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

by Vicki Mackenzie

  ’Then you’d go to the next house and the next. When you first started it was great. You’d have been walking for an hour or two through the pre-dawn and you’d be numb with the cold by the time you got to the first house. The hot tea they offered was wonderful. But by the end of the day the sack and the stomach is getting bigger and bigger, and you’re feeling completely nauseous and you beg them not to give you any more. But the villagers really loved it. At the end of it all you had about fifty to eighty kilos of barley. It was more than enough for me,’ she said. The process didn’t stop there. After amassing the barley, Tenzin Palmo had to get it roasted before going to the local mill to grind it into flour, ready for it to be mixed with tea and rolled into balls to make the ubiquitous tsampa, staple food of all Tibetans. Tenzin Palmo developed a genuine taste for it.

  Life went on in this manner for six years. Occasionally she ventured out of her valley. Every year during the summer she went back to Tashi Jong to see Khamtrul Rinpoche, to report on her spiritual progress and to receive further instruction. It was imperative. The guru was the guide who, knowing his disciple’s mind more intimately than anyone else on earth, could steer her course and tailor-make her path to ensure maximum progress towards Enlightenment in her lifetime.

  Once, in 1973, she made her way back to England to see her mother. It was her first visit to her homeland in ten years, and was to prove an eye-opener. Lee had moved from Bethnal Green to fashionable Knightsbridge, in the heart of London’s West End, where she had taken a job as housekeeper to a wealthy Canadian who had an opulent apartment there. From living in a little stone house and fetching her own water, Tenzin Palmo now found herself just a few steps away from Harrods, the exclusive department store, and from the manicured splendour of Hyde Park, steeped in luxury. She had a soft bed to sleep in, wall-to-wall carpets, central heating, two colour television sets, and every modern convenience Western civilization had thought of. Far from revelling in the unaccustomed comfort as one might expect, she hated it.

  ‘I was so bored. The London water I found undrinkable. I had to drink fruit juices all the time, I couldn’t even drink tea. It made me sick. The food was so rich it made my head feel as if it was stuffed with black cotton wool. I got electric shocks from everything I touched and I felt tired all the time. “If ever you think that happiness depends on external factors, remember this,” I told myself.’

  Finding absolutely nothing in her former life to attract her, she was eager to get back to her stone house in Lahoul, but there was a problem. She did not have the plane fare back. As was so often the case, she was completely out of cash. Over the years Tenzin Palmo had developed an interesting, if highly unusual relationship with money. Like all religious in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, she was not funded by a common fund or central government body – being left to her own devices to find a living allowance. As such she was at the mercy of whatever people found it in their hearts to offer her. Since she made it a personal policy never to ask, this frequently made for a precarious and astonishingly lean existence indeed. With remarkable equanimity she learnt to let go – and somehow managed to survive.

  ‘From time to time people would give, usually small amounts,’ she explained. ‘For the first few years when I was a nun in Dalhousie my mother sent me a month. Sometimes that managed to feed two of us. A couple of rupees would get you a plate of rice and dhal (lentils), which is what I lived on. The most expensive item was milk powder for tea. Everything could be bought in small amounts according to your need. When I went back to London I was staggered when I went to buy butter being asked if I wanted New Zealand, Australian, Devon, Danish, salted, unsalted. The choice and quantities were so enormous!’

  When her mother could no longer afford the allowance, John Blofeld suddenly wrote saying that he and his friend, a Thai princess called Mom Smoe, had decided they both wanted to support her.

  ‘I wrote back thanking him and saying I could live on half the amount he was suggesting. He replied that if he took a Thai farmer out to a 10-baht meal it would seem an enormous amount to the farmer but little to him and that likewise I should accept. When Mom Smoe died John took over her share until his own death. He used to put the money, about £50 a year, into a bank account and I would take it out when I needed it. His donations were extremely helpful when I was living at Tayul Gompa and not going out and meeting anybody to give me donations,’ she said.

