Our Circle of Connection

Our Circle of Connection (Círculo de conexión) was formed as part of our transition to an antipatriarchal spiritual community and path. This Circle meets and leads Dharmadatta Community non-hierarchically and collaboratively. Decision making is consensus-based and an ethics of care guides our gatherings.

We all come from contexts where patriarchal models of leadership are dominant and we are emerging from them step by step, together. We understand ourselves to be a work in progress, individually and collectively. As part of our construction of a women-led, anti patriarchal leadership model, we undergo the work of coming to terms with our beginnings as a monastic-led, topdown Tibetan Buddhist structures. You can read more about this work in our Empowering Women Leaders initiative. 

Seven women have stepped into this circle, each contributing her unique set of strengths and aspirations. Together we represent the monastic and lay Buddhist path. We are practitioners and scholars, mothers and daughters, seekers and dreamers and builders. We come together as weavers and as woven.

We weave in our collective life experiences  –  planting the earth and teaching in universities, raising children and running businesses, driving taxis and conducting trains, giving workshops and starting non-profits.   

Here is who we each are, but know that together we are much more…

This page is under construction, as you can see! The rest of the biographies are on their way!

Rosalía Vázquez Toríz (Mexico)

Rosalía was born in Puebla, Mexico, where she lives with her daughter and two beloved dogs, whom she considers part of her family and daily life. Her interest in social issues led her to pursue a bachelor’s degree in economics, a masters in environmental sciences and a PhD in rural development.

For more than three decades, her professional life was immersed in university collectives and spaces, where she taught and conducted research in collaboration with various social actors. She collaborated closely in training, mentoring, and organizing processes with peasant communities and rural women’s groups. Rosalía also and served as academic coordinator of undergraduate and graduate programs.

In 2014, she discovered Buddhism, a path that enriched her perspective on social issues and deepened her desire to contribute to the construction of alternative communities based on the common good. She became Director of Instituto Budadharma in 2016 and continues to head this cornerstone of Dharmadatta’s offering to this day. She is currently Professor Emerita of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla.

To the circle, Rosalía brings her experience coordinating educational programs, her aspiration to contribute to the construction of collective spaces by and for women, and her decolonial feminist perspective for the dissemination of the Dharma in Latin America.

Gabriela Calete (Argentina)

Gabriela was born and raised in Buenos Aires and has two children, a son aged 26 and a daughter aged 20. After a first career as a chemist managing a laboratory, she trained as a social psychologist, and also studied theater as a therapeutic tool. She worked in a center supporting patients of multiple sclerosis and their families. During that time, Gabriela was certified in neurorehabilitation and discovered a vocation working with the elderly. Moved by the agism she witnessed, she co-founded a senior center in Buenos Aires with the intention of offering senior adults a space where they could experience respect and true inclusivity, and continues to work there today.

Among Gabriela’s particular contributions to the circle are her acute social intelligence, her experiencing in community-building and her commitment to the construction of projects that reflect her feminist values and authentic inclusivity.

Damcho Diana Finnegan (New York, USA)

Originally from New York, Damcho first encountered Buddhist teachings after she was posted to Asia as a journalist. She was ordained for 24 years as a Buddhist nun, training for over a decade with Tibetan lamas in India and earning a PhD in Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a dissertation on gender and ethics in Buddhist narratives about women. Damcho has been teaching in Latin America in Spanish since 2003, and co-founded  Dharmadatta Community in 2012.

After becoming aware of widespread abuse in Buddhist communities, she gave back her monastic vows in 2023, and has lived and served as a lay teacher since then.  She has lived in Poland, Trinidad and Tobago, Hong Kong, India and Mexico, and currently makes her home near the slow-flowing Hudson River  in Peekskill, New York.

To the circle she brings her heart-love for earth-based spirituality, her willingness to follow questions wherever they lead, and her years immersed in canonical texts and the living tradition of Tibetan Buddhism in Asia.

Libia Franco González (Mexico)

Biographical sketch to come

Jennifer Battista Adarme (Venezuela)

Biographical sketch to come

Lorens Bobadilla Césped (Chile)

Biographical sketch to come

Thubten Karya/Andrea Quintana Torres (Colombia)

Biographical sketch to come