Cave in the snow. A western woman’s quest for enlightenment

by Vicki Mackenzie

  The obvious next step was to find a teacher, ‘an eminent guru’as Milarepa had put it, to guide her, as he had found Marpa. ‘I knew I had to look for a teacher, not just any teacher, but the one,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I ever questioned the fact that I would find him, that he would be Kargyu and that he would be in India because that was where all the Tibetan refugees had gone. I made up my mind then that I would go there to look for him,’ she added. But this was not to happen yet.

  In the meantime life was not all serious spiritual inquiry. Tenzin Palmo had another side. She was a teenager, she was pretty, she had long curly hair and was described as ‘bubbly’ by those who knew her. As she had grown older she had not only got used to being in a female body but had actively begun to enjoy it. She had discovered boys and they had certainly discovered her. Life in the heart of London was fun. It was the early sixties, the time of Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Beatniks, Radio Luxembourg and rock’n’ roll. The cult of youth was just beginning, and Tenzin Palmo threw herself into it with all the enthusiasm she could muster.

  ‘I wore stiletto heels, and pretty clothes, went to jazz clubs and loved dancing. I was a great Elvis Presley fan (he was my big renunciation when I became a Buddhist!). In fact I had a very hectic social life and had lots of boyfriends, especially Asians. Funnily enough, I was never attracted to Western men. One thing I was always completely sure about, though, I never wanted to get married. I was very clear about that. I can remember when I was sixteen and about to be a bridesmaid for the third time – a friend said, “Don’t do it! Three times a bridesmaid never a bride!” And I replied, “That’s a silly superstition but let’s hope it works, it will add that little bit extra.” I wanted to be independent. I didn’t want to have my head filled with thoughts of one person.’

  The two sides of Tenzin Palmo inevitably clashed, throwing her into an inner struggle which was not to be resolved for some years. ‘On the one side I was this frivolous, fun-loving young woman and on the other I was serious and “spiritual”. I would vacillate between putting on my flared skirt and petticoats and the black stockings and flat shoes. Those two sides were at war. At the time I was frightened the frivolous side would win,’ she said. The split caused other difficulties. ‘I had friends who belonged to each side and who never mixed. One day I went to a gathering where I’d invited both sets. I arrived late, and by the time I walked through the door they were totally confused because the only thing they had in common was me and it seemed as though they were talking about entirely different people. That gave me a real sense of crisis. How am I going to resolve this, I wondered. And at that moment I heard this voice inside me again saying: “Don’t worry about it. When the time comes to renounce, you will renounce. You’re young, enjoy yourself! Then when the time comes you’ll really have something to give up.” Hearing that, I relaxed.’

  She continued to date boys, go dancing and on one occasion got properly drunk on Chianti during an Italian holiday. Underneath the levity, however, she had not forgotten her quest to find a guru. On the Buddhist grapevine, she had heard of an Englishwoman called Freda Bedi who had married an Indian, become a Buddhist and started a small nunnery for Kargyupa nuns as well as a school for young reincarnated lamas in Dalhousie, in northern India. It was as good a place as any to begin her search. Tenzin Palmo duly wrote to Freda Bedi explaining that she was also Kargyu and would like to offer her services in whatever way she could, although she was only a trainee librarian and didn’t know really what she could do. Freda Bedi wrote back: ‘Please come, come.

  Don’t worry, just come!’

  The door was open but stepping through it was difficult. Getting to India required money, more than Tenzin Palmo could ever amass from the Hackney Library. She decided to look for a higher-paying job. She was never ambitious in the worldly sense - careers, success, personal accolades meaning nothing to her. ‘I have never been driven to prove myself in that sense,’ she said. Having made up her mind, fate or karma once again played into her hands.