  Still, £5 or less a month is little to live on, even in India. Sometimes there was not even that. It taught her, the hard way, the fundamental principle of being non-attached to the material, and the rare lesson of trust: ’There have been times when I have had no money, not even for a cup of tea. I can remember one time in Dalhousie when I didn’t have anything left. Not a single rupee. I had nowhere to live, and nothing to buy food with. I stood on the top of a hill with waves of isolation and insecurity running over me. And then I thought, if you really take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha (the monastic community), as we all do at our ordination, and sincerely practise, then you really shouldn’t be concerned. Since that time I have stopped worrying,’ she said nonchalantly.

  ‘I have learnt not to be scared. It’s not important. The money appears from somewhere, usually the exact amount I need, and nothing more. For example, one time I needed £80 for a train fare to visit friends. I had arrived with just £10 in my purse. On the day I was leaving the woman I was staying with handed me an envelope with a donation of just £80 in it. I thanked her and laughed. It was such a strange amount to give, but precisely what I required. So it’s like that.

  ‘Actually, as ordained Buddhists we shouldn’t care about money – be it big or small,’ she went on. ‘I always travel third class in Asia and sleep on the floor of pilgrims’ rest houses, but I’m not adverse to travelling first class and staying in beautiful places if they’re offered. We also have to learn not to be attached to simplicity and poverty. Wherever one is one should feel at home and at ease, be it an old chai shop or a five star hotel. The Buddha was entertained by kings and lepers. It was all the same to him. And Milarepa said, “I live in caves for the practitioners of the future. For me, at this stage, it’s irrelevant."’

  But for the Englishwoman wanting to get out of London and back to Lahoul money was definitely needed. True to form, her faithful friend and sponsor John Blofeld offered her a plane ticket but this time Tenzin Palmo refused. Her principles wouldn’t allow it. ‘I said I could not possibly accept donations as I had not been doing any dharma activity in the West to earn them,’ she said crisply.

  There was nothing for it but to get a job. So, dressed in her robes, with her severely short hair-do, Tenzin Palmo fronted up to the Department of Employment to ask for work. Unfazed by her unorthodox appearance, or perhaps intrigued by it, they listened to her curriculum vitae (librarian skills, office work, teaching experience) and promptly hired her themselves. She was just the person they were looking for to set up panels of different professionals to interview applicants for vocational training. In spite of being out of the workforce for ten years, Tenzin Palmo was so efficient at her job they begged her to stay on to co-ordinate the whole project.

  She politely but hastily declined. If ever she had any doubts about her vocation, her two and a half months at the Department of Employment soon banished them. ‘I felt very sad. There were all these middle-aged guys saying, “What have I done with my life?" and young married people with mortgages, already trapped. All they talked about was what was on TV. I was in my robes and because of that they opened up. They told me about their lives and used to ask me all sorts of questions they were very interested in my way of life and what it meant,’she said.

  Her appearance, still extremely unusual in the early seventies, in fact drew people to her everywhere. They were fascinated by the phenomenon of an English Buddhist nun and hungry for the values that she had embraced. More than once she was approached in social gatherings and told she looked like St Francis of Assisi. One well-dressed
man stopped her in Hyde Park and told her she looked so chic that she must be French. There was also the time when she was travelling by train to Wales to visit her brother who was living there and she was joined by two policemen, a detective inspector and a sergeant. Conversation started up and they explained that they were on their way to arrest a man in a Welsh village for murder.

  ‘Can you tell me anything that will help me make sense of my life?’ asked the Inspector, obviously depressed by his mission.

  Tenzin Palmo answered by telling him about karma, the law which decrees that every action of body, speech and mind, when accompanied by intention, brings about a correlating reaction. In short, she said, we are all ultimately responsible for our lives and as such can actively influence the future. It was a long lucid discourse and the policemen listened attentively. When it was over the Inspector leaned across and said in appreciation: ‘I think it is the custom to make offerings to Buddhist monks and nuns,’ and handed her £5. The sergeant did likewise. These were gratefully added to her escape fund.

