a minor terton.

Unfortunately, Gyalsé Rinpoche felt threatened by her growing—but mixed—reputation. She was becoming locally famous as a doctor, miracle-worker, and terton. She gave transmission of her terma to several monks. She was regarded by many as a dakini—but by many others as a liar, fraud, and evil-doer. Some called her a demoness—and she admits (with remorse) to having used black magic against Gyalsé Rinpoche’s family, who loathed her as a foreigner. Gyalsé Rinpoche himself insisted that there was no such thing as a female terton, and forbade her to discover terma.

Fortunately, another local Lama, Gotrül Rinpoche, came to have faith in her. He said, “I think this dakini is certainly the speech incarnation of Yeshé Tsogyal. Abandon your wrong views [about her] and have faith. This is not deception – it is real.” He became “one of Sera Khandro's first and strongest supporters, contradicting Gyalsé’s criticism, encouraging Sera Khandro to write down the Treasures [termas] that came to her, and publicizing her legitimacy as a Treasure revealer.”

Throughout her marriage to Gyalsé Rinpoche, she continued her passionate love for Drimé Özer Rinpoche. She describes her “intense craving to see him again” “as a thirsty person wants water.”

She and he were finally united when she was 30 and he was in his early 40s. They entered a joint three-month retreat during which together they attained complete enlightenment by means of vajra romance. “Method and wisdom merged as one taste, catalyzing their completion of the quick path of Secret mantra, resulting in spiritual liberation for both Sera Khandro and Drimé Özer together as a divine couple.” (More on this in the next section.)

After this retreat, they acted as a terma-discovering and teaching couple. The support of a female consort has always been considered necessary for a male terton. Sera Khandro Rinpoche also needed the support of a male consort to discover terma. Because both relied on each other as tertons and consorts, they were able to discover terma together exceptionally easily.

Tragically, Drimé Özer Rinpoche died four years later.

For the rest of her life, Sera Khandro Rinpoche became increasingly famous and successful as a terton and Lama. She taught thousands, including Lamas, kings, monks, nuns, and lay people. She was accepted as a teacher not only by the Nyingma, but also the Jonang and Kagyüd Schools. Since the population of Golok was only about 20,000, she apparently taught a substantial fraction of the whole country.

When she died in 1940, she attained rainbow body, which is taken to be proof of full enlightenment through Dzogchen practice.

Vajra romance

Vajra romance is the practice of viewing one’s lover as a divine Buddha. The woman views her partner as the personification of compassionate method; the man views her as the personification of primordial wisdom. Buddhahood is the non-dual union of wisdom and compassion. In their romantic and sexual union, the couple attain Buddhahood jointly.

In theory, at least, most or all Vajrayana lineages teach that this is an absolutely necessary part of the path to enlightenment. Surprisingly little has been written about it in recent centuries, however. This was probably due to the increasing political dominance of celibate, monastic practice. Modern theoretical writing about the practice has generally regarded it as an adjunct to the highly technical sexual energy-manipulation methods of “karma mudra”. These descriptions have little if anything to say about love. Elite monks, while publicly claiming to be celibate, regularly practiced karma mudra. (This is documented by Jacoby and other writers.) However, in most cases they seem not to have maintained the enduring intimate heterosexual relationships that are a prerequisite for vajra romance.

The importance of vajra romance continues to be recognized in ngak’phang lineages. (Interestingly, Sera Khandro Rinpoche described herself as a “ngakpa,” and dressed as one. Apparently the equivalent feminine words, “ngakma” and “ngakmo,” were unknown in Golok then.)

Sarah Jacoby writes:

“In the Buddhist context, love is more often associated with attachment to the suffering of cyclic existence than with spiritual realization . . . Buddhism has been a tradition ideologically centered on renouncing householder society.

In Sera Khandro’s writing, sexual yoga is not only about manipulating channels, winds, and seminal nuclei in order to engender spiritual liberation within an individual practitioner; it is also an aspect of an emotionally charged relationship with her consort, Drimé Özer.

Perhaps Sera Khandro’s female gender, but certainly her non-monastic status, contributed to her portrayal of the Buddhist spiritual path in which her love for Drimé Özer was both the path and the goal of her spiritual journey. Sera Khandro’s writing thus moves beyond the technical, physiological elements of sexual yoga to represent the human relationships that accompanied these practices. The sentimental tone of her writing stands in contrast to the more typically negative Buddhist evaluation of emotions, which tend to focus on the triadic designation of afflictive emotions including anger, lust, and hatred. In addition to the one emotion that is valorized in Buddhist contexts, namely compassion, Sera Khandro also valorizes the love between prophesized partners as an important part of the spiritual path. Her Autobiography and Drimé Özer’s Biography can be read on multiple levels; they portray the union of method and wisdom and the religious importance of consort practices for Treasure revelation, but they also depict a dramatic love story. For Sera Khandro, the culmination of the quick Secret Mantra path is spiritual liberation through union with the divine in the form of Drimé Özer. For Drimé Özer as well, according to Sera Khandro’s portrayal of him, Sera Khandro is his equal in a spiritual partnership.

