Dharmadatta Community was founded in 2009 by and for Spanish-speaking women who share a vision of awakening as collective. 

Its offerings include an online institute for the study of Buddhist teachings that now has 400 students in its seven-year study program, a virtual meditation hall with regular group practice sessions and hybrid meditation retreats. To ensure an equitable and inclusive community, Dharmadatta has maintained a fierce commitment to offer all its online talks, workshops, retreats and other events completely free of charge. Its projects are sustained by generosity and the efforts of a volunteer organization that unites over 150 people.

The community locates gender and ecological issues at the heart of Buddhist practice.

Our community began as a group of nuns who trained together for seven years in India with Tibetan Buddhist masters, including the Dalai Lama and senior Karma Kagyu masters. The nuns moved in 2016 to Mexico and more recently, the joy of service has come to unite a flourishing team of lay and monastic women inspired to share Dharma resources and to apply them to co-create the conditions for a better world. 

Dharmadatta’s founding teacher, Damcho, had been sent by her own teachers in 2003 to teach in Puerto Rico and then Mexico, and traveled to Latin America most years thereafter to guide retreats. In 2010 she responded to requests from those communities to offer weekly Dharma talks live-streamed from their residence in India. As the webcasts reached Spanish-speakers around the world seeking access to the Dharma, Dharmadatta Community grew and began to link from Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, Spain and other countries, as well as Spanish speakers living in the United States and around the world.

After four years in Mexico with the nuns walking a monastic path alongside lay practitioners, Dharmadatta Community has shifted to a model of community that integrates lay and monastic practitioners. 

Lhundup Damcho 

Lhundup Damcho was born and raised in New York. After high school, she spent a year back-packing alone in Europe before starting her university studies at Sarah Lawrence, where she earned a BA in humanities. She then spent a year studying and living abroad in Paris and Poland, and then joined the New School for Social Research, for MA studies in Continental and Greek philosophy. In 1989, she left to begin a career as a journalist, continuing for seven years in her hometown of New York and later as bureau chief in Hong Kong. Later, during a year’s sabbatical writing as a freelance journalist, she engaged in a 10-day meditation retreat in Nepal’s Kathmandu valley. It was there that she… read more…

Tenzin Nangpel

Nangpel was born to Polish and Mexican parents. Her maternal grandmother was a Holocaust survivor: one of the few survivors within her family. Nangpel was raised in Mexico in a large family. She began studying Spanish literature at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and then shifted to the study of law, in which she earned her BA. As part of her deep social commitment, Nangpel worked for 13 years as a researcher in the National Anthropology and History Institute INAH.

She holds a first grade black belt in aikido and was authorized by her teacher to open her own dojo, where she … read more…

Tenzin Dapel

Born in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, Dapel trained as a teacher, and worked for four years as an elementary schoolteacher. While still living in Europe, she was exposed to Buddhist meditation in the Theravada tradition and regularly participated in meditation retreats. During extended travels in Asia, she attended a month-long lam rim meditation retreat at Kopan Monastery, followed by the three-month Vajrasattva retreat there.

At the age of 28, Dapel decided to dedicate her life… read more…

Karma Lodrö Lhadron

Karma Lodrö was born in the Dominican Republic. She immigrated with her family to Puerto Rico at an early age. Lodrö earned a BA in Accounting and an MA in Business Management. She founded her own business, providing accounting services to diverse companies.

She encountered the Dharma at the Centro Budista Ganden Shedrub Ling Buddhist Center in Puerto Rico, where she completed the study program comprising a two-year course in Basics of Buddhism followed by the study of Madhyamaka philosophy. In 2012, she joined the 3-month Vajrasattva Retreat in Mexico directed by Venerable Damchö and… read more…