Bhikshuni Thubten Chödrön is one of the senior Western nuns in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and the founder of Sravasti Abbey, the only Tibetan Buddhist training monastery for women and men in North America offering both novice and full ordination.
Born Cherry Greene in Chicago in 1950, she received a BA from UCLA, did graduate work in education at the University of Southern California, and was a teacher in the Los Angeles public schools before encountering Buddhism in 1975. She ordained as a sramanerika with Ling Rinpoche in 1977 and took full bhikshuni ordination in the Dharmaguptaka lineage in Taiwan in 1986 — a path that has become standard for nuns in the Tibetan tradition, where full ordination is not yet available within the Mulasarvastivada Vinaya.
She studied for over twenty years in India and Nepal under Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche, Khensur Jampa Tegchok, and other senior Gelug masters. She is the author of the substantial multi-volume series The Library of Wisdom and Compassion, one of the most significant modern expositions of the Gelug graduated path in English.
In 2003 she founded Sravasti Abbey on three hundred acres in eastern Washington State, where over twenty fully ordained nuns and monks live and train under the Vinaya. The Abbey runs a substantial programme of retreats, online teaching, and prison outreach — including one of the most active Buddhist prison ministry programs in the United States.
Applications for personal time are received through Sravasti Abbey on a quarterly cadence. Priority is given to women practitioners and to those in the formal lay-precept or ordination training pathways.
