People often ask about my name. I’m not Tibetan nor married to a Tibetan, so where’d that funny surname come from?
Rinchen-Wongmo is my Tibetan name.
It means Precious Empowered Woman (or female initiate of great value).
Tibetans don’t generally have surnames or family names. Each individual carries one or two names, usually given to him or her by a lama.
Names can change several times in a lifetime. When great obstacles are encountered or significant changes take place in one’s life, it’s not uncommon to ask a lama for a new name. This shows a deep respect for the power of words and an awareness of the fluidity of identity.
(A large proportion of Tibetans in exile are named Tenzin, because they received a new name from the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, when they arrived in India.)
My name, Rinchen Wongmo, was given to me by Geshe Sonam Rinchen, the Tibetan lama with whom I took refuge in the Buddha’s inner path of freedom and well being. Taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha is, in layman’s terms, the formal act of becoming Buddhist.
I had always been drawn to an eastern spiritual view. It simply felt natural to me from an early age, but I had no specific practice. Ram Dass had been my first teacher, I’d done T.M., and I’d seen the Dalai Lama in college, during his first visit to the US. When I met Tibetan culture on my first trip to Ladakh, I felt I’d found a family — to add to my already wonderful family in the US.
After a few months in Dharamsala studying Buddhism and living among Tibetans, I chose to formalize my commitment to the practice. Geshe Sonam Rinchen, my primary teacher at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, welcomed my declaration and gave me a part of his name, Rinchen (great value, precious). This piece of my name reminds me of the precious opportunity I have in this human life, to practice, to discern, to make choices, to teach, to give. It trains me not to disparage myself, nor to waste the great resource of being me.
The second name Geshe Sonam Rinchen conferred upon me, Wongmo, is a bit harder to take on. And it challenges me every day to step into what I’ve come here prepared to be. Wong is power or authority, ability and influence. It’s also the word used to describe the initiation or empowerment rituals by which lamas confer the juice of a Vajrayana practice to practitioners (the blessings and authority of unbroken lineage). Mo is a feminine suffix, indicating that this particular holder of power is female. So Wongmo can be translated as empowered woman or female initiate. (More commonly transliterated as “Wangmo,” I altered the spelling to “Wongmo” to encourage accurate pronunciation by English speakers.)
Living among the Tibetans for nine years, I was Rinchen Wongmo, precious empowered woman. I learned to make thangkas as Rinchen Wongmo. Ask me in Tibetan what my name is and “Rinchen Wongmo” is the response I’ll give.
When I returned to the West, I tried to bring this name with me intact, to be Rinchen Wongmo here too. But I quickly found that I was still Leslie when speaking English. I’d spent a long time growing into that name and liked who Leslie was. To merge the gifts I was born with and those I’d acquired, I hyphenated my Tibetan name and made it into an artistic surname.
Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo was born.
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Many thanks to Babette Teich-Visco (Tenzin Shila), Ursula Jorch, and Pamela Wilson for encouraging me to tell this story.
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Ah…so I wasn’t the only one who was curious! Thank you for sharing your story, Leslie – old habits, and all….;-) — it’s fascinating.
this was truely interesting – thanks so much for sharing this! I have long been curious about Buddhism, and after attending a conference with the Dalai Lama at Emory University, I’m still curious. This inspires me to keep digging and learning.
leslie ~
i’m glad you wrote about this – it’s VERY interesting to learn about your experience. it also makes it much easier for me to remember how to spell your name(s) because the words now have deep meaning to me, rather than being primarily a handful of different letters.
how cool – you precious empowered women!
i love it – it’s beautiful.
~ julie
Fun story.
Question:
You said: “Tibetans don
It’s great to read all your comments!
Sabio, to respond to your question, just about every Tibetan town has a lama or two, a small local monastery, maybe not in the village but accessible, maybe a few days walk away. Tibetans are used to walking! And the spiritual life has traditionally been intimately woven into their daily lives. “Lama” can be defined different ways in different lineages, but it’s generally a monk with a certain degree of experience, likely having completed a three-year retreat, or it could be a lay spiritual master. It doesn’t have to be someone famous like the Dalai Lama. Most families in Tibet had relatives in the monasteries.
During certain periods of repression, when monasteries were under lock-down or when it was hard to reach a lama for any reason, children were named for the day of the week on which they were born. Sometimes, this is a temporary measure until a trip to a lama can be undertaken, maybe even a few years later. It would not be considered strange to change a child’s name at four years old if that’s when the opportunity finally came! As far as I’m aware, there’s no tradition for parents choosing their children’s names in Tibet the way we do.
Thanks for asking, Zhan Xiang!
Wow, that is fascinating.
BTW, you have a wordpress blog but you have not turned on the option to allow others to follow your blog’s threads by e-mails. You can find that in your control panel. That way people don’t have to come back to see if you replied — turning it on will improve communication on your blog.
IMHO
If you have trouble, visit my blog and click on my “Contact Me” tab and jot me a note.
Thanks for the fantastic information — I learned much.