Tenzin Palmo took all this in, and in spite of the minute size and condition of the overhang was sold. ‘I knew instantly. This was it,’ she said. It had everything she needed. Here, perched like an eagle on the top of the world, she would most definitely not be bothered by the clamour and clutter of human commerce. She would have the absolute silence she yearned for. The silence that was so necessary to her inner search, for she knew, like all meditators, that it was only in the depth of silence that the voice of the Absolute could be heard. She could bury herself in the confines of her cave to pursue her spiritual practices without interruption. She could go out and look at the mountains and the infinite sky. She would see no one. No one would see her.
There were other attractions. Fortuitously, considering her quest to attain enlightenment as a women, she had landed in the midst of a vortex of female spiritual energy. On the summit of the mountain opposite was a curious black rock called by the locals ’The Lady of Keylong’. Even in the midst of winter the shape remained inexplicably free of snow. On closer inspection one could make out the silhouette of a kneeling woman draped in a mantle with a baby at her breast and one hand outstretched feeding a small bird. To the Western eye it bore an uncanny resemblance to the Madonna and child, although to the Lahoulis she was Tara, the female Buddha of Compassion. High on a precipice nearby could be found a faded blue and gold painting of the same goddess. It had apparently appeared there spontaneously several centuries earlier, having moved itself from the opposite side of the valley, its form still clearly visible to the perceptive eye. And down the way, not far from the cave, was a spot said to be inhabited by the powerful Buddhist protectress Palden Lhamo, traditionally depicted riding on a mule. One day several years later Tenzin Palmo was to see footprints of a mule embedded in the snow at this very spot. Strangely there were no other footprints leading to or from it.
All in all it was perfect. Here she could finally devote her entire energy and time to profound and prolonged meditation. She could begin to unravel the secrets of the inner world – the world that was said to contain the vastness and the wonder of the entire universe.
If she was happy at her discovery of the cave, her companions were not. They proceeded to throw at her all the objections and discouragements that had been hurled at women who wanted to engage in serious meditation in total isolation down the ages. Tenzin Palmo deftly fielded each one.
‘It’s too high! Nobody, let alone a woman, can survive at this altitude. You will die,’ they chorused.
‘But caves are warmer than houses. They are thermostatically controlled. My house in Tayul is freezing in winter and I survive that. This cave will be better,’ she replied.
‘Well, living so far away from any living person you will be a sitting duck for thieves who will break in and rob you,’ they retorted.
’There are no thieves in Lahoul. You can see for yourself how the Lahouli women walk around wearing all their jewellery quite openly and no one tries to rob them,’ she argued.
‘Men from the army camp will come up and rape you,’ they tried again.
‘By the time they have climbed this high they will be so exhausted all they will want is a cup of tea,’ she responded.
‘What about the ghosts? These places are haunted, don’t you know? You will be terrified,’ they continued.
At this point Tenzin Palmo’s Tibetan failed her. Believing they were talking about snakes instead of ghosts (the word being similar in Tibetan), she blithely replied, ‘Oh I don’t mind them at all.’ This nonchalant declaration impressed her detractors almost to silence, but not quite.
‘Well, we’re not going to help you move up here because if we do we will only be aiding you in your own death. And we are not going to be party to that.’ They were adamant.
‘If I get permission from my guru, Khamtrul Rinpoche, will you agree and help?’ she asked. They finally nodded their heads.A letter was duly dispatched to Tashi Jong, and after asking her several searching questions about the position and condition of the cave Khamtrul Rinpoche gave his permission. The objections were at last quelled.
In that one brief argument Tenzin Palmo overturned centuries of tradition, which decreed that women were not capable of doing extensive retreats in totally isolated places in order to advance themselves to higher spiritual levels. In doing so she also became the first Western woman to follow in the footsteps of the Eastern yogis of old and enter a Himalayan cave to seek Enlightenment.
