Most of all Tenzin Palmo discovered the pleasure of music, which fed some long-neglected part of herself. She steeped herself in the classical composers – Bach, Handel, Haydn and her favourite, Mozart. ‘It was a wonderful thing to find Mozart. I completely fell in love with him,’ she declared. ‘It was something quite profound at a certain level. It was very moisturizing. I think I had become extremely dry, somewhere,’ she said candidly.
Knowingly or not, Tenzin Palmo was balancing East with West, asceticism with sensuality, solitude with sociability giving herself a more rounded personality. In this way she was following the exact advice given by one of her new-found Christian mentors, the great thirteenth-century German mystic, Meister Eckhart, who had written: ‘I say that the contemplative person should avoid even the thought of deeds to be done during the period of his contemplation but afterwards he should get busy for no one can or should engage in contemplation all the time, for active life is to be a respite from contemplation.’
At this time another aspect to Tenzin Palmo’s life began to open up – one that would develop much further in the future. The Christians soon got wind of her presence in Assisi and became highly interested to see and hear for themselves the woman who had spent so long in retreat alone. Her effort was beyond anything their orders ever attempted. She was asked to talk at seminars and at one point received an embossed invitation from the Vatican Council, no less, asking her to speak at an inter-faith conference in Taiwan. She was also invited to conduct workshops in seminaries and convents to tell the enclosed orders precisely what she had done, and how she had done it. Tenzin Palmo happily accepted, as she was now well receptive to inter-faith dialogue and was keen to give whatever knowledge she had in exchange for Christian methods of contemplation. But it didn’t work out like that at all.
‘At one Benedictine monastery I was told that mass was at 5 a.m. and so I thought I would join in. When I got to the chapel, however, there were only one or two people inside. I asked where everyone was and was told that they were in a small room that had been set aside for my meditation course. When I got there I found all these shoes neatly lined up outside the door and all the inmates inside sitting there on the floor cross-legged. They had set up an altar with a Buddha statue on it, flowers and water bowls and asked me if it was all right."It’s lovely, thank you,” I told them.
’They were only interested in learning about Buddhism. They’d been studying it, had met the Dalai Lama and were keen to know more. I wanted to encourage Christian meditation but they weren’t having any of it. They told me that there were so few masters of the inner life in Catholicism which was why the young people were falling away. They said the young were asking for ways of obtaining inner peace and a spiritual path to put meaning back into their lives. The nuns and monks felt that if they could get themselves together they could become guides to bring the young people what they needed.
’They wanted methods, because they had lost their own. They wanted directions: what to do, what not to do, descriptions of the problems that can arise in meditation and how to deal with them. Tibetan methods are excellent because they don’t require any particular faith structure. Anyone can make use of them including psychologists. So I told them what to do and they would sit there nodding their heads. Afterwards one elderly Carmelite nun said: “If only someone had told me how to meditate years ago. It’s so simple. ‘"
From her side, Tenzin Palmo enjoyed being with the nuns enormously. They swapped methods of robe-wearing, she told them about her life, they explained theirs. In spite of the differences, their pleasure in the commonality of the habit was mutual. From the Christian nuns she also picked up methods of a different kind which were to be extremely useful in a few years’ time. In turn the Christian fraternity so appreciated Tenzin Palmo that they invited her to their monasteries to do long retreats whenever she wanted. She thanked them kindly and declined.
As time went by her name became known and her influence began to spread. She was invited to talk in Rome, north Italy, Umbria, Devon, Poland. While she was in Poland she visited Auschwitz and saw for herself the place which had been the site of so much human suffering. ‘One of the things that moved me most of all were the photographs of the people who had gone to the gas chambers. So many of them were bright-eyed and beautiful. Some were even smiling. I found that incredibly painful,’ she said.
For all of her appreciation of Western culture, she had not relinquished her Buddhism, nor her meditation. Far from it. She continued to do her daily practices and conducted several short retreats. Before she knew it she was also caught up in a project to start a nunnery for Western Buddhist nuns in Pomaia, near Pisa.
