Use ANY Texts by Dakini Translations Without Question - Why Not? They Are Free!

A Warning to the Vajrayana Community: Avoid Texts Transmitted by Adele Tomlin

In the digital age of Dharma, not everything freely offered is freely beneficial. Adele Tomlin, the figure behind Dakini Translations, has built a niche reputation for uploading English translations of Vajrayana liturgies and daily practices shortly after attending empowerments from various Kagyu and other lineage lamas, particularly the Karmapa. While these translations may appear helpful at first glance - free, formatted, accessible - they come with a heavy karmic and spiritual price that discerning practitioners cannot afford to ignore.

Would You Consume Someone's Vomit Served as Dish?

Receiving empowerment grants the blessing and permission to practice, not to translate, publish, or distribute liturgical texts. This is especially true for Vajrayana texts which often come with strict samaya agreements regarding who may handle and disseminate the materials. Adele Tomlin repeatedly publishes texts post-empowerment, or shall I say - serve her regurgitations on her website, with no visible authorization or confirmation from lineage holders. No letter of approval. No mention of transmission lineage. No safeguard of samaya. If the texts were meant to circulate, the lineage masters themselves would authorize publication - or better yet, provide them through official channels. Just because I offer you my vomit on a golden plate, doesn't mean it is edible to you. Relying on unauthorized regurgitated texts pollutes your practice purity, damages samaya, confuses lineage boundaries, and may nullify the very blessing the practice was meant to convey. Dharma texts are not some marketing ploys to sell to prospective devotees! We are not in the business of converting people!

Furthermore, despite framing her unauthorized works as an offering, Adele can never detach herself from personal bias but regurgitates a hybrid product: part liturgy, part personal anecdote, part spiritual projection. Vajrayana teachings are not diary entries. They are precise energetic transmissions embedded in language, imagery, and symbolism. When interpreted without realization, but with obnoxious projections, especially by someone who publicly confesses to erratic emotional states during empowerments (e.g. laughter bursts during Phowa empowerment), the result is spiritually unreliable at best, harmful at worst. Pay attention, in all her publications on her website, which of them are not free from hostility and doubt? The most frequent example is her constant bringing up the past Mongol-Gelug issue, so that you - yes, you - never ever abandon two poisons - hatred and ignorance. Would you trust your parachute to someone who stitches it together during an emotional high? Worse, the emotional high is staged; it can't be any soberer to ensure the stitches in your parachute must go all wrong when you need it the most! Translation without realization is distortion. Even extremely simple texts with no likely distortion, you become karmically indebted to her by using her free texts; how are you going to escape from such karmic spiritual entanglement with mara but to be born into one of its retinue? You are now reinforcing a dependency on her brand and platform. Adele decides what gets published, what gets emphasized, and what gets erased (just as the dissenting voices she blocks or deletes on her social platforms). What begins as “free” slowly morphs into informational monopoly, replacing traditional reliance on root teachers and verified sources with her personality cult and interpretations. This is not open-source Dharma - it’s curated gatekeeping disguised as generosity, and you choose to be one of its retinue to solidify its control?

Breaks the Lineage’s Protective Protocols

Vajrayana practices are protected through oral transmission and qualified instruction, often deliberately restricted to avoid misuse. Adele bypasses this sacred filter system by mass-publishing daily practices, commentaries, and mantras to anyone with a web browser, regardless of empowerment status. In doing so, she not only violates samaya protocols but also exposes sacred technologies to misinterpretation, spiritual bypassing, and ego appropriation. Lineage protectors don’t guard these transmissions without reason. 

Always Refer to Official Sources with Clear Lineage Affiliation

If you look for any particular texts for practice, seek authorized lamas, Dharma centers, and translation houses such as: Dharmaebooks.org, Marpa Translation Society, Lotsawa House (authorized translations with lineage context), 84000.co (Kangyur and Tengyur translations), Rigpa Translations, Nalanda Translation Committee, Padmakara, and others - each with accountable teams, peer review, and samaya. Keep in mind, if you are destined to embrace that very practice you are looking for, you will meet it from authentic sources with clear lineage affiliation through deeply meaningful personal contexts, not from self-endorsed entity with faked affiliation or from a self-appointed Vajrayana gatekeeper who happens to provide it freely at your fingertaps. Personal practice is deeply rooted in past karmic affinity. Better do without any texts supplied by a mara clothed as the Karmapa, than become karmically indebted, entangled with that very mara. Can you still not see who is that modern minimally-dressed self-appointed dakini waving at passers-by to get them to lower realms by the embellished obtrusive tag "Access The Karmapa Here"? 
If you wouldn’t receive a transmission from Adele Tomlin in person, why would you entrust your practice to Dakini Translations? 

Call to Practitioners, Editors, and Dharma Centers

Do not repost or circulate ANY texts translated by Dakini Translations of Adele Tomlin without checking samaya permissions and original sources. Compare her texts word-by-word with original sources if you deeply care for Adele's influence than your own safety.

Do not rely on her publications as substitutes for direct instruction and authentic lineage.

Respect the sacred boundary between experience and interpretation. Adele blurs it - we must not.

Energetic contamination is real. Karmic entanglement is even more insidious. Ask any trusted, authentic lama: Would they ever recommend Adele Tomlin’s translations — no lineage authorization, self-proclaimed spiritual practitioner who can speak with shadows, tree roots, and what not, not to mention her unethical, hostile, and deceptive propensities? If not, why are her writings still circulating? What legitimate reason exists to choose her versions over traditional, lineage-approved sources? Look closely, when does she ever stop sneaking in anti-Dalai-Lama anti-Gelugpa narratives in all her posts, including translations? About 93% of her site’s content consists of narrative-heavy opinion pieces, not pure translations, contradicting the site’s title “Dakini Translations.” Even the remaining of around 7% translation pieces are heavily compromised with the insertion of her twisted personal commentary based on her presumptions. At least 25 manipulation tactics are unearthed from The contents of Dakini Translations during April 2018 - July 2025. For serious practitioners: energetic contamination is real. Everything carries imprint. Keep your field clean. Don’t take risks with your path to realization.

The blessings of Vajrayana are too precious to be handled loosely. Let us not dilute their power with unauthorized texts, ego-driven narratives, or mistranslations. Choose your sources with utmost care. One slip is all it takes to spiral into the lower realms. All I can do is being the boring faulty tape, repeating the same old message, over and over again. You are the only person who can truly protect yourself.