How Buddhist Nuns Restored This War Correspondent’s Faith In Humanity

03/28/2016 Antonia BlumbergAssociate Religion Editor, The Huffington Post

In a remote Buddhist nunnery outside Kathmandu, Nepal, a group 
of young nuns wakes up at 3 a.m. every day to practice kung fu, a 
form of martial arts used both for exercise and spiritual growth.

The kung fu nuns at Druk Gawa Khilwa Buddhist nunnery are just 
one community among the dozens that journalist and author 
Christine Toomey describes in her book, In Search of Buddha’s 
Daughters: A Modern Journey Down Ancient Roads.

Published in the UK in 2015 and released in the U.S. in March by 
The Experiment Publishing, Toomey’s book depicts the lives of 
Buddhist nuns around the globe, from San Francisco to Dharamshala. 
Along the way, she dispels some of the misconceptions people have 
about these spiritual women. 

Like Buddhist monks, nuns entering monastic life shave their heads, don robes, and take vows to live simply and follow the precepts of the tradition, often after years of intensive study and practice of meditation.   

“One very common misperception is that women who choose to become Buddhist nuns are somehow running away from life, whereas I found the opposite to be true,” Toomey told The Huffington Post. “Most of those who choose this path make it their business to deal on a daily business with some of the most profound and intractable problems of human existence.”

The decision to dedicate one’s life to deep meditation and reflection isn’t an easy one, and Toomey said it “takes courage” to choose such a path. In addition to meditating, many of the nuns she witnessed and interviewed spend ample time doing physical labor, teaching, volunteering in prisons and hospice centers and more. In some parts of the world these women also encounter deeply ingrained sexism that makes it difficult for them to attain full ordination.

“There has been resistance, for instance, to them accessing higher levels of Buddhist teachings and to them advancing from the stage of a novice to full ordination,” Toomey said in an interview with The Experiment.

What, then, would draw a woman — or young girl, as it is sometimes — to become a Buddhist nun?

The book trailer for In Search of Buddha’s Daughters, above, shows just how young some of the girls are when they embark on their path. Toomey interacted with trainees as young as 10 years old. Some are sent to nunneries by their families but many choose the path on their own accord — whether to escape from a difficult family situation or simply because they feel it is their calling to do so.

Toomey said she found that many of the women she spoke with shared a “deeply questioning nature” that led them to a monastic life. One of her interviewees, a former BBC journalist who joined Thich Nhat Hanh’s Zen Buddhist community Plum Village in the south of France, told her: “It was a choice I made to understand life and understand myself, to heal, transform, learn and do it in such a way that I can share this with others.”

The healing stories of the nuns had an impact on Toomey, too, who built a career around reporting in conflict areas and has witnessed the impacts of war, terror, rape, and religious persecution around the globe. 

“After so many years spent writing about conflict, I realized that much of it focussed on violence directed towards women and children, and a kind of sadness had settled in my bones,” she told The Experiment.

That intensified for Toomey when both her parents died within a few months of one another just before she set off on her travels to research for the book.

“Encountering such female wisdom restored my faith in the ability of the human spirit to flourish, despite sometimes appalling hardship,” she told The Experiment.

One of the most staggering stories from the book centers around Tenzin Palmo, a British Buddhist nun who spent 12 years living alone in a remote cave in the Himalayas. She went on to found a nunnery, with some 70 nuns in her care.

Read an excerpt of Tenzin Palmo’s story from In Search of Buddha’s Daughters below:

COURTESY OF THE EXPERIMENT

At the time of her ordination as a novice, [Tenzin Palmo] was just twenty-one and only the second Western woman to be ordained in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition (the first was another indomitable English-woman, Freda Bedi, founder of the Dalhousie school). Following her ordination, Tenzin Palmo went to work as Khamtrul Rinpoche’s assistant and found herself the only woman living among 100 monks, all trained to keep their distance.

In addition to intense feelings of isolation and loneliness, she immediately hit a spiritual glass ceiling. Chauvinistic attitudes, which for so long in Tibet had reserved the heights of spiritual endeavor for monks and relegated nuns to subservient positions, continued to prevail in monastic communities in exile. The monks, though kind, said prayers that in her next life she would have the good fortune to be reborn a man. Despite her deep devotion to Khamtrul Rinpoche, after enduring years of such treatment, Tenzin Palmo became convinced her spiritual path lay in a different direction.

With his blessing, she undertook to become the first Western woman to follow in the footsteps of male yogis, or spiritual practitioners who, through the ages, have retreated to remote caves for long periods of seclusion. Traveling by foot over a high Himalayan pass, she sought solitude in a remote corner of Himachal Pradesh called Lahaul, close to India’s border with Tibet, an area renowned as a place conducive to meditation. Once there she eventually found a small cave perched at almost 4,000 meters—the height of some of the tallest peaks in the Alps—that would become her refuge for the next twelve years. The cave was little more than an indent in the mountains, a space she closed in with a simple brick wall, window, and door, giving her a living area of approximately three by two meters.

During the twelve years she spent alone in this cave, Tenzin Palmo survived blizzards, avalanches, the attention of wolves, even a snow leopard, and temperatures plunging to –35°C in the winter months that lasted from November to May. On a small stove she cooked simple meals of rice, lentils, and vegetables—supplies brought up to her occasionally by local villagers. Her days began at 3 a.m. and were divided into three-hour periods of intense meditation. During one stretch of three years, she neither saw nor spoke to a single soul. Tenzin Palmo was thirty-three years old when she entered her mountain retreat and forty-five when she was forced to emerge by a policeman who scrambled up to her eyrie to warn her that her visa had expired.

