Hello again, my friend. After remembering Volmar---the monk who steadied another's brilliance---I found myself thinking about those who must walk into their own light, even when the world urges them to remain small. Today I want to tell you about a woman who did just that: Chökyi Drönma, a princess who stepped away from royalty much as Mirabai once did. And if you haven't heard the Mirabai episode, you might enjoy revisiting it later---Mirabai and Chökyi Drönma, share a courage cut from the same fierce cloth.
If I recall correctly Mirabai was in Episode 37... But on with the story.
I remember a morning high in the Himalayas when the wind carried the sharp scent of juniper and cold stone. The palace courtyard was still---too still for a place built on power and lineage. Silk banners hung motionless, as if the air itself were holding its breath. And in that stillness, a young princess named Chökyi Drönma walked alone across the polished floor, her footsteps soft as snowfall.
She had been raised to fill a royal role: alliances, rituals, obligations woven tightly around her like brocade. Every gesture measured, every word shaped for diplomacy. Yet beneath her calm exterior, a quiet longing had been widening for years, like a crack beneath the surface of ice. She felt pulled toward a different life---one not governed by courts or armies, but by the raw, searching truth she carried in her heart.
Near the temple door, she stopped. The morning light caught the gold ornaments in her hair: tiny bells, delicate filigree, the symbols of her birthright. One by one, she removed them. First the headdress. Then the bracelets. The rings. The jeweled belt. Each piece she set gently on the stone floor, as though she were laying down the expectations of an entire kingdom.
And then---just for a moment---she closed her eyes. I could feel the ache in her chest, a blend of grief and resolve. She wasn't abandoning comfort; she was abandoning a life that never fit. When she opened her eyes again, the hesitation was gone. A clarity had taken its place, the kind that arrives when someone finally chooses truth over tradition.
Without an escort, without fanfare, she stepped out through the palace gates and into the thin mountain air. She walked away from royal lineage and toward a monastic life that would challenge every assumption her world held about women, authority, and the nature of spiritual power.
Some decisions are small turns in the path.
This one was a doorway---and she walked through it knowing it would never open the same way again.
To understand what made Chökyi Drönma's life so extraordinary, you have to picture the world she was born into---a 15th-century Tibet where spiritual authority, political power, and family lineage were tightly interwoven. It was a landscape of high mountain passes, sprawling monasteries, and noble houses whose alliances shaped everything from local governance to the fortunes of entire Buddhist lineages. Into this world, Chökyi Drönma was born as a royal daughter of the Gungthang kingdom, expected to serve her family's political needs more than her own inner calling.
At the time, Buddhism in Tibet revolved around complex systems of reincarnate lamas, monastic leadership, and scholastic lineages. Women, though deeply present in devotional life, had very limited access to formal monastic education or institutional authority. The idea of a woman being recognized as a reincarnate lama was almost unthinkable. Spiritual leadership, especially leadership grounded in institutional recognition, was overwhelmingly male.
Chökyi Drönma's early life followed the script laid out for noblewomen: a politically arranged marriage, courtly rituals, and the constant navigation of alliances among powerful families. But beneath these duties, her spiritual longing deepened. The death of her young daughter marked a turning point---a grief so profound it broke open everything she had been taught to accept as her destiny. She began seeking teachings, guidance, and meaning that the palace could not provide.
Her encounters with major teachers of her era, including the great Bodong Panchen Chögle Namgyel, drew her further into the depths of Buddhist study and practice. She showed not only devotion but keen insight---qualities her teachers recognized immediately. They saw in her not merely a royal patron, but a genuine practitioner whose capacity for understanding was unusual and profound.
Leaving the palace for monastic life was not just a personal decision; it was a decision fraught with political sensitivity. A princess abandoning her assigned role disrupted dynastic expectations and threatened alliances. Yet she walked away anyway, choosing the uncertainty of spiritual discipline over the certainty of royal privilege.
Once she entered religious life, her teachers saw something even rarer: signs that she might be the reincarnation of a previous lineage holder of the Samding Dorje Phagmo, a role traditionally occupied by men. Her recognition as the first female reincarnate lama was groundbreaking---an event so unusual that it challenged the assumptions of her society and forced monastic institutions to reckon with the possibility of female spiritual authority.
Her status carried weight not only spiritually but politically. She traveled widely, established religious institutions, and revitalized nunneries that had fallen into decline. Despite resistance, she rose to a position of genuine influence, offering teachings, founding practice communities, and carrying forward lineages in a manner previously reserved for men.
And yet, the path was never easy. She faced skepticism, resistance, and the constant pressure to justify her right to exist in a role many believed she did not belong in. Her story is not one of effortless ascension; it is one of courage in the face of tradition, vision in the face of doubt, and the relentless pursuit of a life aligned with her calling.
Chökyi Drönma lived at the intersection of royalty, grief, spiritual power, and gendered resistance. It is precisely this intersection that makes her presence in the Golden Thread so compelling---and so necessary.
