Expanded Bio for Zhaxi Zhuoma

Zhaxi Zhuoma Rinpoche (Carol Welker) was born in 1940  near Otsego, Ohio. She received  Bachelor of Landscape Architecture and Masters of City and Regional Planning degrees from the Ohio State University and had several careers in government, private consulting, international banking, and academia. Her academic career also included a MBA from the Drucker School of Management, Claremont Graduate School and post graduate work at Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania.

Somehow, all of this prepared her for her spiritual quest that started around the mid 70’s. She had been a very devout youth and active in the local Lutheran church.  Women were not allowed to enter the ministry then or she would probably have gone to Wittenberg, but instead left the church on her 21st birthday and never returned. She was introduced to Beat Zen through Kerouac and Watts, but it didn’t stick. She converted to Judaism when she married her second husband, but neither worked out. She was ready for something more than worldly life had offered, but she did not know where to go. Now active in the Unitarian Church in the Bay Area, she considered going to Harvard or Starr King to become a Unitarian minister. How else do you learn a new profession? She had much to learn about spiritual awakening.

On a business trip to Asia, she found something else in the dark, solemn Buddhist temples in Kyoto. She came back determined to become a Buddhist. That wasn’t so easy then. She stayed in an ashram run by disciples of Paramahansa  Yogananda. She sat with Jack Kornfield in Marin County where she was then living and eventually took refuge with Roshi Houn Jiyu-Kennett at Shasta Abbey in Northern California. When the San Francisco Zen Center came back to life and Reb Anderson was named abbot, she moved in and started the first of several practice periods there. Somehow she was given an old deserted hotel in northeast Kansas that she saw as a woman’s retreat center. By now Danin Katagiri Roshi was her teacher. She tried many times to become a nun, but it was never to be. A Zen priest friend had told her she should study Shamanism, something that had always interested her. Her mother died and she moved back to Ohio to be with her dad and find her Native American roots. He always believed his paternal grandmother was Ojibway or maybe Blackfoot. Lots else happened, but these were the strongest currents.

She connected with a Huichol shaman and made contact with their fire god, Tatewari. She had seen other dimensions. She had had visions. She remained a Buddhist at heart, but something was missing. The power and fervor that had moved her to radically change her life after Japan was lacking in what she saw in Western Buddhism. Something was missing from what the Buddha brought to this world. Was enlightenment still possible in this Dharma-ending age? About this time, her friend and acupuncturist, Dr. Kuai, had been converted by his sister to follow a master from Chengdu, an artist who was said to be a great teacher, a holy man, a Dharma King. Through Dr. Kuai, she met another disciple of this holy man, a professor from Auburn University, who gave her a strange little book on the “True Stories of a Holy Monk” that rang true. She started practicing a Dharma in that book and listening to tapes of earlier discourses, yes, some of the same discourses she now reads for the classes at LFBCS, and again her life changed. She was able to meet this Dharma King, be accepted as His disciple, packed what she needed and left for California. She had found what she had been seeking.  All of her experiences, education and seeking had prepared her to recognize and be able to receive the true and correct Buddha Dharma that has the power and wisdom that Shakyamuni Buddha discovered and awakened to so long ago. In 2008, it was revealed to the world that her guru was a Buddha, a manifestation of Dorje Chang Buddha.

Zhaxi Zhuoma RInpoche was able to study, train, and travel with H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III, and receive many initiations and empowerments. She also trained and lived with the female Dharma King Dorje PaMu. She started the Xuanfa Institute in 2009 to propagate the correct Buddha Dharma brought to this world by Shakyamuni Buddha and His teacher, Dorje Chang Buddha. In 2010 the temple and retreat center she was developing was recognized as a Vajra Throne and her temple renamed the Holy Vajrasana Temple after some aluminum poles started miraculously shaking and other supernatural events happened. This was a site where people could become enlightened. In 2016 she passed the written exam administered by the World Buddhism Association (WBAH) and the holy test as a Xuan De after she was able to enter the Holy Realm, although she was not able to stay there, earning three blue and one black buttons. She has since earned three more black buttons and the title of Shang Da De for her work in bringing the Dharma to women prisoners and establishing the virtual Lemonade Sangha during the quarantine time of the Covid pandemic and other accomplishments. During that time, she also published Thus Have I Seen: The Marvelous Buddha Dharma and It’s Power to Transform, a book on her experiences with the Dharma and her guru, His Holiness Dorje Chang Buddha III. This book also established the core curriculum and foundation for this Learning from Buddha College and Seminary that she founded and currently heads.