Coming in February!
An inspiring and intimate tale set against the turmoil of recent Tibetan history, Inseparable across Lifetimes offers for the first time the translations of love letters between two modern Buddhist visionaries, Khandro Tare Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche. The letters are poetic, affectionate, and prophetic, articulating a hopeful vision of renewal that drew on their past lives together and led to their twenty-year partnership. This couple played a significant role in restoring Buddhism in the region of Golok once China’s revolutionary fervor gave way to reform.
Pre-order on Amazon.com.
“An instant classic, Gayley’s translations of contemporary love letters between a Tibetan visionary couple are luminous. The couple’s spiritual courtship animates a relationship that bridges the traditional and modern, transcendent and mundane. This is an inspiring page-turner that shows mutually transformative love is really possible.”
—Judith Simmer-Brown, author of Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism
“Inseparable across Lifetimes tells the amazing personal stories of two Buddhist masters in twentieth-century Tibet, and their love letters are skillfully translated here into soaring yet intimate English. Few publications record this crucial time period after the cultural devastation of Tibet, and fewer still offer such visionary hope for some kind of transformation.”
—Sarah Harding, author of Niguma, Lady of Illusion
“In a love relationship that was not just based on ordinary passions, but rather the union of incisive knowledge and skillful means, Namtrul Rinpoche and Khandro Tāre Lhamo came to know the pure essence of wisdom exaltation as the sacred union of male and female. They used this unobstructed power to work for the welfare of others through their enlightened deeds. I am grateful to Holly Gayley for bringing their exemplary life stories and songs of profound union into the English language so that readers can glimpse the best of our Tibetan Vajrayana tradition.”
—Lama Chonam, teacher and translator, Light of Berotsana Translation Group
With the global #MeToo movement underway, and recent disclosures of sexual improprieties and alleged abuse within Tibetan Buddhist communities, it seems timely to revisit the topic of sexuality in Buddhist tantra.
In the last decade on the Tibetan plateau and in the diaspora, several movements have emerged that interlink Tibetan identity and Buddhist ethics. These include the new “ten virtues” (dge bcu) promoted by Larung Buddhist Academy in eastern Tibet, the Lhakar or ‘White Wednesday’ (lhag dkar) movement underway since 2009, trends in Tibetan pop music, the ‘amulet for peace’ (zhi bde rtags ma) introduced in 2012, and more.
Visiting Bhutan again after fifteen years felt like coming full circle. My first research project explored the revelatory career of Pema Lingpa (1450–1521) after Sarah Harding invited me to write the introduction to her book of translations, 
The paperback is now out for Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern Tibet, which chronicles the lives and letters of 
Pithy works of advice on meditation practice can often be difficult to find in translation. Just published by Wisdom, 
Yeshe Tsogyal is the foremost Tibetan woman associated with the advent of Buddhism in Tibet. This was a time of imperial power, when Tibet controlled vast tracts of Central Asia between the seventh and ninth centuries. A princess-turned-yogini in the lore of that period, Yeshe Tsogyal is remembered as the disciple and consort to the great Indian tantric master, Padmasambhava, and later a teacher in her own right. She has remained central to Tibetan art and ritual and continues to be a living presence for Tibetans amid pilgrimage sites associated with her, in the visions of realized masters, and through her emanations in each generation.