Holly Gayley

Holly Gayley is a scholar and translator of Buddhist literature in contemporary Tibet and associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research explores gender and sexuality in Buddhist tantra, literature by and about Tibetan and Himalayan women, ethical reform in contemporary Tibet, and theorizing translation, both literary and cultural, in the transmission of Buddhist teachings to North America. She is author of Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern Tibet (2016), translator of Inseparable Across Lifetimes: The Lives and Love Letters of Namtrul Rinpoche and Khandro Tāre Lhamo (2019), editor of Voices from Larung Gar: Shaping Tibetan Buddhism for the Twenty-First Century (2021), and co-editor with Dominique Townsend of Longing to Awaken: Buddhist Devotion in Tibetan Poetry and Song(forthcoming in 2024). For more than two decades, she has regularly led meditation workshops and retreats.

Upcoming Programs by Holly Gayley

Living Bodhisattvas: Life as a Path of Awakening

Also With Gelong Loden Nyima

July 14 - 27, 2024

We often think of our practice as something that happens on the meditation cushion. From the Mahayana point of view, our whole life is the path of awakening. This perspective is encapsulated in namthar literature, Tibetan stories of “complete liberation” that recount lives of Buddhist practitioners who met challenges and endured adversity, bringing everything onto […]