Thubten Chodron

Biography Born in 1950, Thubten Chodron grew up in a "non-religious Jewish" family near Los Angeles, California, and earned her B.A. in history from University of California at Los Angeles in 1971. After traveling through Europe, North Africa and Asia for one and a half years, she received a teaching credential and went to the University of Southern California to do post-graduate work in education while working as a teacher in the Los Angeles City School System. In 1975, she attended a meditation course given by Lama Thubten Yeshe and Kyabje Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, and subsequently went to Kopan Monastery in Nepal to continue studying Buddhism. In 1977 she was ordained as a Buddhist nun by Kyabje Ling Rinpoche in Dharamshala, and in 1986 she received bhikshuni (full) ordination in Taiwan.

Chodron has studied and practiced Buddhism in the Tibetan tradition extensively in India and Nepal under the guidance of the 14th Dalai Lama, Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche, Lama Thubten Yeshe, Thubten Zopa Rinpoche and other Tibetan masters and for three years at Dorje Pamo Monastery in France. She directed the spiritual program at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa in Italy

Chodron was a co-organizer of Life as a Western Buddhist Nun, an international conference of Western Buddhist nuns held in 1996. She was a participant in the 1993 and 1994 Western Buddhist teachers' conferences with the 14th Dalai Lama, and she was instrumental in the creation of the 2007 International Congress on Buddhist Women's Role in the Sangha. She is a member of the Committee for Bhikshuni Ordination and attends the annual Western Buddhist Monastic Gathering in the US. Keen on interfaith dialogue, she was present during the Jewish delegation's visit to Dharamshala in 1990, which was the basis for Rodger Kamenetz’s The Jew in the Lotus, and she attended the Second Gethsemani Encounter in 2002. She has been present at several Mind and Life Institute conferences in which the 14th Dalai Lama dialogues with Western scientists.

Chodron travels worldwide to teach the Dharma: North America, Latin America, Singapore, Malaysia, India, and the former Soviet countries. Seeing the importance and necessity of a monastery for Westerners training in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, she founded Sravasti Abbey, a Buddhist monastery in Newport, Washington, US, in 2003, and became its abbess.

Teaching schedule Chodron permanently resides at Sravasti Abbey in Washington, US, when she is not on her international teaching tours.

The abbey has a program of weekly teachings as well as other one-day events, courses, and meditation retreats: Weekly teachings, which are broadcast via livestream and posted on the Sravasti Abbey YouTube channel;