  Finally she had earned enough money and was off, back to her beloved India. En route she stopped over in Thailand to visit John Blofeld, who attempted once again to give her a donation. ’Since you are too proud to take my offerings for secular purposes, here is some money for you to go to Hong Kong to take the Bhikshuni ordination,’ he said.

  This was an offer she couldn’t refuse. The Bhikshuni ordination meant nothing less than official and full admittance into the Buddhist order with all the authority and prestige that that entailed. It was a gem all Buddhist nuns yearned for, and few ever received. For complicated reasons steeped in tradition and the patriarchy, no Buddhist country other than China allowed their nuns the honour and respect of full ordination, thereby relegating them to inferior standing in the community. And since few nuns had the money or means to travel to Taiwan or Hong Kong (the only places it was available), that was where they stayed.

  Arriving in Hong Kong, Tenzin Palmo duly donned the black and brown robes of the Chinese Buddhist nun and with head bowed and hands together stood through the long ceremonies which formally accepted her as a full member of the Buddhist monastic community. As she did so camera lights flashed and reporters scribbled furiously. Tenzin Palmo made the headlines. Once again she was the first Western woman to take such a step and the Chinese occupants of the former British colony were mesmerized. What the photographers did not pick up, however, were the little stumps of incense which, as part of the ritual, had been placed on the nuns’ heads and left to burn slowly down on to the freshly shaven scalps, leaving a small scar to remind them for ever of their commitment. Tenzin Palmo cried, but not from pain.

  ‘I was absolutely blissed out,’ she said. Later, when she showed a photograph of the event to H. H. Sakya Trizin, her second guru, he took one look at her white beatific face silhouetted against the black cloth and remarked: ‘You look like a bald-headed Virgin Mary.’

  After all these delays and detours she finally reached Lahoul and resumed her way of life with renewed determination: getting in supplies during the summer weeks, strict meditational practice during the winter. Her mind and heart were still set on Enlightenment. But for all her enthusiasm, and the strength of her will, the conditions at Tayul Gompa for the sort of spiritual advancement that Tenzin Palmo was seeking were still far from satisfactory.

  ‘Getting water was a problem. When you are in retreat you should not be seen by anyone, which meant that I had to collect water at night. The path was full of snow and very icy. I didn’t have any Wellingtons so I used to wrap my straw sandals in plastic bags which made it even more slippery. I used to go out once a week after dark with a hurricane lamp, a big tin on my back and a bucket and would carry back thirty litres of water. It was very difficult. I learnt to be very frugal with water.’

  And then there was the noise. Just as the elderly nun who had greeted Tenzin Palmo on her arrival had intimated, the winter months for the majority of the community were set aside for serious partying. ‘While I was trying to be in retreat, the others would sweep all the snow from the top of their houses, take their mats up there, and have these great conversations, yelling at each other across the rooftops in the sun. In the evening they held these dinner parties with their eighteen plates and cups. It was very sociable! It was also very difficult to meditate.’ Actually, they gathered to card and spin fleece for their families. One person would provide food and drink while their guests would spin their wool for them. They would rotate so everyone’s work was completed as a team.

  After six years she had had enough. ‘I had gone to Lahoul to meditate, not to have a swinging social life!’ she said. ‘I decided I had to move out, to find somewhere quieter. So I went up above the monastery to look for a place where I could build a small house.’ Up in the mountains she called upon the dakinis, those ethereal female Buddhist spirits, known for their wildness, their power and their willingness to assist spiritual practitioners, to come to her aid. She had always had a particularly intimate relationship with them. Now she addressed them in her own inimitable way: ‘Look here – if you find me a suitable place to do a retreat, then on my side I promise I will try to practise,’ she prayed. ‘I felt very positive about it, very happy. I was sure something was going to happen,’ she commented.

  She came down the mountain and the next morning went to see one of the nuns. ‘I’m thinking of building a house above the monastery,’ she remarked.

  ‘How can you do that? You need money for building materials and labour and you don’t have any. Why don’t you live in a cave?’ the nun replied.