  ‘Almost immediately I saw a job advertised at the School of Oriental and African Studies in Bloomsbury and went along for an interview with the Chief Librarian, a Mr Pearson. He had just come back from Burma and India, so I was absolutely fascinated and plied him with all these questions. He asked me if I would be willing to take library exams and I said, “No, because I’m going to go to India to help the Tibetan refugees.” With that I thought I’d lost the job. Mr Pearson then asked me when I planned to leave. “As soon as I can save up the money, in a year or two,” I replied. When I walked out of his office I saw all these other people lining up for the job. A few days later I got a phone call. It was Mr Pearson. “Well, we had such a fantastic interview I forgot to talk about things like how much money you want and the hours,” he said. “We’d be very happy to welcome you to our library. ‘"

  Mr Pearson had clearly taken Tenzin Palmo’s personal mission to heart. Once she was installed in the library, he arranged for her to take Tibetan lessons at SOAS’s expense and during the library’s time with the renowned Tibetologist David Snellgrove, one of the rare people who had actually travelled to Tibet in the 1950s. These elementary lessons were to prove invaluable later when she was faced with being in an all-Tibetan community with only Tibetan texts to read. At the time, however, this unexpected boon had some dire moments. ’Snellgrove was terrifying. He used to stand in front of us and utter these crushing remarks. I used literally to shake before going into the classroom. The nice thing was he had these three Bonpo lamas (the religion from pre-Buddhist Tibet), staying with him. They were the first Tibetan lamas I ever met.’

  Over the next year a few other Tibetan lamas were to trickle into England, lamas who spearheaded the first wave of the implantation of Tibetan Buddhism to the West. Tenzin Palmo, as one of the first Westerners ever to embrace the unfashionable faith, was in a perfect position to meet them. Her mother, Lee, always interested in new things and open to fresh ideas, especially in the matter of spirituality, would invite them home for lunch and dinner, and they, knowing no one in this strange land, were only too happy to mix with people who were showing some interest in Tibetan Buddhism.

  Among them was Rato Rinpoche (who now runs Tibet House in New York and who starred in Bertolucci’s film The Little Buddha) and the brilliant, charismatic and latterly notorious Choygam Trungpa. Trungpa went on to make his mark in a number of ways: he not only wrote a number of best-selling early Buddhist books including Cutting through Spiritual Materialism and Journey Without Goal, but he established the first British Tibetan retreat and meditation centre, ’Samye Ling’ in Scotland. Later he moved on to the USA where he founded the equally successful and still thriving Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, which has produced some of America’s most prominent Buddhist teachers. As well as being a high lama, an accomplished meditation master, a brilliant scholar and gifted communicator, Choygam Trungpa in his later years also became known for his unconventional and scandalous behaviour, which threw his organization into chaos.

  None of this had yet happened when the nineteen-year-old Tenzin Palmo met the young and obscure Choygam Trungpa. Like the other lamas of that time he was wandering around lost and ignored, no one having any idea of the calibre of the teachers who had come among them. Tenzin Palmo happened to be at this cross-over point, ready.

  ’Shortly after I met him he turned to me and said: “You may find this difficult to believe, but actually back in Tibet I was quite a high lama and I never thought it would come to this but please, can I teach you meditation? I must have one disciple!"’

  Tenzin Palmo was only too willing. She became a private pupil of the talented Trungpa. Now instead of having only a few books to turn to for guidance, she had a living resource. She was delighted. ‘I felt, this is the genuine thing at last, even though Trungpa was nothing like how I imagined a monk or lama should be. He wasn’t at all beautiful. He was very plain and didn’t know much English but there was something there,’ she sa
id.

  In the coming months Trungpa demonstrated some remarkable capacities. ‘On one occasion he began talking about the Tibetan lamas’ powers to “make weather", claiming that it was easy to bring about hailstorms but not so easy to prevent them once they were on their way. We were fascinated,’ recalled Tenzin Palmo. ‘The next week my mother and I went to visit him in Oxford where he was staying. It was a warm sunny day in mid-July, with a gorgeous deep-blue sky, and as we got off the coach this little black cloud came tripping along and the next minute we were in the middle of a small hailstorm right over our heads.’

