Introduction to Ḍākinīs’ Great Dharma Treasury

Introduction to the Ḍākinīs' Great Dharma Treasury

Published in Tibetan in 2017, the Ḍākinīs’ Great Dharma Treasury (mkha' 'gro'i chos mdzod chen mo) is the largest anthology of writings by and about Buddhist women ever compiled in the Tibetan language, totaling 53 volumes. The creators of this treasure trove are a group of classically educated Tibetan nuns from the largest Buddhist monastic institution in the world, Larung Gar, in the Serta region of eastern Tibet. The Ḍākinīs’ Great Dharma Treasury is a product of the intense commitment of these female cleric-scholars to preserve and promote the teachings and life stories of their Buddhist foremothers. It is among the most exciting publications to come out of modern Tibet, because it contains a plethora of hitherto unknown and never-before-translated texts of myriad genres, enriching and expanding our knowledge about historical Buddhist women and female deities. The Ḍākinīs’ Great Dharma Treasury contains sources that span two thousand years, cross the full terrain of the Tibet plateau and, in a non-sectarian manner, feature women who practiced in varied lineages of Buddhism.

Inside its pages, we find accounts of the earliest Indian nuns drawn from Buddhist canonical sources, including the Vinaya and the Sūtras. There are also accounts of the elaborate pantheon of Mahāyāna Buddhist goddesses from Indian and Nepalese Buddhism, as well as some drawn from the Chinese canon. That said, most of the volumes are comprised of biographies and teachings of Buddhist women in Tibet ranging from imperial queens, medieval and modern nuns, as well as yoginīs and ḍākinīs. While the early volumes in the collection contain canonical Buddhist scriptures and other early sources that lack a single author, most of the texts written from the twelfth century onward are by known authors.

The 53 volumes of the Ḍākinīs’ Great Dharma Treasury are divided into four parts: (1) volumes 1–18 called “Garland of White Lotuses” include biographies of Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese Buddhist women; (2) volumes 19–49 called “Heart Treasury of the Trikāya Ḍākinīs” include the collected works of various Tibetan female masters, such as Jetsün Mingyur Paldrön (1699–1769), Sera Khandro Kunzang Dekyong Wangmo (1892–1940), Do Dasel Wangmo (1928–2018) and Khandro Tāre Lhamo (1938–2003), as well as assorted religious teachings; (3) volume 50 called “Jewel Treasure Chest” is a collection of texts in praise of female deities, such as Tārā, Sarasvatī and Kurukullā, as well as human masters like Machik Labdrön; and (4) volumes 51–52 called “Lantern Illuminating the Path of Liberation” contain collections of advice for women written by assorted male masters. The final volume, 53, contains the preface and the table of contents for the entire anthology (Padma’tsho and Jacoby 2021). These sources document the lives of accomplished female practitioners, monastic and non-monastic, as part of an autobiographical and historical impulse in Tibet that has otherwise favored male Buddhist figures. The surviving teachings of these accomplished women, as well as advice to women by prominent male teachers, are included in the collection as valued religious teaching deemed worthy of recording and preserving for posterity.

The Tibetan nuns who compiled the Ḍākinīs’ Great Dharma Treasury spoke to Padma’tsho at length about their inspirations and motivations for creating this extraordinary collection. We thus learned that in 2011, seven Tibetan nuns from Larung Gar formed a group called the Larung Ārya Tāre Book Association Editorial Office, named after the female buddha Tārā. The first order of business for this fledgling association was to find Tibetan Buddhist texts written by or about Buddhist women. They told us that this work was challenging because they had to do this in their spare time between their primary commitments of studying Buddhist philosophy and performing rituals and prayers. It was also challenging because the search for extant Tibetan manuscripts sent the nuns all over Tibet; frequently only one copy of a manuscript could be found, often with archaic or inconsistent spelling as well as missing sections. Once the nuns had managed to collect texts about women, none were yet digitized, requiring the nuns first to teach themselves how to type and use computers, and then to painstakingly type the manuscripts into digital files by themselves. These efforts initially resulted in a 16-volume series published in 2013, which became the first ever non-sectarian anthology of writings by and about Buddhist women published in Tibetan. This initial anthology was called Garland of White Lotuses: The Biographies of the Great Female Masters of India and Tibet. As the Larung Gar nuns continued to find additional works, their anthology grew, resulting in the expanded 53-volume version published in 2017.

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