  ‘A cave is out of the question. To begin with there are very few caves in Lahoul, and where there are caves there isn’t any water, and where there is water there are people,’ Tenzin Palmo pointed out.

  ’That’s true,’ the nun replied, ‘but last night I suddenly remembered an old nun who told me about a cave up on the mountain which has water nearby as well as trees and a meadow outside. Why don’t we go and look for it?’

  The moment the words were out Tenzin Palmo knew.

  ’That’s it!’ she said.

  The next day she gathered together a group of people, including the head lama of the monastery, and set off up the mountain in search of the cave the nun had heard about.

  Chapter Eight

  The Cave

  Tenzin Palmo, with her small band of companions, began to climb the mountain which stood behind Tayul Gompa in the direction in which they had been told the cave lay. They trudged up and up in a steep ascent, leaving the habitations of human beings far behind. Higher and higher they went, across the sweet-smelling grasses which gave off aromatic scents as they brushed by, climbing more than 1,000 feet beyond the Gompa, their chests bursting with the effort and the altitude. This was not a trek for either the faint-hearted or the short-winded. The way was perilously steep and treacherous. There was no path to follow and the drop beside them was sheer. At various points the way was made more hazardous by wide streams of loose scree - boulders and stones that the mountain rising over them habitually shrugged off as though irritated by their presence. They had to be traversed if the cave was to be found, but one false foothold on those slippery stones meant likely death.

  Undaunted, they carried on. After two hours of climbing they suddenly came across it. It was so well blended in with the mountain, so ‘camouflaged’, that until they were almost upon it they had no idea it was there. It was certainly not the archetypal cave of one’s imagination or of Hollywood movies. Here was no deep hollow in the mountainside with a neat round entrance and a smooth dirt floor, offering a cosy, self-contained, if primitive living space. It was less, much less than that. This ‘cave’ was nothing more than an overhang on a natural ledge of the mountain with three sides open to the elements. It had a craggy roof which you had to stoop to stand under, a jagged, slanting back wall and beyond the ledge outside a sheer drop into the steep V of the Lahouli valley. At best it was a flimsy shelter
. At worst a mere indentation in a rock. It was also inconceivably small: a space measuring at most ten feet wide by six feet deep. It was a cupboard of a cave. A cell for solitary confinement.

  Tenzin Palmo stood on the tiny ledge and surveyed the scene. The view was sensational. How could it be otherwise? In front of her, stretching in a 180 degree arc, was a vast range of mountains. She was almost eye to eye with their peaks. Right now, in summer, only the tops were covered with snow but in the long eight-month winter they would constitute a massive wall of whiteness soaring into the pristine, pollution-free, azure-blue sky above. The light was crystalline, imbuing everything with a shimmering luminosity, the air sparkling and crisp. The silence was profound. Only the rushing grey-green waters of the Bhaga river below, the whistle of the wind and the occasional flap of a bird’s wing broke the quietness. To her right was a small juniper forest, which could provide fuel. To her left, about a quarter of a mile away, was a spring, gurgling out from between some rocks, a vital source of fresh, clean water. And behind her was yet more mountain towering over her like a sentinel. For all the awesome power of her surroundings, and the extreme isolation, the cave and its surroundings felt peaceful and benign, as though the mighty mountains offered security by their sheer size and solidity, although this, of course, was an illusion – mountains being as impermanent as everything else made of ‘compounded phenomena’.

  She was 13,200 feet above sea level – a dizzying height. At this altitude it was like contemplating living just below the peak of Mount Whitney in the the Rockies or not far short of the top of Mont Blanc. In comparison Britain’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis, at 4,402 feet, was a pygmy. It would have to be stacked three times on top of itself to approach the spot where Tenzin Palmo now stood. Up here the eye was forced upwards and outwards, bringing the mind automatically with it, forcing both beyond the confined boundaries of the earthbound mortals below. It was no wonder that the highest peaks had always been the favoured haunts of solitary meditators.