04/12/2025
Reclaiming the Stories That Shape Our Culture
I love reading about inspiring people through the ages, and found in many ancient traditional texts, that some stories remain untold. That often women appear only at the edges — silent, symbolic, or forgotten. And yet, when we look deeper, we find luminous stories that reshaped entire lineages.
One such Buddhist story, beautifully highlighted by Miranda Shaw in Passionate Enlightenment, is that of the yogini who taught the great Tibetan sage Saraha. Her wisdom was so profound that Saraha described her in reverence:
“This yogini’s action is peerless…
Beyond passion and absence of passion…
It is beyond the mind and inconceivable,
This wonder of the yogini…
Perfecter of thought and unity of enlightened spontaneity —
O know this yogini.”
Shaw points out that it wasn’t the sage alone who shaped the teaching — it was the woman beside him.
A teacher.
A guide.
A presence of awakened clarity.
And yet, history almost wrote her out.
This is why storytelling matters so deeply in leadership.
The stories we choose to tell become the foundation of our culture — what we value, what we recognise, what we believe is possible.
When we bring such stories back into the light, we don’t just correct history.
We expand the narrative of wisdom.
We create space for new forms of leadership — inclusive, conscious, embodied.
As leaders, we have a responsibility:
to honour the voices that shaped our path,
and to create cultures where the wisdom of all people — especially those historically unseen — is visible, valued, and transformative.
Because when untold stories rise, so does the world around us.
