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Chapter Ten Yogini
The scenery outside her cave may have been awesome, but what of Tenzin Palmo’s inner world? This, after all, was what she had gone to the cave to discover. What was she seeing on that long journey inwards?
- Was she sitting there having visions, like watching TV?
- Was she being bathed in golden light?
- Hearing celestial voices?
- Experiencing waves of transcendent bliss?
- Or was she perhaps being tormented by the devils of her psyche, disturbed from the depths of her subconscious by those penetrating tools of meditation designed to dig deep beneath the surface?
According to the legends of solitary mediators, this was what cave-dwelling was really all about. Up in his icy, barren cave the great yogi Milarepa, founder of Tenzin Palmo’s own lineage, after years of terrible deprivation and unwavering endeavour, found himself in a realm of surreal splendour. The walls and floor of his cave melted with the imprint of his hands, feet, buttocks where he pressed them into the rock. Goddesses appeared bringing him delicious morsels to stave off his hunger. His emaciated body, turned green from eating only nettle soup, was filled with intense ecstasy. In his dreams he could turn his body into any shape he wished, traversing the universe in any direction unimpeded. In his waking state he learnt to fly, crossing the valleys of his homeland at great speed, much to the consternation of the farmers ploughing the fields in the valley below.
Was the fishmonger’s daughter from Bethnal Green experiencing any of this? No one will ever know exactly what Tenzin Palmo went through in all those years of solitary retreat, the moments of dazzling insight she might have had, the times of darkness she may have endured.
She had learnt well from the Togdens, those humble yogis whose qualities had touched her so deeply, that one never reveals, let alone boasts, of one’s spiritual prowess.
Getting rid of the ego, not enhancing it, was the name of the game. Besides, her tantric vows forbade her to divulge any progress she may have made.
It was a long-held tradition, ever since the Buddha himself had defrocked a monk for performing a miracle in public, declaring the transformation of the human heart was the only miracle that really counted.
‘Frankly I don’t like discussing it. It’s like your sexual experiences. Some people like talking about them, others don’t. Personally I find it terribly intimate,’ she said.
When pressed, she conceded the barest essentials:
‘Of course when you do prolonged retreats you are going to have experiences of great intensity – times when your body completely melts away, or when you feel the body is flying. You get states of incredible awareness and clarity when everything becomes very vivid.’
There were visions too – occasions when her guru Khamtrul Rinpoche appeared to her to advise her on her meditations. Other holy beings manifested in her cave as well. But these signs, normally taken as indications of supreme spiritual accomplishment, she dismissed as events of little true significance.
’The whole point is not to get visions but to get realizations,’ she said sharply, referring to the stage when a truth stops being a mental or intellectual construct and becomes real.
Only when the meditation dropped from the head to the heart, and was felt, could transformation begin to take place.
‘And realizations are quite bare,’ she continued. ‘They are not accompanied by lights and music. We’re trying to see things as they really are. A realization is non-conceptual. It’s not a product of the thinking process or the emotions – unlike visions which come from that level. A realization is the white transparent light at the centre of the prism, not the rainbow colours around it.’
As for the bliss, that most attractive of all meditational states, did Tenzin Palmo know this? To the average lay person, sitting at home in her house reading about the heroic meditators, it was the bliss that made it all worthwhile – all the terrible hardships and deprivations, the lack of comfort and human companionship. Bliss, in short, was the reward.
Certainly the one or two photographs taken of Tenzin Palmo at this time show a face suffused with happiness. ’There are states of incredible bliss. Bliss is the fuel of retreat,’she confirmed in her matter-of-fact voice. ‘You can’t do any long-term practice seriously unless there is inner joy, because the joy and enthusiasm is what carries you along. It’s like anything, if you don’t really like it you will have this inner resistance and everything is going to be very slow. That is why the Buddha named Joy as a main factor on the path.