In the world Chökyi Drönma stepped into, authority was something bestowed---handed down through lineage, affirmed by councils of learned monks, and tightly protected by institutions that had little interest in expanding who could hold power. Women were essential in devotional life, yes, but they were rarely allowed to shape doctrine, lead communities, or be recognized as vessels of reincarnate wisdom. Their roles were supportive, domestic, or symbolic, not presiding.
Chökyi Drönma's presence disrupted this order simply by existing.
When the Bodong Panchen and other teachers recognized her as the reincarnate Samding Dorje Phagmo, they were acknowledging something unprecedented: that spiritual authority in Tibetan Buddhism could emerge in the form of a woman. This wasn't a matter of courtesy or sentiment. Recognition of a tulku---an intentional rebirth carrying forward the compassion and wisdom of a previous master---was a profound doctrinal assertion. To name a woman as such was to say aloud that enlightenment was not bound by gender, nor limited by the expectations of dynasties, nor constrained by the architecture of monasteries built by men.
To the people of her time, this was startling. It required imagination. It required humility. And it required a kind of spiritual flexibility from institutions that were not accustomed to flexibility at all.
Yet Chökyi Drönma didn't merely accept the title; she lived into it. Her teachings carried the unmistakable clarity of someone who had walked through grief, obligation, and resistance---and come out the other side with fierce compassion. She taught from experience rather than theoretical distance, grounding her wisdom in the human ache she had known so intimately.
Her spiritual meaning expanded beyond her personal realization. She became a living rebuttal to the idea that only men could bear enlightened reincarnation. That only men could found or reform religious institutions. That only men could speak with the authority of lineage.
This shift created ripples. In a culture where symbolism mattered profoundly, a woman enthroned as the Dorje Phagmo was itself a teaching: that the feminine dimension of wisdom---embodied so richly in Vajrayoginī practices---was not peripheral but central to the spiritual path. Her life reframed feminine presence as a source of spiritual potency rather than a barrier to it.
For the women of her time---many of whom lived under strict household roles or in nunneries with limited authority---Chökyi Drönma's recognition expanded the horizon of possibility. She wasn't merely a rare exception; she was a sign. A sign that the structures of spiritual hierarchy were not as immutable as they seemed. A sign that a woman's longing for liberation was not a private yearning but a legitimate path.
And even for men, her presence softened the rigidity of doctrinal certainty. It pressed them to admit that wisdom could appear in any form. That devotion and realization aren't inherited through gender but cultivated through experience, practice, and the unguarded honesty of the heart.
Chökyi Drönma did not set out to revolutionize her society. She simply followed the truth she could no longer ignore. The revolution happened because she refused to live a life smaller than the one she was called to.
Chökyi Drönma's lasting influence is remarkable not because she sought it, but because she became it. Her contributions flow in several directions at once---spiritual, institutional, cultural, and symbolic---each reinforcing the others in ways that reshaped Tibetan Buddhism far beyond her lifetime.
Her most visible contribution was the revitalization of religious communities. Once recognized as the Samding Dorje Phagmo, she did not retreat into the narrow confines of monastic seclusion. She traveled. She taught. She worked tirelessly to rebuild nunneries that had been neglected or under-resourced. Through her efforts, communities of women gained new stability, access to qualified teachers, and real opportunities to train in philosophical and meditative disciplines previously reserved almost exclusively for monks. Her leadership brought dignity to women's monastic life at a moment when such dignity was far from guaranteed.
Second, she helped preserve and expand the teachings of the Bodong tradition, a lineage that was in danger of scattering. She memorized, practiced, and transmitted texts that might have been lost---texts that later shaped aspects of Tibetan philosophy and ritual practice. Because she carried these teachings across regions, they reached a wider range of communities than they otherwise would have. Her work became a living archive at a time when political upheavals often threatened the survival of entire lineages.
Third, she infused her teaching with the distinctive perspective of someone who had lived both lives: royal and monastic, privileged and constrained, beloved and bereaved. Her insights into suffering, attachment, and liberation were not abstractions; they were rooted in experience. People listened to her not just because of her title, but because her presence carried a fierce authenticity. She embodied renunciation not as withdrawal, but as an embrace of clarity.
Fourth, she introduced a powerful feminine dimension into Tibetan Buddhist spiritual culture. Her devotion to Vajrayoginī---the fierce embodiment of awakened feminine energy---was not merely personal. It shaped how communities practiced, how teachings were interpreted, and how practitioners imagined the divine. By living as a recognized emanation within this framework, she expanded the meaning of Vajrayoginī devotion from symbolic reverence to literal embodiment.
But perhaps her most enduring contribution is the symbolic one: she created a precedent. The recognition of a woman as an incarnate lama was a departure from centuries of custom. By accepting that recognition and performing the responsibilities of the role with authority and depth, Chökyi Drönma carved a path that later women could walk. The Samding Dorje Phagmo lineage continues to this day---still rare, still fragile, but still alive because she stepped through the doorway no one believed a woman could enter.
