March 2001
In This Issue
THE WEALTH OF BEING NATURAL - Dzongsar Khyentse RinpocheINTERVIEW
WITH NAMKHAI NYINGPO RINPOCHE
A WEEKEND WITH MATTHIEU RICARD AT SSRC
INTERVIEW
WITH VENERABLE TENZIN PALMO
NEWS OF THE PEACE VASE PROJECT
INTERVIEW
WITH
VENERABLE TENZIN PALMO
Many of us, fortunate enough to live in beautiful northern New South Wales, were additionally blessed in July last year by the visit of Venerable Tenzin Palmo who spoke at the Byron Bay Surf Club and conducted a weekend retreat at Vajradhara Gonpa. Tenzin Palmo was the first Western woman to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun, three weeks after meeting her guru, Khamtrul Rinpoche. She was 21. Many of you would know Tenzin Palmo as the English Buddhist nun who spent 12 years in retreat in a cave high up in the Himalayas - well documented in the book Cave in the Snow. This remarkable achievement was just the beginning for Tenzin Palmo and the prelude to an unexpectedly public and busy life.
In 1988, Tenzin Palmo moved to Italy and determined to build a nunnery dedicated to helping women achieve spiritual excellence. For the past three years, she has been travelling the globe, teaching and raising funds for the Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery project. Here Tenzin Palmo explains how the land was purchased for the nunnery and gives an insight into the lives of the young Tibetan nuns who will be studying there.
You've become well known through your book Cave in the Snow. Now, after completing a 12-year retreat, you're travelling the world and teaching. Does this raise its own set of challenges for you?
It's not what I had foreseen for myself when I was living in the cave, but … You know, there are times for doing one thing and there are times for doing another thing. And this is obviously a time for travelling and setting up nunneries. So be it.
I believe you've been given land by the lamas at Tashi Jong to set up the nunnery?
No, we haven't been given it. The land that we're getting, we're buying from the Tashi Jong lay community. They're selling it to us. But Tsoknyi Rinpoche is the president of Tashi Jong and he managed to get them down to half price. They were asking an atrocious amount before, so they came down half. Considering it's their nunnery for Khamtrul Rinpoche and that they didn't buy the land in the first place (it was given to them by Dorzong Rinpoche), they're being very Tibetan about the whole thing.
So what's happening now with Dongyu Gatsal Ling nunnery? Has building started?
Well, we now have 13 nuns, nine from Ladakh and four from Mustang in Nepal. And when I go back in September, we'll take some more, some Tibetans from Kham. Now that we have the land and we've fenced it and planted several hundred trees, when I go back, we'll start building. But we're going to build, using traditional methods like stone and mud brick.
And the 13 nuns who are there already?
They're living at the moment in Tashi Jong, in the large monastic college, which is the shedra. It's empty, so we asked if our nuns could live there in the meantime. And they said, "Sure, why not?" It's better for the building anyway, to have someone living in it and taking care of it.
Do you find that the exiles who are arriving, such as those you mentioned from Kham, are arriving in a very weak state?
Well, the only Khampa nuns I've seen so far were Dorzong Rinpoche's nuns and they are extremely gung-ho. I mean, they're amazing girls! Quite astonishing, really! Their outwardness and confidence… What kind of nuns we're going to get I'm not sure. I haven't met them yet. Certainly, in Dolma Ling, which is the Dalai Lama's nunnery below Dharamsala, which was opened mainly to accept these girls coming now from Tibet, many of them are in a very bad state. Several have been imprisoned because of the freedom movement, tortured, raped, abused… I mean, they're in a very traumatised state. But those nuns we won't accept, at least not now. It would be too disruptive. So I don't know how these girls coming from Kham are. But we presume that they're okay, that they haven't had those kinds of experiences.
And I believe that the nunnery is also to include Western women at some stage in the future?
The nunnery won't include Western woman. It's really not an appropriate education for Western women. I mean, from the East the girls are just village girls. This is their education. Western women are already educated; they don't need this. We will also have a retreat centre for the nuns because we want them to train and practise, as well as study. But, also, there will be an international retreat centre for women.
I see. So there will be many different purposes to the whole project?
Yes, because so many women come to India from all over, hoping to do retreat. But where is there? So we're hoping to have an environment which is quiet, conducive, inspiring and safe.
It's so important to find a safe environment, isn't it?
Yes, and it's not easy, especially in India. A woman alone is very vulnerable.
You've been teaching a lot in the West recently, so you've seen a little of the lifestyle and the opportunities we have for practice. What advice would you give to practitioners?
Well, basically, the message I'm giving is that, given the lifestyle of people nowadays, the fact that they are not monks and nuns and hermits, that they are people in relationships, with families, with careers, with a social life, in an environment such as they have, to think of dharma practice as what you do when you're sitting on your cushion just breeds frustration and resentment. People have to realise that everything we do is a dharma practice. Dharma isn't just sitting and saying mantras or doing prostrations. Dharma is being generous, being patient, having loving kindness and so on and developing mindfulness in everyday life. So we have to use our everyday life as a spiritual practice. Then there is hope of transformation. But you have to transform your daily life and not make this partition between dharma practice and everyday life.
That makes so much sense, given that we sometimes feel restricted time-wise…
Well, you have to accept the situation that you have and use it.
Would you like to say anything else in conclusion?
I must say that I've been impressed by the thoughtful questions asked by a lot of very young people at my talks. I think this bodes well for the future.
(The Gentle Voice would like to thank Madeline Shaw for her help with this article.)
Cave in the Snow by Vicki Mackenzie is published by Bloomsbury and distributed by Allen & Unwin.
If
you would like to make a donation in Australia to Tenzin Palmo and the
Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery, please write to Tenzin Palmo, P.O. Box 127,
Harbord, NSW, 2096. For donations from other countries, please write to
Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery, 3 Nassim Road, #02-02, Nassim Jade, Singapore,
258371. For further information, you can also visit the websites: www.gatsal.org
or www.tenzinpalmo.com.
