Lama Tsultrim Allione Archives

Lama Tsultrim Allione

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Lama Tsultrim Allione is an author, an internationally known Buddhist teacher, and the founder of Tara Mandala, a mountain retreat center on 700 acres south of Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

Lama Tsultrim was the first American woman to be ordained as a Tibetan nun by His Holiness the 16th Karmapa. At the age of 26, after four years as a nun, she returned her monastic vows, married, and raised three children. Lama Tsultrim earned a Master’s degree in Buddhist Studies and Women’s Studies from Antioch University. She is the author of Women of Wisdom and Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict which connects the knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism with modern life. This national bestseller is based on Lama Tsultrim’s pioneering five-step process that is used to nurture the parts of ourselves which we normally fight against.

For many years, Lama Tsultrim has focused on the teachings of Dzog Chen and the lineage of Machig Labdrön, the 11th century Tibetan yogini who founded the Chöd lineage. Lama Tsultrim’s teachings arise from the blessings of her many wonderful Tibetan teachers, her 40 years of practice and dedication to the Buddhist teachings, and her experience as a Western woman and mother.

Listen to Tami Simon's in-depth audio podcast interview with Lama Tsultrim Allione:

The Fierce Empowered Feminine »

Author photo © Laurie-Pierce-Bauer

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Tsultrim Allione: Turning Towards What’s Difficu...

Lama Tsultrim Allione — January 16, 2024

What if instead of trying to avoid or attack the people or situations in life that we don’t like, we chose to “invite them all to dinner”? In Tibetan Buddhism, this counterintuitive approach is known as “feeding our demons.” In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Lama Tsultrim Allione about making the choice to turn toward what we usually avoid—and the healing and integration this choice can lead to.

Give a listen to this inspiring conversation on the need to reclaim the sacred feminine at this time in history; the dakini principle in Tibetan Buddhism; balancing the energies of the masculine and feminine; the courage to stand up to authority; cultivating self-trust; the Great Mother of pure potential; the union of wisdom and skillful means; becoming an emanation of an ever-evolving mind stream; the legendary yogini, Machig Labdrön, and learning to move toward what we usually avoid; the practice of “feeding your demons”; creating wholeness by integrating the shadow; working with grief and loss; and more.

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The Fierce Empowered Feminine

Lama Tsultrim Allione — September 7, 2021

Lama Tsultrim Allione is an internationally known Buddhist teacher and the founder of Tara Mandala, a mountain retreat center south of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Lama Tsultrim was the first American woman to be ordained as a Tibetan nun by His Holiness, the 16th Karmapa. After four years as a nun, she returned her monastic vows, married, and raised three children. She is the author of several books, including Women of Wisdom, Wisdom Rising, and Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict. With Sounds True, she has released a new 10-part audio series called The Empowered Feminine: Meditating with the Dakini Mandala. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, we explore the dakini principle in Tibetan Buddhism, and Lama Tsultrim takes us into a meditation that invites us to actually become wrathful dakinis—transforming anger into wisdom and compassion. Tami Simon and Lama Tsultrim also discuss the role of the feminine in the dharma, how Buddhism might be different if it had been articulated by and for women, and why the “fierce and forceful” aspect of the feminine is so urgently needed in our world right now.

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Turning Towards What’s Difficult

Lama Tsultrim Allione — March 24, 2015

Lama Tsultrim Allione is an author, former Tibetan nun, internationally known Buddhist teacher, and founder of the Tara Mandala retreat center. Lama Tsultrim has created several audio programs with Sounds True, including The Mandala of the Enlightened Feminine and Cutting through Fear, which helps us meet and release the demons of fear—as well as other unhelpful emotions and obsessions. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami and Lama Tsultrim speak about the sacred feminine within Buddhism and how to understand it without creating duality. They also discuss the eleventh-century Tibetan yogini Machig Labdrön and Lama Tsultrim’s journey through grief over the sudden loss of her husband. (68 minutes)

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Richard Rohr: Gratuitous Goodness in an Age of Outrage

Richard Rohr — April 22, 2025

The prophets and mystics of the Judeo-Christian tradition each had their ways of bringing attention to the hypocrisies and injustices of their particular period in history. Here in the year 2025, as we navigate our own time of disruption and upheaval, how can we as individuals raise our voices and become the compassionate, conscious change agents our world so desperately needs? In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Franciscan friar and ecumenical teacher Richard Rohr about his new book, The Tears of Things, and what we can learn from the “sacred revolutionaries” who came before us.

Tune in to explore: the prophet’s mission and “making good trouble”; self-critical thinking (and how it’s unknown to most major institutions); sacred criticism and the revelation of the shadow; the paradigm of order, disorder, and reorder; outrage, cosmic sadness, and unlimited praise; using anger to cover up sadness; grief work and “getting to the hallelujah”; discovering the foundation of hope; contemplative thinking; conversion and transformation; opening to grace; letting go of control; why “what we don’t want to see is the problem”; waking up from our collective illusion (especially around power and control); living in a deceit-allowing culture; the word “evil”; an ever-present sense of goodness in the world; holding the tension of opposing truths; gratuitous goodness; realizing a joy that cannot be taken from you; the prophet Jeremiah and the Book of Lamentations; why the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty; acting from the highest levels of motivation; and more.

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Suzanne Giesemann: Dancing Between Being a Soul and a ...

Suzanne Giesemann — April 15, 2025

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John J. Prendergast: Meeting Your Deepest Ground

John J. Prendergast — March 25, 2025

At a time when things feel utterly groundless for so many of us, Dr. John J. Prendergast offers a practical approach to “meeting your deepest ground”—a stabilizing core of awareness and truth that is at once within and all around you. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with the retired therapist and spiritual teacher about his new book, Your Deepest Ground: A Guide to Embodied Spirituality.

Settle back for a fascinating conversation filled with both practical insights and esoteric wisdom for anyone on a path of growth and transformation. Tami and John explore overcoming deep inner resistance to what we would rather not face; how traumatic “material” becomes frozen in the body; Kundalini awakening; how to attune to your body’s “subtle sensitivity” to receive the wisdom it has to offer; relaxing the mind; touching reality through and beyond the body; the “underground dimension” that is both personal and collective; the work of Carl Jung; becoming more intimate with the archetypal dimension of life; the challenge of defining the undefinable “absolute ground” of our being; transmitting a felt experience within a shared field of openness; the two kinds of inner blockages, psychological and existential; the core theme of safety; welcoming difficult feelings and experiences in order to better understand them; activating the light of awareness that leads to transformation; the practice of paying attention to the space behind you; mindfulness and witnessing our thoughts; humility and the pilgrimage from the head to the heart; the futility of “seeking” what is always already here; the disorientation that often precedes a reorientation; common symptoms people experience during the process of unwinding core contractions; letting go (and doing it with trust); the rainbow bridge between heaven and earth; why psychological healing is a necessary component for spiritual awakening; and more.