  On a more serious level, he was there to meet her barrage of questions and to engage in heated arguments which both of them enjoyed. He told her many things which she didn’t understand at all at the time but which made sense later on. And he gave her her first meditation lessons, teaching her how to observe the mind, how to make it relaxed but alert at the same time. Tenzin Palmo was in her element. ‘I thought it was wonderful. I always felt meditation was the essence of the path and I had great faith in Trungpa,’ she said. At the time she could not have articulated precisely why meditation was so important, nor what it did. Now after thirty years of solid practice she can explain exactly what the business of ‘looking inwards’ is all about: ‘Our mind is so untamed, out of control, constantly creating memories, prejudices, mental commentaries. It’s like a riot act for most people! Anarchy within. We have no way of choosing how to think and the emotions engulf us. Meditation is where you begin to calm the storm, to cease the never-ending chattering of the mind. Once that is achieved you can access the deeper levels of consciousness which exist beyond the surface noise. Along with that comes the gradual disidentification with our thoughts and emotions. You see their transparent nature and no longer totally believe in them. This creates inner harmony which you can then bring into your everyday life.’

  But Tenzin Palmo also experienced at first hand the more controversial side of Trungpa. She was neither upset, nor outraged (unlike his recent detractors), nor did she take the high moral ground. Quite the contrary. ‘I can remember the first time I met him. As I walked in the room he patted the seat next to him on the sofa, indicating I should sit beside him. We were in the middle of afternoon tea, eating cucumber sandwiches and talking about deep Buddhist subjects when suddenly I felt his hand going up my skirt. I didn’t scream but I did have on stiletto heels and Trungpa was wearing sandals! He didn’t scream either, but he did remove his hand very quickly,’ she said laughing as she recalled the event.

  Trungpa was not to be deterred. ‘He was always suggesting I sleep with him. And I kept saying “No way",’ she continued.’The fact was, he was not being truthful. He was presenting himself as a pure monk and saying that meeting me had swept him off his feet etc. which I thought was a load of baloney, although I did think he was “pure” because I couldn’t see how a high Tibetan lama would have had the opportunity to be otherwise. And I certainly was not going to be the cause of any monk losing his vows. I didn’t want anything to damage Mahayana Buddhism. If he had said to me, “Look, my dear, I’ve had women since I was thirteen and I have a son, don’t worry about it,” which was true, I would have said, “Let’s go,” because what would have been more fascinating than to practise with Trungpa? None of the men I knew were anything like him,’ she said with surprising candour, referring to the fact that in the higher stages of Tibetan Buddhism in tantra, one takes a sexual partner to enhance one’s spiritual insights. ’So, he lost out by presenting that pathetic image!’ she added.

  In spite of the sexual skirmishes Tenzin Palmo and Choygam Trungpa remained good friends. ‘He definitely had something. Even though he was very casual and certainly never acted in a way I expected a lama to act, he was special,’ she acknowledged. He was also instrumental in encouraging Tenzin Palmo to go to India to find her guru. By February 1964 Tenzin Palmo, now aged twenty, had saved the £90 needed for the sea passage to India. It was the cheapest way she could find, but earning just £8 a week, it had been a slow process. Her ship, he Vietnam, was to sail from Marseille, in the south of France. A train, a Channel crossing and another train were necessary before the journey proper could begin. Trungpa was amongst the group who came to Victoria station to wave her off.

  Chapter Four

  The First Step

  As the train pulled away from the platform leaving her mother, her country, for she didn’t know how long, Tenzin Palmo was dry-eyed. Her travelling companions, Ruth Tarling and Christine Morris, who were also headed for Freda Bedi’s school, were in floods of tears, however. ‘I couldn’t understand it. I was extremely happy. Finally I was off. This was the moment I’d been waiting for years,’ Tenzin Palmo said.

  She was carrying two big bags containing an odd assortment of gear – six nightdresses, lots of soap and a big sweater which one of the London lamas wanted her to deliver to his brother in India. ‘I was carrying all the wrong things. Why I needed six nightgowns I’ll never know, and India makes perfectly good soap,’ she laughed.

  Le Vietnam was a banana boat crewed by Ethiopians, Vietnamese, Sudanese and Algerians, recruited from the former French colonies. This was India on the cheap. There were no deck quoits, no cocktail parties, no luxury swimming pool, and just a handful of passengers, all making their way slowly eastwards to India and beyond. The voyage took two weeks, stopping off at Barcelona, Port Said, Aden, and Bombay before sailing further eastwards. Tenzin Palmo knew a girl who lived in Bombay and had written to her asking if she could stay for a few days while she orientated herself.