’The only problem with bliss is that because it arouses such enormous pleasure, beyond anything on a worldly level, including sexual bliss, people cling to it and really want it and then it becomes another obstacle,’ she added, before launching on a story to illustrate her point. ‘Once when I was with the Togdens in Dalhousie there were two monks who were training to be yogis.’ One day they were standing outside shaking a blanket and they were so blissed out they could hardly stand up. You could actually feel these waves of bliss hitting you. The Togdens turned to me and said, “You know, when you start, this is what happens. You get completely overwhelmed by bliss and you don’t know what to do. After a while you learn how to control it and bring it down to manageable levels.” And it’s true. When you meet more mature practitioners they’re not completely speechless with all this great bliss, because they’ve learnt how to deal with it. And of course they see into its empty nature.
‘You see, bliss in itself is useless,’ she continued. ‘It’s only useful when it is used as a state of mind for understanding Emptiness – when that blissful mind is able to look into its own nature. Otherwise it is just another subject of Samsara.
You can understand emptiness on one level but to understand it on a very subtle level requires this complement of bliss. The blissful mind is a very subtle mind and that kind of mind looking at Emptiness is a very different thing from the gross mind looking at emptiness. And that is why one cultivates bliss.
‘You go through bliss. It marks just a stage on the journey. The ultimate goal is to realize the nature of the mind,’ she insisted. The nature of the mind, she said, was unconditioned, non-dual consciousness. It was Emptiness and bliss. It was the state of Knowing without the Knower. And when it was realized it wasn’t very dramatic at all. There was no cosmic explosion, no fanfare of celestial trumpets. ‘It’s like waking up for first time – surfacing out of a dream and then realizing that you have been dreaming. That is why the sages talk about all things being an illusion.
Our normal way of being is muffled – it’s not vivid. It’s like breathing in stale air. Waking up is not sensational. It’s ordinary. But it’s extremely real.’ Nor apparently does the real thing happen in a Big Bang. ‘At first you get just a glimpse of it. That is actually only the beginning of the path. People often think when they get that glimpse that it is the whole thing, that they’ve reached the goal. Once you begin to see the nature of the mind then you can begin to meditate. Then after that you have to stabilize it until the nature of the mind becomes more and more familiar. And when that is done you integrate it into everyday life.’ At other times Tenzin Palmo’s revelations were decidedly more ordinary, although in her eyes equally valuable. There was the occasion one spring when the thaw of the winter snows had begun and her cave was being systematically flooded. ‘The walls and the floor were getting wetter and wetter and for some reason I was also not very well,’ she related. ‘I was beginning to think, “Oh dear, what they say about caves is really true,” and started to
feel very down.’ Suddenly the Buddha’s First Noble Truth which she had learnt when she first encountered Buddhism struck her with renewed force. ’I thought, “Why are you still looking for happiness in Samsara? and my mind just changed around.
It was like: That’s right- Samsara is Dukka [the fundamental unsatisfactory nature of life]. It’s OK that it’s snowing. It’s OK that I’m sick because that is the nature of Samsara. There’s nothing to worry about. If it goes well that’s nice. If it doesn’t go well that’s also nice. It doesn’t make any difference. Although it sounds very elementary, at the time it was quite a breakthrough. Since then I have never really cared about external circumstances.
In that way the cave was a great teaching because it was not too perfect,’ she said. If the results of meditation could be sensational, the path to Enlightenment was plodding and exceedingly hard work. There was a lot to do and an inconceivably long way to go. The lamas said if you reached there in three lifetimes you were moving incredibly quickly, for the task at hand was the transformation of the body, speech and mind into that of a Buddha. No less.
Understanding this, the Tibetans had developed the Way into a science. Anyone could do it, given the texts which held the instructions, the initiations which conferred the empowerment and the right motivation which ensured the seeker did not fall into the abyss of self-interest. There were clear-cut paths to take, detailed directions to follow, delineated levels to reach each marked with their own characteristics so that you knew precisely where you were. There were specific landmarks to watch out for, special yogic exercises to do, and a myriad aids harnessing all the senses to propel the seeker forward.
