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A renowned Buddhist visionary who was recognized as a reincarnation of Tibet’s preeminent female saint, Yeshé Tsogyel, Sera Khandro Dewé Dorjé (1892–1940) was also a prolific writer with remarkable literary gifts. This book presents the unabridged translation of her extraordinary autobiography—one of only a handful of life stories written by women in Tibetan literature.
Sera Khandro’s chronicle intersperses the story of her spiritual awakening with candid accounts of the difficulty, misogyny, and injustice of everyday life in the nomadic pastoral culture of eastern Tibet. Even as she enters otherworldly realms and encounters deities and spirits, she endures the sufferings typical of women’s lives in this time and place. In vivid detail, she relates prophecies and celestial visions alongside deeply human emotions like joy and sorrow, depression and rage, passionate love and fathomless grief.
Brimming with spiritual insight, eloquent figurative language, and forthright storytelling, the book intermingles genres such as poetry, songs, and vernacular dialogue. It features evocative portrayals of Tibetan landscapes and culture, redolent of alpine pastures and grazing livestock, together with intricate descriptions of transcendent experiences. Sera Khandro’s autobiography is not only an invaluable resource for understanding the lives of Tibetan Buddhist women but also a beautiful and poignant work of literature.
The book features forewords by Sogen Rinpoche Pema Lodoe, spiritual director of Tupten Osel Choling and holder of Sera Khandro’s spiritual lineage, and Lama Jabb, lecturer in Tibetan language at the University of Oxford.
— Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies, Harvard Divinity School
Our dharma sister Sarah Jacoby has skillfully and accurately translated this great treatise over a period of many years. Jacoby has poured her heart and soul into this project and is the ideal person to have done so given that she is highly qualified as an academic Buddhist scholar and teacher, an accomplished and devoted practitioner, and a qualified literary translator authorized by Chatral Rinpoche to make this translation. May these accounts of Sera Khandro’s astonishing life inspire and uplift all who are fortunate enough to encounter this text and make a meaningful connection.
— Lama Chönam and Sangye Khandro
Sera Khandro Dewé Dorjé (1892–1940) was born in Lhasa, Tibet, to a wealthy and politically powerful family. She renounced her privileged upbringing and joined a group of pilgrims from the eastern Tibetan region of Golok, where she spent the rest of her life dedicated to Buddhist practice, eventually becoming a renowned visionary who discovered Buddhist revelations, a guru, and a Tantric consort.
Sarah H. Jacoby is professor of religious studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro (Columbia, 2014) and coauthor of Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience (fourth edition, 2024), among other works.