  The leisurely pace of the voyage suited Tenzin Palmo’s mood perfectly. ‘It was like being in a bardo state, that world in between death and rebirth. You’re not part of the past and not yet in the future. I had this limited time where I could just be on the boat, before the next chapter. It was a lovely way to travel.’

  The journey was to prove memorable, however. True to all good sea voyage stories, there was a ship-board romance. Also accompanying Tenzin Palmo was a young Japanese man whom she had only recently met. Like many of her suitors, he had fallen deeply in love with the vivacious and intelligent woman. Tenzin Palmo from her side had been extremely attracted to the tall Asian man, who came from a good family and was Buddhist as well. They had decided to travel together, the Japanese man intending to take the boat on to Tokyo. Inevitably, once on board romance flourished and one night under the stars he proposed, albeit in a most unusual way.

  ‘He told me he was going to say something and that I had to say “Hei” at the end. I said OK, thinking it was a game. He went on for about five minutes, stopped, looked at me and I said, “Hei”. I asked what I had agreed to, and he said, “You’ve just agreed to marry me.” I burst out laughing. I thought he was joking. We hardly knew each other. I didn’t think he was serious, but he was.’

  Tenzin Palmo vacillated, caught once more between the two sides of herself. ‘The thing was he was so beautiful and such a lovely person. He had such a good heart. My friends said I’d better marry him quick because I wasn’t going to find someone like him again in a hurry. And it was the first time I’d ever met anyone who I felt “This one I want to be with.” Still, deep inside me, I didn’t really want to get married. My idea was that we’d live together for a while, he would get fed up with me because he was so incredible and I was really nothing and then I’d really understand that this life was suffering, as the Buddha had said. I could then come back and be a nun. That’s what I was thinking,’ she said.

  ’The problem was I never actually said “No.” When I suggested we live together he was horrified and said it was out of the question. The family, the tradition would never allow it. It was unthinkable. We had to get married. At that moment all the warning bells went off and I felt this terror of becoming entrapped.’

  Caught in the two-way pull between the need for physical and emotional intimacy and the ever-present call of the spirit she decided to keep her options open. They made an agreement. Tenzi
n Palmo would stay in India for a year and then go to Japan. As it turned out, the Japanese boyfriend almost got his way sooner than he expected. Disembarking at Bombay Tenzin Palmo discovered, much to her dismay, that there was no one waiting on the docks to meet them as arranged. Taking control of the situation, the Japanese boyfriend left the girls with the luggage and went to look around.

  ‘He came back absolutely appalled. “This is a terrible place. It’s hell. I can’t leave you here,” he said. I didn’t know what to do. “If someone doesn’t come for us in half an hour I will come on with you to Japan,” I finally agreed. We had waited for another twenty minutes when a man suddenly came rushing towards us waving a letter. “You wrote to my daughter – but she is not at home, so I opened it. It only came by this morning’s mail. I rushed here immediately,” he said. Such is the fine-timing of fate. I remember crying myself to sleep that night, thinking of leaving my boyfriend. The next morning, however, I woke up and felt quite cheerful! Ah, never mind, I thought.’

  So Tenzin Palmo and her girlfriends made their way to Dalhousie, in northern India, and Freda Bedi’s school for young lamas. It was March when they arrived, Tenzin Palmo having trudged the last two hours through the snow in sandals. Her feet might have been wet but her spirits were ebullient: ‘I was going up into the mountains and more and more Tibetans were appearing. When I finally reached Dalhousie there were thousands of them. There were snow mountains all around, the sky was bright blue - it was so lovely.’

  She continued: We found Mrs Bedi in the kitchen standing over a stove which was gushing out smoke with no heat coming from it at all. She was cooking porridge made with some Tibetan cheese. It was disgusting. She was a tall, plump woman in her mid fifties with blue eyes, an aquiline nose and grey hair pulled back in a bun. I remember she was wearing a maroon sari made of heavy woollen cloth, which made her look enormous.’