This was the mind working on the mind, consciousness working on consciousness, the task at hand unlocking the secrets of that three-pound universe contained within our own heads. In short, what Tenzin Palmo was engaging in was arguably the most important and significant adventure of all time – the exploration of inner space.
Dr Robert Thurman, Professor of Indo-Tibetan Studies at Columbia University, New York, one of the world’s most lucid and entertaining exponents of Buddhism, put it this way: ‘What the meditator is doing in those long retreats is a very technical thing. He’s not just sitting there communing with the Great Oneness. He’s technically going down, pulling apart his own nervous system to become self-aware from out of his own cells. It’s like you are using Word Perfect and you are in the chip. And you are self-aware of being in the chip. The way you have done that is by stabilizing your mind where you can go down to the dots and dashes, and you’ve gone down and down even into that.
‘In other words the Mahayana Buddhist, filled with the technical understanding of tantra, has become a quantum physicist of inner reality,’ he continued. ‘What he has done is disidentified from the coarse conceptual and perceptual process. He’s gone down to the neuronal level, and from inside the neuronal level he’s gone down to the most subtle neuronal level, or supra-neuronal level and he’s become where it is like the computer is self-consciously aware of itself. The yogi goes right down to below machine language – below the sub atomic level. ‘When you have done this what you have achieved is not some kind of mystical thing but some very concrete, evolutionary thing. It’s the highest level of evolution. That’s what the Buddha is defined as. The highest level of evolution.’ Personally Tenzin Palmo had never doubted the efficacy of the methods she was following. ‘Tibet had been producing Enlightened beings like an assembly line for centuries. For such a small population it was extraordinary,’ she said.
Being a methodical and highly conscientious person, she had started at the beginning with the preliminary practices, which she had begun in Dalhousie and Lahoul long before she went into the cave. These consisted of certain rites such as mandala offerings, where the practitioner builds up a symbolic universe on small silver trays decorated with ‘precious’ items and offers it to all the Buddhas, or doing full-length prostrations, or mantra recitation. These are then performed literally hundreds of thousands of times in order to prepare and soften the mind for the esoteric tantric meditations that were to follow. In the cave Tenzin Palmo did them all again. At one point she fasted completely (although she would not reveal for how long). At another she conducted a partial fast while simultaneously doing prostrations and singing praises to Chenrezig, the thousand-armed Buddha of compassion. Always an extremely arduous exercise both physically and mentally, this time it was made even more difficult by the extreme conditions in which she was living. ‘It was winter and I didn’t have the right food. What I was eating was too heavy. When you fast it’s much better if you have light, nourishing food. So, physically it was quite tough. I got digestive problems and became very weak,’ she said, while refusing to amplify any further. Mentally, however, it worked. ‘The mind does become purified. The prayers are very beautiful and the mind grows extremely clear and light, very devoted and open,’ she confirmed. After she had done six months of purification practice, Tenzin Palmo had a dream. Arguably it revealed more than anything she said, the level of spiritual development she had reached. ‘I was in a prison, a vast prison composed of many different levels,’ she began. ‘On the top floor people were living in luxury, in penthouse type splendour, while in the basement others were undergoing terrible torture. In the intermediate floors the rest of the inhabitants were engaged in various activities in diverse conditions. Suddenly I realized that no matter what level people were on, we were all nevertheless trapped in a prison. With that I found a boat and decided to escape taking as many people as I could with me. I went all over the prison telling people of their
