Students on our August 5 - 11 2011 course had the incredible opportunity to study with the world's first (and so far only) female Geshe!

Venerable Kelsang Wangmo received a Rime Geshe diploma (equivalent to several Ph.D's in Buddhist Philosophy) from the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics (IBD) in April 2011. Until this time, the Geshe title was only given to Monks (men), but His Holiness the Dalai Lama authorized the IBD to award Rime Geshe degrees in 2009 and Geshe Kelsang Wangmo became the first woman to ever receive the title. Before this, she had been studying Buddhist Philosophy and Debate for 16 years here in Dharamsala. You can see photos of the Graduation Ceremony here.

In addition to her obvious scholastic skills, Geshe-la is also a wonderful teacher and we are so very happy that she was able to accept our many, many requests (plea's!) to teach a course here at Tushita. Geshe-la is extremely busy with her own continuing studies and teaching curriculum (details of which you can see here), but we very much hope that she will join us again in the near future.

This course also became our biggest ever - 95 students! Photos from the course can be seen here and an interview with Geshe-la can be heard here.

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