Before she could begin her great work, however, the cave had to be made habitable. With the help from her Lahouli friends she employed labourers to brick up the front and side of the cave with walls made especially thick to keep out the ferocious cold. A small area inside was partitioned off to use as a storeroom for her supplies of food. It was essential, but reduced her living space still further, to a minuscule area of six feet wide by six feet deep. The floor also had to be scooped out to give her room to stand up, then baked earth was put on top of it, then flagstones, then more earth. They put in a window and a door, which Tshering Dorje insisted open inwards – an insight which was to prove invaluable in the drama that was to follow. Then they slapped mud and cow-dung on the floor and walls. After that they levelled off the ledge outside, making it into a patio where Tenzin Palmo could sit and bask in that breathtaking view. Finally they constructed a stone wall around the perimeter of the cave to keep the wild animals at bay and to establish a boundary for her retreat area.
Into the cave Tenzin Palmo put her furniture: a small wood-burning stove (a legacy of the Moravian missionaries who had once tried to convert the Lahoulis) with a flue pipe that thrust out of the front wall; a wooden box for a table covered with a flowery tablecloth; a bucket. On the walls she hung pictures of Buddhist deities in their various manifestations.A handy depression in the wall became her bookshelf holding her precious dharma texts, carefully wrapped in yellow cloth to keep the loose pages together, bookbinding never having made it to Tibet. On a natural ledge she placed her ritual implements of dorje and bell, the mystic thunderbolt signifying compassion, the bell Emptiness or wisdom. These were the two ‘wings’ of Tibetan Buddhism which, when realized, were said to fly you all the way to Enlightenment. And against the back wall was her altar, holding the images of her personal meditational deities, a miniature stupa (representing the Buddha Mind) and a text (representing the dharma). In front of this she set up seven small offering bowls which she filled with water. They represented the seven gifts offered to any distinguished visitor who graced your house with his or her presence: water for drinking, water for washing the feet, flowers, food, perfume, light and music.
And then there was the most unusual object of all, a traditional meditation box. This was a square wooden structure measuring 2ft 6in by 2ft 6in and raised slightly off the ground to insulate the meditator from rising damp. It was where she would spend the greater part of her life. Over the years she developed a remarkably close attachment to it: ‘I loved my meditation box. I’d wrap myself in my cloak and be perfectly snug there, out of the way of draughts,’ she said enthusiastically.
When it was finished the gaping, jagged hole in the mountain had been transformed into a pretty little house with a crooked rocky roof, so quaint it could have come out of the pages of a fairytale book. It instantly dispelled any notion of cliched cave-living.
‘It was a very pukka cave,’ Tenzin Palmo admitted. ‘The few people who saw it were always very surprised how neat and cosy it was. It was small, certainly. There was no room to dance! Although when I did my long retreat I did do Hatha yoga there. Yoga was great in counteracting all the sitting I did and in helping with the problems with my spine,’ she said, referring to the back problems which had plagued her since birth. ‘But the cave was so small I had to do different postures in different parts of the cave, depending on where there was room.’
Didi Contractor was one person who witnessed the cave. A large, grey-haired woman now in her late sixties, she had come to India from Cali
fornia many decades earlier and had led a colourful life in an extended family with her Indian husband. She had met Tenzin Palmo during one of her visits to Khamtrul Rinpoche and had stayed in touch. As an interior designer (responsible for such famous landmarks as the Lake Palace in Udaipur), she wanted to throw a professional eye over Tenzin Palmo’s unorthodox living arrangements to make sure she was safe: ’The climb up was horrific, especially over the loose scree. I looked down on the tiny houses in the valley below and thought, “If I fall I’m strawberry jam.” Tenzin Palmo, who escorted me, however, bounded up like an antelope. When I finally got there I was reassured. The cave was very secure and safe. The walls were thick - although I did arrange for her to have double glazing put on the windows. Most importantly, it was south-facing, which meant it got the sun for the whole day which was essential in winter. My God, it was tiny though. There was just room for me to lay my sleeping bag down beside her meditation box. That was it,’ she said, from the mud-brick house which she had built herself just below Dharamsala, home of the Dalai Lama and his government in exile.