predicament and urging them to break free. But no matter how hard I tried, they all seemed to be locked in an awful inertia and in the end only two people had the will and the courage to come with me. ‘We got into the boat, and even though there were prison guards around, nobody stopped us as we sailed out of the prison to the world outside. Once we were there we started to run alongside the prison. As I looked over at it I could still see all the people in the windows busily engaged in their different activities, not the least concerned about the truth of their situation. We ran for miles and miles on a path parallel to the prison which seemed never-ending. I became increasingly exhausted and dispirited. I felt I was never going to get beyond the prison and that we might as well return and go back in. I was about to give up when I realized that the two other people who had followed me out had their hopes pinned on me and that if I gave up they would be doomed as well. I couldn’t let them down, so I kept going. ‘Immediately we came to a T-junction beyond which was a completely different landscape. It was like suburbia. There were these neat houses with flowery borders and trees. We came to the first house and knocked at the door. A nice middle-aged woman opened it, looked at us and said, “Oh, you’ve come from that place. Not many people get out. You’ll be OK now, but you must change your clothes. To go back would be dangerous, but you must try to help others also to get out.” At that point I had a great surge of aspiration. “I have tried but no one wants to come,” I told the woman. She replied, “Those in power will be helping you.” At that I said, “I dedicate myself to working with them so that I can help free all beings.” ‘I woke up at that point – and giggled at the image of the middle-aged lady in suburbia,’ she said. The dream was clear. In her subconscious Tenzin Palmo had pledged herself to lead the great escape out of the prison of Samsara, the realms of suffering existence we’re condemned to until we reach the eternal freedom of
Enlightenment. She had also internalized, it seemed, the Bodhisattva ideal of unconditioned altruism. When she was not doing her preliminary practices she worked on her Single Pointed Concentration – the meditative discipline which trains the mind to focus single-pointedly on one subject without interruption. Yogis were said to be able to stay in this state for days, weeks, months even, without moving, their mind totally absorbed on the wonders of their inner reality. Single Pointed Concentration, or Samadhi, was essential for penetrating the nature of reality and discovering absolute truth. It was also exceedingly difficult, the mind habitually wanting to dance all over the place flitting from one random thought to another, from fantasy to fantasy, perpetually chattering away to itself, expending vast quantities of energy in an endless stream of trivia. The mind was like a wild horse, they said, that needed to be reined in and trained. When the mind’s energy was harnessed and channelled like a laser beam on a single subject, its power was said to be tremendous. Ultimately this was the high-voltage power-tool needed to dig down into the farthest reaches of the mind, unlocking the greatest treasures buried there. ‘For any practice to work,’ said Tenzin Palmo, ’the mind which is meditating and the object of meditation must merge. Often they are facing each other. One has to become completely absorbed, then the transformation will occur. The awareness naturally drops from the head to the heart – and when that happens the heart opens and there is no “I”. And that is the relief. When one can learn to live from that centre rather than up in the head, whatever one does is spontaneous and appropriate. It also immediately releases a great flow of energy because it is not at all obstructed as it usually is by our own intervention. One becomes more joyful and light, in both senses of the word,
A young Tenzin Palmo (centre), then known as Diane Perry, in her home town, London. ‘Three times a bridesmaid, never a bride - I better do it and make sure,’ she had said.
Gerald York (editor of a Buddhist magazine), a youthful Chogyam Trungpa (Tenzin Palmo’s first meditation teacher), and author John Blofeld (Tenzin Palmo’s future sponsor), at the Buddhist Society Summer School, Hertfordshire, 1962.
Aged twenty-one in 1964, just after her novice ordination. Tenzin Palmo wrote to her mother on the back: ‘You see? I look healthy! I should have been laughing then you would know that I am also happy!’
‘Kailash’, the former British hill station house in Dalhousie which Freda Bedi turned into her Young Lama’s Home School. Tenzin Palmo’s first port of call in India, 1964.
A class of young Tulkus (reincarnated lamas) whom Tenzin Palmo taught at Kailash, Dalhousie, 1964.
Early days in Dalhousie, 1966. Choegyal Rinpoche (who taught Tenzin Palmo Buddhist stories), Khamtrul Rinpoche (Tenzin Palmo’s guru), Lee Perry (Tenzin Palmo’s mother) and Togden Anjam.
Tenzin Palmo, one of the first Western women to receive full Bhikshuni ordination, Hong Kong, 1973. Sakya Trizin, Tenzin Palmo’s ’second’ guru, remarked, ‘You look like a bald-headed Virgin Mary!’
