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Currently the Chinese Dharmaguptaka tradition is the only living Buddhist tradition in which women can undergo full ordination. Yet, within the two other two surviving monastic Buddhist traditions (Theravāda for South‐East Asia and Mūlasarvastivāda for Tibet) attempts are being made to (re‐)establish a nuns’ order. This chapter deals with the actual process in the Tibetan tradition. After several years of discussions between traditional Tibetan monks, the Buddhist women’s association “Sakyadhita”, proponents of the recent movement called “Engaged Buddhism”, and others, in July 2008 not only Buddhist practitioners but also scholars of diverse Buddhist traditions were invited to a conference in Hamburg, to formulate and publicly express their perspectives on the question of whether, and if so how, a tradition of Tibetan Buddhist nuns can be established. While the main question to be negotiated was the actual procedure of the ordination ceremonies, “behind the screen” there were many more issues at stake. The chapter describes and analyzes the process of public negotiations and negotiations behind the screen between the diverse individuals and interest groups, all with their own agenda, with respect to the roles attributed to “authority” and “authenticity”, and to ritual practice. One main focus of the chapter is the question of how interpreting Buddhist monastic rules either as “ritual” or as “law” affects the scope of interpretation of the procedures.

This chapter examines three dimensions of Sera Khandro's relational selfhood—the interconnectivity of autobiographical subjects with others in their social works—all of which are intricately tied to the Tibetan Treasure tradition. The first is Sera Khandro's strong alignment with the tradition's progenitors—Padmasambhava and his ḍākinī consort, Yeshé Tsogyel, who was an important model and object of devotion for Sera Khandro. The second is the auspicious connections or favorable circumstances necessary for Sera Khandro to accomplish her religious mission. The last is Sera Khandro's relational selfhood connected to the many local deities inhabiting sacred mountains, with whom she interacted regularly to reveal her Treasure.

This chapter looks at the technique of exchanging the self and other. This technique originates from Shantideva, an important Buddhist thinker from eighth-century India and was later developed in the Tibetan tradition. It involves imagining the self from different points of view and cultivating certain responses from those imagined perspectives. It aims at changing an individual’s fundamental orientation to the self and others to combat feelings of envy, jealousy, and insecurity at their source. More importantly, the central aim of this exercise is a simple one: to make the self more compassionate. Imaginatively, adopting these different points of view forces the individual to stop and take other people's experiences seriously. Rather than simply accepting the personal take on situations, the individual starts to see more clearly that other people see the same situation very differently.

This chapter assesses the technique of sending and receiving. Sending and receiving, sometimes also translated as giving and taking, is an imaginative visualization technique developed in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. It aims at altering how an individual responds to negativity and helps that individual to see themselves as a transformational force, one that changes hostility into compassion. In it, the individual imaginatively receives the badness out in the world and changes it into goodwill and compassion, which they send back out. When a person mentally visualizes things, it can change a lot about how that individual feels and what they notice. This technique uses this psychological fact as a tool to deliberately bring about certain changes. In particular, this technique will help to change that individual’s relation to others and the negativity they face every day.