It is our great pleasure to share the upcoming virtual retreat offered with Wendy Garling, Returning to Our Roots – Voices of the Sacred Feminine in Early Buddhism, on March 25 – 26.
Wendy has a BA from Wellesley College and an MA specializing in Sanskrit language and literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a vajrayana practitioner and dharma teacher in the Lam Rim tradition; her root teacher was Venerable Geshe Acharya Thubten Loden. In 1976, she took refuge with His Holiness the 16th Karmapa and in 1979, after a first meeting in Dharamsala, began lifelong teachings with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Pilgrimage has played an important role in Wendy’s life. In 2007 she journeyed with Lama Tsultrim Allione “In the Footsteps of Machig Labdron,” to sites of the sacred feminine in Tibet. In 2012, 2018 and 2022 she traveled to sacred sites of the Buddha in India and Nepal where stories of Buddhism’s first women arose. She is author of two books: the award-winning The Woman Who raised the Buddha: The Extraordinary Life of Mahaprajapati, with Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama (Shambhala Publications, 2021) and Stars at Dawn: Forgotten Stories of Women in the Buddha’s Life (Shambhala Publications, 2016). Wendy lives in Concord, Massachusetts.
Returning to Our Roots – Voices of the Sacred Feminine in Early Buddhism
With Wendy Garling • March 25 – 26
Drawing from early Mahayana and Pali texts from multiple Buddhist traditions, this retreat will offer practitioners from all Buddhist schools the opportunity to learn about our shared foremothers – the first daughters, mothers, sisters, and wives on their spiritual journey as the Buddha introduced his teachings twenty-five hundred years ago, often supported by the wisdom and animated presence of goddesses or yakshis in the natural world … Read more »
We warmly welcome you to encounter the spiritual power of the first Buddhist women and feminine voices of the natural world.
~With Blessings,
Tara Mandala