Some of the monks whom Tenzin Palmo befriended during her six-year stay at Tayul monastery, Lahoul, between 1970 and 1976.
Houses of the monks and nuns of Tayul monastery. The flat roofs provided perfect venues for winter parties.
Still close: renowned artist Choegyal Rinpoche and Tenzin Palmo with the late 8th Khamtrul Rinpoche in the background. Tashi Jong monastery, Kangra Valley, 1997.
Tenzin Palmo with the ‘new’ 9th Khamtrul Rinpoche, Tashi Jong, 1997.
Togden Cholo, one of the elite meditators of Tashi Jong and a close friend of Tenzin Palmo.
The young 8th Khamtrul Rinpoche in Tibet, circa 1958, surrounded by the regalia of his unique status. Shortly afterwards he was a refugee.
The stupa (reliquary) Tenzin Palmo built on a ledge outside her cave as an act of religious devotion.
Inside Tenzin Palmo’s cave, showing the wood-burning stove, table, bookcase with cloth-wrapped texts, pictures of Buddhas, and the meditation box. ‘People were surprised how neat and tidy it was. It was a very pukka cave,’ she said.
Outside the cave, drying out her soaked possessions after the spring thaw – the cave leaked dreadfully. Note the size of her meditation box (upright to the left of the cave), her ‘bed’ for twelve years.
Tenzin Palmo’s garden in which she grew turnips and potatoes (her only source of fresh food) and flowers.
13,200 feet above sea level, a cave with a view!
During the eight-month-long winter Tenzin Palmo was presented with a solid wall of white. because it’s going back to the source, the heart, rather than being in exile in the head. Our modern scientific approach has thrown such emphasis on the brain, we’re all so cut off. That is why so many people feel life is meaningless and sterile.’
When she had finished all her preparations she got down to the core of her practice, tantra – the alchemical process which promised the transformation to full awakening. If the end result was magical, the business of getting there was infinitely prosaic and, some would say, horribly tedious. Every day for the months and years she was in formal retreat inside her cave she got into her meditation box and followed the same gruelling, utterly repetitive routine: Up at 3 a.m. for the first three-hour meditation session; 6 a.m. breakfast (tea and tsampa); 8 a.m.back into the box for the second three-hour meditation session;11 a.m. lunch and a break; 3 p.m. return to the box for the third three-hour meditation session; 6 p.m. tea; 7 p.m. the fourth three-hour session; 10 p.m. ‘bed’ – in the meditation box! All in all that amounted to twelve hours of meditation a day - day in, day out, for weeks, months and years on end. Ironically for a woman who left the world, she had a clock to time all her sessions and was living a life as disciplined and structured as any worker on the factory floor. For all the mind-numbing monotony she was never bored. ’Sometimes I would think that if I were having to watch the same TV programme four times a day I’d have gone up the wall,’ she said candidly. ‘But in retreat there’s a pattern that emerges. At first it is very interesting. Then you hit a period when it’s excruciatingly boring. And then you get a second wind after which it becomes more and more fascinating until at the end it’s much more fascinating and interesting than it was in the beginning. That’s how it is even if you’re doing the same thing four times a day for three years. It’s because the material begins to open up its real meaning and you discover level after level of inner significance. So, at the end you are much more involved in it and totally identified with it than you were at the beginning,’ she said. She remained deliberately vague about the precise nature of the material she was working with. ‘I was doing very old traditional practices ascribed to the Buddha himself. He revealed them to various great masters who then wrote
them down after having realized them themselves. They involve a lot of visualization and internal yogic practices,’ she hinted. ‘Basically, you use the creative imaginative faculty of the mind to transform everything, both internally and externally. The creative imagination in itself is an incredibly powerful force. If you channel it in the right way it can reach very deep levels of mind which can’t be accessed through verbal means or mere analysis. This is because on a very deep level we think in pictures. If you are using pictures which have arisen in an Enlightened mind, somehow that unlocks very deep levels in our own minds. ‘What you are dealing with are images which are a reflection of the deepest qualities within oneself,’ she continued. ‘They are reflections of one’s Buddha mind, therefore they are a skilful means for leading you back to who one really is. That’s why, when you practise, things occur and experiences happen.’ Maybe it was her Cockney upbringing which taught her to be cheerful in adversity and gave her resilience, maybe it was her psychological make-up, which was unusually well-balanced and unneurotic, or perhaps it was that for some reason she was predisposed to be up in the mountains meditating all alone, but Tenzin Palmo claims that for her there was no dark night of the soul. There was never a moment when those legendary demons confronted by other recluses rose up to torment and taunt. She suffered no moments of madness, no paranoia, no agonizing periods of doubt or depression. And not for a second was she prey to the barbs of lust that seemed to attack the most ‘holy’ of male hermits. ‘I found myself surrounded by bands of dancing girls. My face was pale with fasting but though my limbs were cold as ice my mind was burning with desire and the forces of lust kept bubbling up before me when my flesh was as good as dead,’ cried St Jerome before going off to flagellate himself in repentance. None of this happened to Tenzin Palmo. ‘I didn’t encounter anything that was particularly awful – maybe because I didn’thave a traumatic childhood. I was very lucky in that respect,’she suggested.
While she may not have hit the spiritual wall in any dramatic fashion, she claims she did not get off scot-free. The pitfalls were there, lethal just the same. It was inevitable. With no social life to distract her, no roles to fulfil, no other person to deflect her feelings on to, the masks all fell away. Now the mirror was held up to herself. It was not always a comfortable sight. ‘In retreat you see your nature in the raw, and you have to deal with it,’ she said. ‘I may not have heavy negative karma but that does not mean my problems don’t exist. They are just not so transparent and therefore more difficult to catch,’ she said. She elaborated:’When you get into the practice you begin to see how it should be done, and when it is not you begin to ask yourself “why?"In my case it came down to laziness, a fundamental inertia. That’s my main problem. It’s tricky. It’s not like facing the tigers and wolves of anger and desire. Those sort of problems you can grapple with. My failings are much more insidious they hide in the undergrowth so that they are more difficult to see,’ she confessed. The laziness she was referring to was not the idleness of sitting around doing nothing, of being slothful, of engaging in frivolous tasks. Tenzin Palmo could never be accused of that. Instead it was laziness of a much more subtle kind. ‘One knows how to practise, and of that one is perfectly capable. But one settles for second or third best. It is like getting the progress prize at school – one is not really doing one’s best. It’s a very low grade of effort and it is much more serious than having a bad temper. The times when I have genuinely put my whole self into something, the results have surprised even me.’ Inside her cave she was doing more than just sit in her meditation box. During her break she painted – beautiful pictures of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. She copied out texts for her monastery in the elegant calligraphy that she had taught herself. And as she had done all her life, she read prolifically and deeply all the works she could get her hands on about the Buddha and about teachings, including works belonging to other traditions. It was highly unusual –
most Tibetan Buddhists never stepped outside their own literature. This learning was to hold in her good stead later on (in a way she could hardly imagine), when she would draw on it time and time again to back up a point she was making. ‘I think it’s very important for Westerners who come from such a totally different background to really study the foundations of Buddhism – what the Buddha taught. If you read the very early sutras, the early Theravadin tradition is the foundation for everything which came after it. Without having really understood what the foundation was you cannot really appreciate what comes after. As Western Buddhists I think we have a responsibility to the Buddhist dharma,’ she reasoned. Curiously in amongst this plethora of Buddhism there was one token of Christianity – the autobiography of St Teresa of Lisieux. In spite of Tenzin Palmo’s antipathy to the Christian religion in general, she was drawn to the French saint who had entered a Carmelite nunnery when she was just fifteen and who had died at the age of twenty-four. She read her story several times and could quote from it at will. ’The ironic thing is that the “little way” that she wrote about had nothing to do with the Way that I practised. What I liked about her, however, was that she was very sensible. She sometimes slept through the church services and it did not worry her that she slept. God would have to accept her as she was! She never worried about her faults so long as her aspiration was right! She had this thing that she was like a small bird scratching around looking for seeds, glancing at the sun but not flying near it. She reasoned that she didn’t have to because the sun was shining even on a small being like a bird. Her whole attitude was very nice. She described herself as “a little flower” by the wayside which nobody sees but in its own self is very perfect as it is. And to me that is her primary message – that even in small, little ways we can be fulfilling our purpose and that in little things we can accomplish much.’