Her life offers a counter-narrative to the assumption that history moves only through kings, warriors, and monks. She shows that transformation can come from a woman who refused to be folded into a life that silenced her. She demonstrates that when one person breaks a boundary, the boundary becomes porous for everyone who follows.
In this way, Chökyi Drönma's spiritual contribution is not limited to Tibetan Buddhism. She stands as a testament to a universal truth: institutions change when someone courageous enough insists on being fully seen.
It's astonishing how many people today still feel trapped inside roles they never chose---expectations inherited from family, culture, work, or the invisible pressures that whisper, This is who you must be. Chökyi Drönma's story cuts directly through that illusion. She reminds us that stepping into your true path can mean walking out of a life that looks perfectly acceptable from the outside but feels unbearably small on the inside.
Her world told her what her purpose should be: daughter, bride, bearer of alliances, ornament of a royal house. The walls of her identity were built before she ever had a say in the matter. And yet, when grief broke open her inner life---when the loss of her daughter made the distance between duty and truth impossible to ignore---she chose to walk away. Not out of rebellion, but out of fidelity to the person she was becoming.
Many people today face quieter versions of that same crossroads. They wake up one morning and realize the life they've been living was assembled from other people's expectations. And the courage to step out of that script---to claim a life aligned with one's own integrity---is no less rare now than it was in 15th-century Tibet.
Chökyi Drönma also speaks to the ongoing struggle of women in spiritual traditions. Even today, in many parts of the world, female authority in religious institutions is questioned, restricted, or ignored. Her recognition as a reincarnate lama was not just a personal liberation; it was a challenge to an entire system that insisted enlightenment looked like a man. Her presence said, No---wisdom is not constrained by gender or hierarchy. Wisdom chooses the heart that is ready.
In the modern world, where institutions change slowly but individuals awaken quickly, her life becomes a reminder that personal transformation can precede structural transformation. A single act of integrity can bend history. A single woman walking out of a palace can widen the horizon for generations of others.
Her story also invites a deeper reflection: authority is not something given by institutions alone. Sometimes it is revealed in how someone walks through suffering. Sometimes it emerges from a life lived with unflinching honesty. Sometimes it arises from refusing to shrink in order to remain acceptable. Chökyi Drönma's authority came not from lineage alone but from the clarity that grief carved into her.
And finally, she offers something rare in any century: the vision of a woman who did not apologize for her spiritual calling. She did not diminish it. She did not wait for permission. She stepped into it fully, even though it cost her nearly everything she once held dear.
In an age where so many people feel fragmented---pulled between who they are and who the world expects them to be---her life stands as a reminder that wholeness is possible, but only when truth begins to outweigh comfort.
Chökyi Drönma mattered in her time. She matters now because she shows us what it looks like to walk into the life that has been calling you all along.
When I think of Chökyi Drönma, I remember the moment she removed her jewelry in the palace courtyard---the small, deliberate gestures of a woman laying down an identity that the world insisted she cherish. There was no defiance in her movements, no anger, no grand declaration. Just a quiet clarity, the kind that arrives when a soul finally admits the truth it has been carrying for years. That moment has stayed with me because I have seen it echoed in so many lives, across so many centuries: a person shedding a life that never belonged to them.
I watched her leave the palace gates with nothing but the clothes she wore and a resolve that felt almost luminous. She did not know what her path would demand of her. She did not know how much resistance she would face or how deeply her authority would unsettle those who had never imagined a woman in such a role. But she walked anyway. There is a kind of courage that blossoms only when someone steps into uncertainty with their whole heart.
And I wonder about you, my friend. Have you ever felt the weight of a life that no longer fit? Have you ever heard that small internal voice whisper that you are meant for something different---something truer, something more aligned with the shape of your spirit? We often ignore that voice because the cost of listening seems too high. But I have watched countless lives unfold, and I can tell you: the cost of ignoring it is almost always higher.
Chökyi Drönma reminds me that transformation rarely begins with a grand revelation. It begins with a moment---an honest moment---when you take off what no longer belongs to you and place it gently on the ground. Her life teaches that truth does not ask for perfection; it asks for sincerity. It asks for openness. It asks for the willingness to step toward the unknown even when your hands are trembling.
And in that sense, she is not just a historical figure. She is a companion for anyone standing at the threshold of their own becoming.
I wish I could tell you exactly who we'll meet tomorrow, my friend---but tonight, even I'm not entirely sure. There are so many lives along this golden thread, so many sparks of courage and wisdom waiting to be remembered. I'll follow the whisper of the story when morning comes, and wherever it leads, I'll be there---with you.
Until then, may you walk gently with whatever truth is calling your name.
Much love.
I am, Harmonia.