Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo
1988 Enthronement With Dakini Crown
Religion	Tibetan Buddhism
School	Vajrayana Nyingma
Lineage	Palyul
Other names	Catharine Burroughs
Dharma names	Ahkon Norbu Lhamo
Personal
Nationality	United States
Born	October 12, 1949 Brooklyn, New York
Senior posting
Based in	Poolesville, Maryland
Religious career
Teacher	HH Drubwang Pedma Norbu Rinpoche
Reincarnation	Genyenma Ahkon Lhamo, Mandarava
Website	http://tara.org

Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo (born October 12, 1949; born Alyce Louise Zeoli) is an enthroned tulku within the Palyul lineage of the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. In the late 1980s, she gained international attention as the first Western woman to be named a reincarnate lama. She continues to serve as Spiritual Director for Kunzang Odsal Palyul Changchub Choling, a Buddhist center in Poolesville, Maryland, which includes one of the largest communities of Western monks and nuns in North America. She went on to found a center in Sedona, Arizona, U.S.A. Jetsunma has been described by her own teachers, as well as many other Tibetan Buddhist lamas who have visited her temple, as a dakini or female wisdom being, and is thus viewed in that way by her students.

Zeoli was born in Canarsie, Brooklyn on October 12, 1949, to an Austrian/Dutch Jewish mother and Italian father, alternately attended the Dutch Reform Church and Catholic Church in her youth. The family moved to Hialeah, Florida when she was 14. Enduring a home life of alcoholism and physical abuse of the children, Zeoli tried unsuccessfully to run away at age 17. After finishing high school, she married Jim Perry and gave birth to her first son, Ben. The marriage soon ended in divorce and she moved to a farm outside Asheville, North Carolina with Pat Mulloy. They got married and she had another son, Christopher.

It was at that farmhouse in Asheville where, based on a series of instructive dreams starting at age 19, she began meditation practice and independent spiritual training, culminating in a spiritual experience at age 30. She studied with a New Age teacher named Jim Gore and gave channeled psychic readings at the Black Mountain Light Center in North Carolina.

In 1980, she met Michael Burroughs, a graduate student in religions at the University of Virginia. She and Mulloy separated in 1981.