She went on: ’St Teresa was interesting because from the outside she didn’t do anything. She performed no miracles, saw no visions, yet she was extremely devout. However, she must have been special because her Mother Superior made her write her story, which was completely unusual. A photograph taken of her at her death shows how beatific she looked. She had said that she wanted to spend her heaven doing good on earth. That’s a Bodhisattva aspiration – you don’t loll around in heaven singing praises, you get on and do something good,’she said. Tenzin Palmo may have removed herself from the world but others were certainly not forgotten. Over the years she had developed a lengthy correspondence with a wide variety of people, some of whom she had not seen for years. When she was not in strict retreat she would faithfully answer all of their letters, which were delivered by Tshering Dorje along with her supplies. Sometimes there were as many as sixty. She looked upon these friendships as ’treasures’ in her life. ‘I have met some truly wonderful people – and I am always grateful for that,’ she said. Her friends, family and the multitude of sentient beings she did not know were also included in her prayers and meditations. ‘You automatically visualize all beings around you. In that way they partake of whatever benefits may occur,’ she said. It was part of her Bodhisattva vow, for true Enlightenment could not be reached without bringing all living beings to that state. How could one be sincerely happy anyway, knowing countless others were enduring untold miseries throughout every realm of existence? Albert Einstein, arguably the West’s greatest guru, knew this too: ‘A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty,’ he
had said, using the same metaphor of a prison that had occured in Tenzin Palmo’s dream. Tenzin Palmo was a firm believer in the efficacy of prayer. ‘Actually one doesn’t have to be a great yogi to help others - the practices in themselves have great power and blessing,’ she commented. ‘I believe there are infinite beings embodying intelligence and love, always beaming in, always trying to help. We just have to open up. So you can definitely pray to theBuddhas and Bodhisattvas, but it’s better not to pray for a bicycle at Christmas. Rather pray for spiritual growth that can flower in the mind. Pray to lesser beings for a bicycle. Just as if you wanted to get a tax return you wouldn’t write to the Prime Minister but to some semi-minor official. If you wanted to stop war you’d write to the Prime Minister,’ she said. After all those hours of meditating, those twelve years of sitting in her box looking inwards in her cave, did she improve? ‘Like anything else, if you practise long enough it gets easier. For example, if you are learning to play the piano, in the beginning your fingers are very stiff and you hit many wrong notes, and it is very awkward. But if you continually practise it gets easier and easier. But even so, although a concert pianist is very skilled at playing, still his difficulties are there. They may be at a higher level and not apparent to other people but he sees his own problems,’ she said, modest as always. In the end had it all been worth it? After that protracted extraordinary effort, the hardships, the self-discipline, the renunciation, what had she gained? The answer came back quick as a flash. ‘It’s not what you gain but what you lose. It’s like unpeeling the layers of an onion, that’s what you have to do. My quest was to understand what perfection meant. Now, I realize that on one level we have never moved away from it. It is only our deluded perception which prevents our seeing what we already have. The more you realize, the more you
realize there is nothing to realize. The idea that there’s somewhere we have got to get to, and something we have to attain, is our basic delusion. Who is there to attain it anyway?’
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Chapter Twelve Coming Out.