She had met the women at a summer course and, recognizing in them a reflection of her own dire experience when she was first ordained, was touched by their plight. ‘The nuns had no place of their own, and no one was looking after them. The monks were OK – they had their monastery, but the nuns were moving from centre to centre. It was not good for their spiritual development at all,’ she said.
Later, when the opportunity came for her to join her friend Ram on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash, in Tibet, she jumped at it. She had never been to the land which had fostered the strongest impulses in her present life, and Mount Kailash was regarded as the most sacred pilgrimage site of all. Situated in a remote region of western Tibet, in one of the most desolate places on earth, Mount Kailash was hailed as the very centre of the tantric universe by Buddhists and Hindus alike. At its peak, which soared more than 21,000 feet into the rarefied atmosphere, lived the gods abided over by Tara herself. Tenzin Palmo had wanted to go to Kailash ever since she first read about the mystical mountain in Lama Govinda’s inspirational book The Way of the White Clouds, but had never seriously thought she would make it in this lifetime.
‘It was incredible to be in Tibet finally – so much of my life had been spent thinking and reading about it. The surroundings absolutely lived up to my expectations – but there was also the anguish of seeing all that had been destroyed under the Chinese. There were huge monasteries which were just ruins. It was terribly sad,’ she said.
They hired four yaks to carry their tents and cooking gear while they travelled by the more modern method of Land Cruiser. The journey took ten days, as there were no roads and the going was incredibly hard. When she eventually got there it was worth it. ‘Kailash itself was wonderful. We had to go over the 18,000 feet Dolma Pass in a snowstorm to get to it and Ram and I were both exhausted and got disorientated. Then this big black dog appeared. We gave it some soggy biscuits and he showed us the way down. We were incredibly happy. It was very special and a great blessing. It took us two and a half days to circumambulate Mount Kailash once, prostrating at the holy places. Some Tibetans do it in a day. They get up at 3 a.m. and finish at 10 p.m. Some do twenty to thirty rounds in a month! Some go for 108, the numbers of beads on their malas (rosaries). And some prostrate all the way around, which takes them about two weeks. It’s very flinty so it’s not easy.’
’The nearby Lake Manasarovar is very special too. We were there for my fiftieth birthday. Ram insisted on bathing in it, so I did too. It almost killed me. It was freezing, with this icy wind blowing. You have to drink the water too, otherwise it doesn’t count!’
She met the nomads, gentle people still clinging to a way of life that had been going on for millennia. She heard their longing for the Dalai Lama, saw their poverty, but thought they were better off than the Tibetan town-folk, who were humiliated daily by the Chinese overlords. ‘For all their suffering I was astonished by the indomitable spirit of the Tibetans and how they managed to stay cheerful in such awful circumstances,’ she said. ‘It was bliss to be there, one of my peak experiences even though I felt terrible with splitting headaches and altitude sickness! I had a sense of fulfilment – I had dreamt of it for so long.’
There was no longing to stay, however. Tenzin Palmo may have had the strongest connections possible with Tibet and its religion
, but now she was a Westerner, who had furthermore discovered Western music. In the midst of the stony wastes of West Tibet, under the shadow of the sublime, mystical Mount Kailash, Tenzin Palmo played Mozart. ‘You can take Mozart anywhere,’ she enthused. ’To me it’s the perfect music. It’s incredibly moving and gives me great joy! My Desert Island Discs would be almost all Mozart. If you could think of heaven with music, it would have Mozart there.’
She was also longing for some decent food. ‘I got sick to death of greasy noodles. I was longing for rice and dhal,’ she said. Her home was no longer Tibet.