With the cave finished, Tenzin Palmo moved in and began her extraordinary way of life. She was thirty-three years old. This was to be her home until she was forty-five.
Her quest may have been purely spiritual but before she could get down to grappling with the immaterial she first had to conquer the eminently mundane business of simply staying alive. For the bookish, other-worldly and decidedly un-robust woman this was a challenge.
‘I was never practical. Now I had to learn to do umpteen physical things for myself. In the end I surprised even myself at how well I managed and how self-sufficient I became,’ she admitted.
The first priority was water.
‘Initially I had to get my water from the spring, which was about a quarter of a mile away. In summer I’d have to make several trips, carrying it to my cave in buckets on my back. In the winter, when I couldn’t get out, I melted snow. And if you’ve ever tried to melt snow you would know how difficult that is!A vast amount of snow only gives you a tiny amount of water. Fortunately in the winter you don’t need a lot because you’re not really washing either yourself or your clothes and so you can be very economical with the water you use. Later, when I did my three-year retreat, and could not venture beyond my boundary, someone paid for a water-pipe to be laid right into the cave’s compound. It was an enormous help,’ she explained.
Next was food.
There was of course nothing to eat on that sparse mountainside. No handy bushes bearing berries. No fruit trees. No pastures of rippling golden wheat. Instead she arranged for supplies to be brought up from the village in the summer, but as often as not they would not arrive and Tenzin Palmo would be reduced to running up and down the mountain herself carrying gigantic loads. ‘It took a lot of time and effort,’ she said. For the bigger task of stocking up for her three-year retreat Tshering Dorje was put in charge:
‘I would hire coolies and donkeys to carry up all that she needed,’ he recalled. ‘There would be kerosene, tsampa, rice, lentils flour, dried vegetables, ghee [clarified butter], cooking- oil, salt, soap, milk powder, tea, sugar, apples and the ingredients for ritual offerings such as sweets and incense. On top of that I employed wood-choppers to cut logs and these were carried up as well.’
To supplement these basic provisions with a source of fresh food Tenzin Palmo made a garden. Just below the ledge outside her cave she created two garden beds in which she grew vegetables and flowers. Food to feed her body, flowers to feed her soul. Over the coming years she experimented to see what would survive in that rocky soil. ‘I tried growing all sorts of vegetables like cabbages and peas but the rodents ate them. The only things they wouldn’t touch were turnips and potatoes. Over the years I truly discovered the joy of turnips! I am now ever ready to promote the turnip,’ she enthused. ‘I discovered that turnips are a dual-purpose vegetable. You have the wonderful turnip greens, which are in fact the most nutritious of all vegetable greens and absolutely delicious, especially when young,’ she waxed. ‘No gourmet meal in the world is comparable to your first mouthful of fresh turnip greens after the long winter. And then you’ve got the bulb, which is also very good for you. Both of them can be cut up and dried, so that right through the winter you’ve got these wonderful vegetables. Actually I was waiting for the book One Hundred and Eight Ways to Cook Turnips but it never showed up,’ she joked.
She ate once a day at midday, as is the way with Buddhist nuns and monks. Her menu was simple, healthy and to ordinary palates excruciatingly monotonous. Every day she ate the same meal: rice, dhal (lentils) and vegetables, brewed up together in a pressure-cooker. ’My pressure cooker was my one luxury. It would have taken me hours to cook lentils at that altitude without it,’ she said. This meagre fare she supplemented with sour-dough bread (which she baked) and tsampa. Her only drink was ordinary tea with powdered milk. (Interestingly, the traditional tea made with churned butter and salt was one of the few Tibetan customs she did not like.) For desert she had a small piece of fruit. Manali was renowned for its apples and Tshering Dorje would deliver a box of them. ‘I’d eat half an apple a day and sometimes some dried apricot.’
