Date of Award
2026
Degree Type
Open Access Dissertation
Degree Name
Religion, PhD
Program
School of Arts and Humanities
Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair
Nicola Denzey Lewis
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Joe Parker
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Karen Jo Torjesen
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Dirk von der Horst
Terms of Use & License Information
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Rights Information
© 2026 Janice Leah Poss
Keywords
Hildegard von Bingen, Leadership, Padmasambhava, Women, Women in Religion, Yeshe Tsogyal
Subject Categories
Religion | Women's Studies
Abstract
This Women's and Gender Studies in Religion dissertation seeks to restore awareness of women's religious leadership using the actual embodied experience of Yeshe Tsogyal and Hildegard von Bingen embedded in the philosophical terms Erlebnis (German), Padartha/Bhava (Sanskrit), and srid pa (Tibetan). Brief definitions are: Erlebnis as enthusiastic, lived experience and awareness, Padarthas as categories of real things or actualities, Bhava as the act of emotional or spiritual feeling, and Srid pa as becoming in possibility. Drawing on the above four terms encapsulated in a feminist transnational and intersectional methodological framework, this project reinforces women’s authority and influence in religion as intellectually capable, inspiring, and humble exemplars, thus rendering inoperative inaccurate historical errors and amending them. I employ a three-stage analysis: first, using a feminist postcolonial methodology that Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak calls “sabotage” to dismantle inherited androcentric historical frameworks. Second, I explore Meyda Yeğenoğlu’s “peering behind the veil” to recognize false colonial paradigms that she questions and renders a counter-Orientalist narrative. Finally, I arrest further systemic harmful structures of suppression of women by using my device of “rendering them inoperative.” Once distinguishing these frameworks, I restructure and retool oppression, suppression, and erasure into freedom, autonomy, and knowledge about women’s contributions undergirded by the above four multi-lingual concepts. Then, this study assesses transformational acquisition of authority and empowerment as topical exegesis, through historical cyclic existence of women’s spiritual lives across inter-cultural scaffolds. I focus on ortho-praxis in Roman Catholic and Tibetan Tantric Buddhist traditions, moving beyond initial analysis to create generative paradigms that convert gendered mind/body dualisms into both/and gender-integrative reciprocity through embodied religious practice. Through selected sections of the faith journeys of Buddha Yeshe Tsogyal (ཡེ་ཤེས་མཚོ་རྒྱལ) (757–817 CE) and Saint Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179 CE) who lived during the eighth century early Buddhist Tibetan Empire and the twelfth century Germanic region of Franconia, I describe how each achieved effective agency through religious practice over the trajectory of their lives. By understanding their faith and Dharma journeys guided by instruction and informal teaching, they acquired increased skills, expertise, and proficiencies which transformed them into consummate female religious leaders as we ascertain their ability to strategically navigate within androcentric religious systems. Presenting German European and Tibetan women’s passionate lived religion throughout the categories of their lives, side-by-side, can neutralize white Western hegemonic viewpoints and allow us to see each woman as her own person and leader. Three themes emerge from historical enquiry that remain relevant today: (1) integration of mind/body, spirit/nature, gender/sex dualisms through lived experience, (2) gradual acquisition of agency (active authority), and (3) marginalized female spirituality and enlightenment as sites of paradigmatic change. Demonstrating women's proficiency, rooted in material lived experience rather than abstract doctrine, renders androcentric binaries inoperative and establishes redefined prototypes and new tools of interconnected reciprocity in religious authority that challenge, modify, and offer Western hegemonic frameworks inclusive contemporary models for feminist religious scholarship.
ISBN
9798247918165
Recommended Citation
Poss, Janice Leigh. (2026). Blazing Turquoise and Coral Light Jewels of Veiled Empowerment: Buddha Ye shes mTsho rgyal (ཡེ་ཤེས་མཚོ་རྒྱལ) and Saint Hildegard von Bingen in the Lotus of Ever-Excellent Feminist Dialogue. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 1121. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/1121.