Tenzin Palmo sincerely believed that Assisi would be her base for the rest of her life. With this thought in mind she set about building a small two-roomed wooden house in the grounds belonging to her friends with money given to her through donations. She meant to go back into retreat, for she had certainly not forgotten her pursuit of perfection. She had actually begun when, Italian-style, building permission was suddenly withdrawn. Once again it seemed that fate, or ‘karma’, was stepping in and taking a hand in Tenzin Palmo’s life. She may have been ready to settle down but her days of ‘going forth into homelessness’, as decreed by the Buddha as the ideal state for his monks and nuns, were far from over. She had work to do. Much work.
Chapter Thirteen
The Vision
The month was March 1993. The place Dharamsala, the former British hill station in Himachal Pradesh, north India, now the home of the Dalai Lama and his government in exile. As senior nun and burgeoning teacher, Tenzin Palmo had been invited to attend the first Western Buddhism conference, aimed at discussing the issues involved in the phenomena of transmitting the Buddha-dharma to the West. With her were twenty-one other leading representatives of the major Buddhist traditions in Europe and America, as well as eminent lamas from the different Tibetan schools. The discussions went back and forth – the role of the teacher, the differences between the Eastern and Western psyche, ethical guidelines – when suddenly ’the role of women in Buddhism’ came up.
An attractive German laywoman, Sylvia Wetzel, took the floor. With a small but discernible gulp she invited His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the assembled throng of luminaries to join her in a visualization. ‘Please imagine that you are a male coming to a Buddhist centre. You see the painting of this beautiful Tara surrounded by sixteen female arhats and you have the possibility to see too Her Holiness the fourteenth Dalai Lama who, in all of her fourteen incarnations, has always chosen a female rebirth,’she began. ‘You are surrounded by very high female rinpoches beautiful, strong, educated women. Then you see the Bhikshunis coming in, self-confident, outspoken. Then you see the monks coming in behind them – very shy and timid. You hear about the lineage lamas of the tradition, who are all female, down to the female Tara in the painting.
‘Remember you are male,’ she reminded them, ‘and you approach a lama, feeling a little bit insecure and a little bit irritated, and ask, “Why are there all these female symbols, female Buddhas?” And she replies, “Don’t worry. Men and women are equal. Well, almost. We do have some scriptures which say that a male rebirth is inferior, but isn’t this the case? Men do have a more difficult time when all the leaders, spiritually, philosophically and politically are women.”
‘And then the male student, who is very sincere, goes to another lama, a Mahayanist from the Higher Vehicle School, and says, "I am a man, how can I identify with all these female icons?” And she replies, “You just meditate on Shunyata (Emptiness). In Shunyata no man, no woman, no body, nothing.
No problem!"
’So you go to a tantric teacher and say, “All these women and I am a man. I don’t know how to relate.” And she says, “How wonderful you are, beautiful Daka, you are so useful to us practitioners helping us to raise our kundalini energy. How blessed you are to be male, to benefit female practitioners on their path to enlightenment."’
It was outrageous but delivered in such a charming way that everyone, including the Dalai Lama, laughed. ‘Now you have given me another angle on the matter,’ he said. In effect Sylvia Wetzel had voiced what millions of women down the centuries had felt. In spite of the mirth, the dam holding back more than 2,500 years of spiritual sexism and pent-up female resentment was beginning to burst.
Others began to join in. A leading Buddhist teacher and author, American nun Thubten Chodron, told how the subtle prejudice she had met within institutions had undermined her confidence to the point that it was a serious hindrance on the path. ‘Even if our pain was acknowledged it would make us feel better,’ she declared.
Sympathetic male teachers spoke up. ‘This is a wonderful challenge for the male – to see it and accept it,’ said a Zen master.
American Tibetan Buddhist monk Thubten Pende gave his views: ‘When I translated the texts concerning the ordination ceremony I got such a shock. It said that even the most senior nun had to sit behind the most novice monk because, although her ordination was superior, the basis of that ordination, her body, was inferior. I thought, “There it is.” I’d heard about this belief but I’d never found evidence of it. I had to recite this text at the ceremony. I was embarrassed to say it and ashamed of the institution I was representing. I wondered, “Why doesn’t she get up and leave?” I would.’
