The Life of a Sakya Khön Daughter

Jetsün Kushok Chimey Luding was born into the prestigious Sakya Khön family, which was established in the eleventh century by Khön Könchok Gyelpo. In the Sakya Khön family, the daughters are known as Jetsünmas and have an important role as religious practitioners and teachers. Until she was twenty-one years old, she lived in the Sakya Khön Dolma Palace in Sakya, and left Tibet for India in 1959. Presently she resides in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, with her family but as a popular lama, she travels all over the world to give teachings.

This lecture will focus on Jetsün Kushok Chime Luding’s early life in Tibet, based on three interviews given to Dr. Elisabeth Benard. During this period she was able to attend His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama’s first public empowerment in Norbulingka and to meet the last British Indian Political Officer—Arthur Hopkinson and his wife Eleanor when they visited Sakya Monastery. The lecture will further examine her family lineage and discuss her main influences in her childhood. Through her life story this lecture will also examine the role not only of the Sakya Jetsünmas, but the greater role of women in Tibet in the first half of the twentieth century.