Tibetan nun brings a message to West

By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Religion & Ethics Writer

The Dalai Lama and Tenzin Palmo met as recently as June. She has hopes of helping other Tibetan Buddhist women. Courtesy Tenzin Palmo Tenzin Palmo appearances "Cultivating Awareness in Daily Life," 7 p.m. tomorrow, First Unitarian Church. Talk and book signing for her books, "Cave in the Snow" (a biography by Vicki MacKenzie) and "Reflections on a Mountain Lake," noon Saturday, free, Borders Books & Music, 1200 Ala Moana. "Karma and Responsibility," lecture, potluck and meditation, 5 p.m. Palolo Zen Center, 2747 Wai'oma'o Road. Information: 261-3469

Her biography, "Cave in the Snow," tells of her passage to India at age 20, of spending 15 hours at a stretch in meditation and an encounter with an avalanche.

Tenzin Palmo prefers to discuss her focus of the moment, a nunnery for women from Tibet and the Himalayan border regions who follow the Drukpa Kargyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. She started the Dongyu Gatsal project in January 2000.

Tenzin Palmo is coming to Hawai'i to discuss Buddhist topics and to spread the word that women in Tibetan Buddhism can develop their intellectual and spiritual potential.

Traditionally, nuns in the border regions of the Himalayas are little better than servants to monks. "Very little had been done for education of nuns," she said. "All emphasis was on monks."

Until the permanent nunnery is built, she has set up a temporary facility where, under her tutelage, a group of 24 nuns, ages 14 to 24, are studying Buddhist philosophy, rituals and the Tibetan and English languages.

To get there, some found themselves in the Free Tibet movement, a hazardous place for young women. "Many are imprisoned, tortured, gang-raped," she said. "Many die. Some escaped (from prison), got to the border and were turned back. It's ghastly."

Nuns in this region receive lower ordination than monks, she added.

"We're now trying to diplomatically introduce full ordination for nuns, but it's a delicate subject," she said. "The monks endlessly, endlessly consider it. We stay quietly, without making huge waves, waiting for our girls to really settle down and be strong. Once they are fully ordained, all eyes will be on them, so we want to make sure they're impeccable in their behavior."

It's not easy. Some of her young charges are undereducated and some never went to school. Many more faced opposition from parents about their vocational choice.

One father even offered his daughter a scooter if she didn't become a nun. That may not sound like a lot, but "it's like being offered a Mercedes!" Tenzin Palmo said.

But hold up a minute, sister. We really can't NOT talk about the whole living-in-a-cave thing.

Born Diane Perry 59 years ago in Britain, Tenzin Palmo was looking for the meaning of life, questioning what was ultimate reality, when she read a book on Buddhism.

"This was before the whole hippie period," she said. "Very little was written on a popular level about Buddhism, and very little was known about it, especially in Europe."

In Buddhism, she found a vocabulary to express that which had not yet been spoken.

"I immediately recognized this is what I ultimately believed; I just hadn't learned it yet," she said.

Her father had died when she was just a toddler and her mother, a spiritualist, followed her to India. Early on, she was drawn to Theravada, an early form of Buddhism that adheres to a strict understanding of the historical Buddha with nirvana as its goal.

In India, Tenzin Palmo took a guru, lived in a monastery and from age 33 to 45, retreated to the cave 13,200 feet up in the Himalayas, where she ate barley and turnips, faced floods and rockfalls, meditated in a 3-foot-square box, chopped wood and learned exactly how much in one's life is superfluous.

Through Buddhism and meditation, she has learned the value of staying in the moment and not being carried away by internal chatter.

These days, she prefers to teach basic Buddhism, rather than a particular tradition or sect.

One of her talks centers on karma and responsibility. In Buddhist philosophy, every action and thought will plant the seeds, which will ripen, she said, and "what we receive is what we've planted in the past."