The English Theravadan monk Ven Ajahn Amaso also spoke up: ’Seeing the nuns not receiving the respect given to the monks is very painful. It is like having a spear in your heart,’ he said.
Then it was Tenzin Palmo’s turn, and with all her natural eloquence she told her tale: ‘When I first came to India I lived in a monastery with 100 monks. I was the only nun,’ she said, and paused for several seconds for her words to sink in. ‘I think that is why I eventually went to live by myself in a cave.’ Everyone got the point. ‘The monks were kind, and I had no problems of sexual harassment or troubles of that sort, but of course I was unfortunately within a female form. They actually told me they prayed that in my next life I would have the good fortune to be reborn as a male so that I could join in all the monastery’s activities. In the meantime, they said, they didn’t hold it too much against me that I had this inferior rebirth in the female form. It wasn’t too much my fault.’
Seizing her chance, she went on to fire her biggest salvo. An expose on the situation of the Western Sangha, particularly the nuns whom she had befriended in Italy. ‘The lamas ordain people and then they are thrown out into the world with no training, preparation, encouragement, support or guidance – and they’re expected to keep their vows, do their practice and run dharma centres. This is very hard and I’m surprised that so many of the Western monastics stay as long as they do. I’m not surprised when they disrobe. They start with so much enthusiasm, with so much pure faith and devotion and gradually their inspiration decreases. They get discouraged and disillusioned and there is no one who helps them. This is true, Your Holiness. It’s a very hard situation and it has never happened in the history of Buddhism before.
‘In the past the sangha was firmly established, nurtured and cared for. In the West this is not happening. I truly don’t know why. There are a few monasteries, mostly in the Therevada tradition, which are doing well, but for the nuns what is there? There is hardly anything, quite frankly. But to end on a higher note, I pray that this life of purity and renunciation which is so rare and precious in the world, that this jewel of the sangha may not be thrown down into the mud of our indifference and contempt.’
It was an impassioned, formidable cry from the heart. When she had finished a great hush fell over the gathering. No one was laughing now. As for the Tenzin Gyatso, the Great Ocean of Wisdom, regarded by his people as an emanation of Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion, he was sitting there, head in his hands, silently weeping. After several minutes he looked up, wiped his eyes and said softly, ‘You are quite brave.’ Later the senior lamas commented that such directness was indeed rare and that in this respect the conference had been like a family gathering where everyone spoke their mind fran
kly.
That speech marked yet another radical turning point in Tenzin Palmo’s already remarkable life. She had stood up and spoken out (to the top man, no less), but it was as if she knew words were not enough. Complaining about the system was one thing, doing something about it was another. And if the women who felt wronged couldn’t act, who would? Now the backlog of her own personal unhappiness as a nun in Dalhousie came to the fore and began to be used for positive ends. She had waited almost thirty years but it was not a moment too late. The time for women’s spiritual liberation had come. And Tenzin Palmo was to take a leading active role. It was as far away from her cherished life as a recluse as she could get, but still it seemed peculiarly apt. She knew at first hand the difficulties that women on the spiritual path faced. She had suffered, had known spiritual rejection and the heavy weight of discouragement, but now it seemed it had all been for a purpose.
‘I think that is why I was born as a woman this time,’ she said.
She began by helping to arrange a conference for Western nuns in Bodhgaya, where they could air their problems, exchange views and establish a much-needed feeling of community and support. After this she joined forces with a small but committed group of women agitating to bring full ordination to the nuns. She knew more than most how essential this was for elevating their status in the eyes of society and boosting their self-esteem. It was a delicate, complex issue, however, bound up with centuries of ecclesiastical red tape, circuitous theological argument and layers of entrenched male prejudice. It would take years of persistence and gentle persuasion to overturn the existing order and to persuade the lamas to move over on their high thrones. But at least the movement had started.
Cave in the snow. A western woman’s quest for enlightenment Page 18