For twelve years this was how it was. There was no variation, no culinary treats like cakes, chocolates, ice creams – the foods which most people turn to to relieve monotony, depression or hard work. She professed she did not mind and as she logically pointed out: ‘I couldn’t pop down to Sainsbury’s if I wanted anything anyway. Actually, I got so used to eating small quantities that when I left the cave people would laugh seeing me eat only half an apple, half a slice of toast, half a quantity of jam. Anything more seemed so wasteful and extravagant.’
And then there was the cold. That tremendous unremitting, penetrating cold that went on for month after month on end. In the valley below the temperature would regularly plunge to -35 degrees in winter. Up on that exposed mountain it was even bleaker. There were huge snowdrifts that piled up against her cave and howling winds to contend with too. Once again, Tenzin Palmo made light of it. ‘Just as I suspected, the cave proved to be much warmer than a house. The water offering bowls in front of my altar never froze over in the cave as they did in my house in Tayul Gompa. Even in my store-room, which was never heated, the water never froze. The thing about caves is that the colder it is on the outside the warmer it is on the inside and the warmer it is outside the cooler it is inside. Nobody believed this when I told them, but the yogis had told me and I trusted them,’ she insisted.
For all her avowed indifference, the cold must have been intense. She lit her stove only once a day at noon and then only to cook lunch. This meant in effect that when the sun went down she was left in her cave without any source of heat at all. Somehow she survived. ’Sure I was cold, but so what?’ she stated, almost defiantly, before adding in a somewhat conciliatory tone, ‘When you’re doing your practice you can’t keep jumping up to light the stove. Besides, if you are really concentrating you get hot anyway.’ And her comment begged the further question of how far she had got in her ability to raise the mystic heat, like Milarepa had done in his freezing cave all those centuries ago and the Togdens, who had practised drying wet sheets on their naked bodies on cold winter nights in Dalhousie. ‘Tumo wasn’t really my practice,’ was all she would say.
Endurance was one thing, however, comfort another. The pleasure of a hot bath, a fluffy towel, scented soap, a soft bed, crisp sheets, an easy chair, a clean lavatory – the soft touches that most women appreciate and need – she had none of. This desire for physical ease was said, by men, to be one of the biggest obstacles to women gaining Enlightenment. How could they withstand the rigours of isolated places necessary to spiritual progress, they argued, when by nature they wanted to curl up cat-like in front of a warm fire? In this, as in many things, Tenzin Palmo was to prove them wrong.
Her bath was a bucket. She washed sparingly, especially in winter when water was scarce and temperatures reduced body o
dours to zero. Her lavatory in summer was the great outdoors – her privacy was guaranteed. ‘In the winter I’d use a tin and later bury it.’ None of this bothered her. ‘To be honest I didn’t miss a flushing toilet or a hot shower because I’d already been so long without those things,’ she said.
Compounding her asceticisms was the total absence of any form of entertainment. Up in that cave she had no TV, no radio, no music, no novel, in fact no book which spoke of anything but religion. ‘There was no “luxury” I missed. Life in Dalhousie had prepared me admirably. I had everything I needed,’ she repeated.
Arguably, the most radical of all her deprivations was the absence of a bed. It was not that the cave was too small, it was simply that Tenzin Palmo did not want one. She intended to follow in the tradition of all serious meditators and train herself to do without sleep. According to the sages, sleep was nothing but a tragic waste of precious time. If we spent eight hours of every day asleep, that amounted to a third of our life which, they calculated, if we lived until we were seventy added up to some twenty-four years of voluntary unconsciousness. Time which could be spent striving for spiritual betterment in order to help all living beings. Knowing this the yogis disciplined themselves not to fall asleep but to use the refined levels of consciousness induced by meditation to bring about both mental and physical refreshment. It was agreed that the quietness and solitude of a cave was the perfect place to practise such a feat, for even the best of them would have been hard-put enduring sleeplessness while living in the midst of a busy town. But sitting up all night in their remote hideaways they learnt to see that whatever images arose from the subconscious, be they in the waking, semi-waking, or sleeping state (should they nod off), were nothing but projections, ‘mere appearances’ from their own minds. It was, they said, an invaluable exercise.
Cave in the snow. A western woman’s quest for enlightenment Page 10
