VENERABLE THUBTEN MUNSEL is a student in the Maitripa College MA Program, and leads prayers and meditations for the community. Ven. Munsel has been a Buddhist nun since 1981, receiving full ordination as a Bhikshuni in 1982. She lived, worked, studied, and practiced for 15 years within a Chinese monastic community under the late Great Master Hsuan Hua. There she taught English and Buddhist studies in the elementary and secondary schools, as well as teaching ESL in the early 1980’s to the boat children arriving into the US from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. She served as the women’s coordinator for the four year Sangha and Laity Training Programs, taught classes on monastic vows, and was appointed manager of a nunnery by her Abbot. In the early 1990’s Thubten Munsel spent a year at a Vinaya academy in Taiwan, studying the Bhikshuni precepts. She has taught basic Buddhist studies to prisoners both in
Taiwan
and the United States. In 1997 she came over to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and has had the great fortune to receive teachings from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Ven. Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, Ven. Denmo Locho Rinpoche, Ven. Choden Rinpoche, Rilbur Rinpoche, and Ven. Lati Rinpoche. She has also embarked on a number of solitary retreats. She served for six and a half years at her root guru, Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s personal retreat homes making water bowl offerings, holy statues and stupas, and serving as housekeeper. Thubten Munsel is currently studying with Yangsi Rinpoche in the MA Program in Buddhist Studies at
Maitripa
College. She is also a substitute teacher in an after school literacy program in Gresham, and works as a transcriber for the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archives.