When I ask Tenzin Palmo about her time of solitude in the mountains, she deftly sidesteps the question. Talking about such an intimate spiritual experience is, she has argued, akin to a person discussing their sex life; some people like to talk about it, others don’t.

Much of the discipline and forms of devotion she practiced during those long years of solitude belong, in any case, to some of the more esoteric practices in Tibetan Buddhism known as Tantra, many of which remain largely secret to all but those who have advanced far enough along the path of practice to be able to truly comprehend their meaning. Even the Dalai Lama admits he hesitates to try to explain Tantric ritual and practice to those who do not have a deep understanding of Buddhism, as they are too often misunderstood. Some of this practice relies on complex visualizations during meditation to challenge fixed views of reality and the self. These visualizations are sometimes represented in intricate paintings.

I find myself wondering if Tenzin Palmo undertook such painting, though I can hardly imagine conditions in a damp mountain cave being conducive to the making of spiritual art. “Have you any reminders from that time?” I ask, unsure what to expect. At this, Tenzin Palmo disappears into a side room and returns with a framed picture in her arms. I am taken aback both by its delicate beauty and by its graphic detail. The painting depicts a pubescent girl, entirely naked, with full breasts and vagina bared. She is wearing a necklace of human skulls and in one hand holds a cup overflowing with blood. Pressed under one foot is a small red figure, symbolizing the quashing of anger—and under the other a figure representing greed. I recognize it as a painting of Vajrayogini; often referred to as a female Buddha, she is an important meditational figure in Tibetan Buddhism. When I ask Tenzin Palmo again if she is able to talk a little about the spiritual practices she undertook in the cave, “Those centered perhaps on this painting?” she declines again with a simple “no,” polite but firm. The painting is returned to its rather unceremonious place on top of a fridge in an adjoining room.

Some have described those who become masters of esoteric Tantric meditation as “quantum physicists of inner reality,” with a profound understanding of the nature of the mind and of consciousness. Realizing how little I would understand were I to ask a physicist to summarize the intricacies of quantum science, I let the matter rest.

Instead, I ask about a subject with which Tenzin Palmo clearly feels more at ease: how far nuns have come since the days when she first ordained. “In the last twenty years there has been quite a revolution,” she begins. “Not only are nuns now living in well-run nunneries, they are also being taken seriously.” The leading role she herself has played in changing traditional attitudes toward nuns is not to be underestimated. [...]

By now, Tenzin Palmo is fully into her stride and talks of how the seventy nuns in her care are not only educated to a high level but also encouraged to cultivate self-confidence. While they do not engage in kung fu like the nuns at Gawa Khilwa in Nepal, they instead practice yoga—fully dressed in monastic robes. One morning, shortly after dawn prayers, I join them and am touched by the sight of young novices furiously tucking yards of maroon cloth between their legs to maintain decorum as they roll themselves up into inverted postures. Later the same day, I attend a team-building workshop designed to help the nuns develop leadership skills.

What strikes me is the women’s clear enjoyment of life here, despite their arduous schedule. One day I follow this program, beginning long before dawn with meditation and chanting sutras, followed by a full academic day, then more chanting late into the evening, and find my eyes quickly closing as I sit cross-legged on a cushion at the back of the meditation hall. By contrast, the nuns appear alert and enthralled; when the power cuts out and the hall is plunged into darkness, a handful of nuns quietly light storm lanterns as the majority continue chanting without missing a beat.

In my final hours at Dongyu Gatsal Ling, Tenzin Palmo takes me on a guided tour of the nunnery. As we set out I can see that she is tired and ask if she plans to go once more into retreat. She rolls her large blue eyes and lifts her hands upward in supplication. “Who knows?” she says, with a shrug. I sense that the spiritual stardom and frequent teaching tours have taken their toll on a woman whose nature is more suited to quiet reflection and journeying inward. But I also sense in her an understandable feeling of deep accomplishment at having created such a center of devotion for future generations. As we pass through the nunnery’s immaculate modern classrooms, library, sleeping quarters, dining hall, and temples, young nuns gently bow and smile greetings. Tenzin Palmo is clearly much loved, and the high standards she expects of her charges seem to be met.

Before we part, Tenzin Palmo expresses her heartfelt conviction that living as a Buddhist nun is as relevant today as it was 2,500 years ago. One of the unfortunate characteristics of the growing interest in Buddhism in the West, she argues, is the decreasing focus on monasticism. “The whole emphasis of Buddhism in the West is on the lay community. As a result of this growing secularization, there is a lot of understanding of Buddhism on an intellectual level, but very little joy and devotion.

“I think the reason we get so much support for our nunnery is that people see how happy our nuns are,” she continues. “They are so relieved to see that there are girls in their teens and women in their twenties and thirties totally immersed in studying the dharma, leading disciplined lives based on abstinence, who are happy.

“This life is not for everyone,” she concedes. “But knowing that there are groups of monastics who are happy being monastics gives people a sense of proportion,” she concludes. “I think it’s very important to have a group of people who are living a life based on contentment with little, who live the example that genuine joy comes from within, from a sense of leading a life well lived.”

Excerpt from In Search of Buddha’s Daughters: A Modern Journey Down Ancient Roads, copyright © Christine Toomey, 2015. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, The Experiment. Available wherever books are sold.theexperimentpublishing.com