Sera Khandro articulates a vision of gender relations in the context of Treasure revelation that has a strongly egalitarian tone that is built on a premise of mutual necessity.

Her spiritual liberation is not about herself as an individual gaining enlightenment as it is most often perceived in Buddhist contexts, but rather about her and her consort Drimé Özer’s joint enlightenment.”

Jetsunma Sera Khandro Rinpoche believed herself and he consort to be incarnations of Yeshé Tsogyel and Padmasambhava. Following their joint enlightenment, they had direct access to the source of termas. Jacoby writes:

“Sera Khandro portrays herself and Drimé Özer to be emanations of this divine couple, charged with the mandate of maintaining the Treasure teachings they hid. Thus, Sera Khandro and Drimé Özer can act as mediators between the eternal sacred reality of Padmasambhava and Yeshé Tsogyal and the temporal context of early twentieth-century Golok because ultimately, they are not separate.”

She wrote more than 2000 pages of termas, which survive; he wrote even more, but that was apparently lost in the Chinese oppression.

How much did they teach explicitly on vajra romance? Their lineage has maintained the centrality of the practice (see the next section). It is the central theme of their biographies; but what role did it play in their more formal termas? The autobiography gives several hints that the termas do contain explicit teachings on vajra romance. However, Jacoby had not yet investigated further as of 2007, leaving the question for future research. Probably I am not the only one eagerly awaiting her report.

Their lineage

Unfortunately, in the chaos of Chinese aggression, their lineage was mainly destroyed.

There are three forms of Tibetan lineage: by biological descent, by rebirth, and by transmission from Lama to disciple. Her biological lineage is gone; her last grandchild died in the Cultural Revolution.

Both she and Drimé Özer Rinpoche had several rebirths. Sarah Jacoby interviewed one of them for whom vajra romance is a central practice:

“Sera Khandro and Drimé Özer’s love story lives on in a reincarnational sense as well in contemporary Golok; the Treasure revealer Namtrül Jikmé Püntsok (b. 1944) and his late consort Taré Lhamo (1938-2002) describe themselves as incarnations of the divine couple Drimé Özer and Sera Khandro. Like Drimé Özer and Sera Khandro, Namtrül Jikmé Püntsok and Taré Lhamo are a Treasure revelation couple, following in the footsteps of their early twentieth-century counterparts and before them, the divine progenitors of the Treasure tradition Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyal.”

Namtrül Rinpoche told Jacoby that “method and wisdom are like your two eyes and two hands; just as those eyes and hands operate as a pair, likewise the two male and female partners operate together . . . We wrote the Treasure texts together and we both propagated empowerment and reading transmissions of them together.”

In terms of the transmission lineage, Drimé Özer Rinpoche’s termas were lost, and few of their students were able to propagate her teachings. Fortunately, Kyabjé Chatral Sang-gyé Dorje Rinpoche was her direct disciple and is now her lineage holder. He is considered one of the greatest living Dzogchen masters. He provided key assistance to Jacoby in her doctoral research.

Jacoby has located a number of practitioners of vajra romance in the transmission lineage, and is conducting further research based on interviews with them.

In the past year, there seems to have been a resurgence of interest in Sera Khandro Rinpoche’s life and work. The empowerment of her terma has been given several times in the West. Others of her writings are now being translated.

Sera Khandro and Aro Lingma

There are startling similarities between the lives and teachings of Jetsunma Sera Khandro Rinpoche and Aro Lingma, the terton of the Aro gTér. Although they certainly did not know of each other’s existence, they were contemporaries; Aro Lingma lived from 1886-1923.

Jacoby poses a question: is there any connection between Sera Khandro having been a woman and the importance of vajra romance to her practice? She observes that there is not nearly enough evidence to answer this as yet. She plans to study modern-day practitioners of Sera Khandro Rinpoche’s terma, to see “how they apply the powerful metaphors of method and wisdom that defined Sera Khandro’s world to their contemporary lives.” Is it a coincidence that Aro Lingma, with similar teachings on vajra romance, was also a woman? Might it be useful to compare the contemporary practices of vajra romance in the two lineages?