Venerable Karma Lekshe Tsomo is a Buddhist nun, scholar and social activist. Karma Lekshe already had a religion when growing up in Malibu: surfing. But being constantly teased by her classmates about her family name, Zenn, (“Are you Buddhist or what?”), she borrowed a book about Buddhism to find out what this was all about and instantly knew that this was it.
She was ordained in 1977 and quickly realized that conditions for Tibetan Buddhist nuns were dire. Almost 30 years ago, she started a movement to give nuns access to education, at a time when this idea was, at best, treated as a waste of time, or even frowned upon by the established monasteries.
Dr. Tsomo holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Philosophy from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and has taught at the University of San Diego since 2000. She specializes in Buddhist studies, women’s studies, death and dying, Buddhism and bioethics, Buddhist transnationalism, comparative religious ethics, and Buddhist social theory, cultural studies, meditation, and conflict transformation. She has founded and directed several international nonprofit organizations, including Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women, Jamyang Foundation, Sakyadhita Hawai’i, and Sanghamitra Institute.