Tenzin Palmo may have been content to sit there in her cave meditating indefinitely, but the world literally came knocking. One day in the summer of 1988 she was startled out of her solitude by the appearance of the police. Paying no heed to the boundary fence,
erected specifically to keep all visitors out, nor to the accepted etiquette never to disturb solitary practitioners, the policeman barged right into her compound, knocked loudly on the door and demanded to know why she had an illegal visa. He went on to state in no
uncertain terms that if she did not appear at the local police station the next day she would be arrested. It was the first voice Tenzin Palmo had heard in three years, the first figure she had seen. By any one’s accounts it was a rude awakening. Complying with this
onslaught of officialdom, she obediently descended from her mountain to confront the new Superintendent of Police, who told her he was very sorry about the situation but he had no choice but to give her a Quit India notice. She would have to leave the country in
ten days.
Patiently Tenzin Palmo explained to the Superintendent that she had been in India for twenty-four years and was not prepared to leave in ten days. Furthermore, she went on, it wasn’t her fault that her visa was not in order, as she’d left the matter with the
previous incumbent who had been renewing it on her behalf. Faced with her utter reasonableness and obvious sincerity, the Superintendent softened and said that as he was going on holiday for a month he did not have to give her notice immediately, as he had
thought, but that eventually she would have to leave. Until the matter was sorted out he graciously gave her permission to return to her cave and resume what she was doing.
Tenzin Palmo climbed her mountain once more but it was no use. She had been seen, she had been forced to speak, and by the spiritual laws laid down, her retreat was thereby irrevocably broken. She could not continue. By rights she should have been furious
or at least bitterly disappointed. She had done three years in the last serious bout of retreat but the fruits could not be fully realized, it was said, until the final three months, three weeks and three days had been done. After such sustained dedication and diligence
she could well have ranted at the Superintendent or wept silently back in her cave. It would have been reasonable. Instead she laughed and said: ‘Certainly, it was not the way you are meant to finish a retreat. You are meant to stay there for a few days and slowly get
used to seeing people again.’
Word soon got out that Tenzin Palmo’s retreat had ended and friends now sought her out, eager to see for themselves the results of that long period of meditation and solitude. Was she still all right? Had that prolonged period of introspection and isolation sent
her mad, or slightly deranged? Maybe she had been transfigured into a glorious being of light, surrounded by rainbows, as the fabulous stories of yore told? If the people who came looking had expected to see a major metamorphosis, however, they were to be
disappointed.
‘It wasn’t so much that Tenzin Palmo had changed, more that her qualities were enhanced. The warmth, the mental sharpness, the humour were all still there, but more so. There was growth. It was as though she already had the talent and the capacity and then
put the effort behind it. She is very single-minded,’ reported Didi Contractor, the woman who had vetted Tenzin Palmo’s cave to make sure it was habitable when she first went to live there and who had known many great spiritual teachers and their followers during
her years in India.
‘I don’t think anyone on the outside can see the results of what she managed in the cave. What she accomplished was between her and the Deity (I’d rather say that than the Nothingness).One can only go by the symptoms. Certainly she has stature and an
integrity of character which is very developed. She also has a completeness. Tenzin Palmo is always completely consistent and always completely kind. But I don’t know whether that is either a proof or a fruit of her spiritual search. It could be part of who she is that
makes it possible for her to take up the search. I would say, however, that Tenzin Palmo has got further than any of the other many western seekers I’ve met,’ she commented.
Another visitor was Lia Frede, a German woman who lived in a beautiful house in the hills of Dharamsala, and who had known Tenzin Palmo for some years. She also had had a long interest in spiritual matters, particularly Vipassana meditation, and had
conducted several retreats herself. Coincidentally Lia was leading a small trek in Lahoul, studying the ecology of the region, when she heard the news that Tenzin Palmo was ‘out’.
‘I was delighted to have the chance to talk to her because I wanted to know what she had accomplished,’ she said frankly.’The day is etched clearly on my mind. I had terrible trouble finding the cave, it was so well blended in with the rest of the mountain – but we
eventually got there. I was a little shy about intruding so I left my two companions at the gate and went inside and called. Immediately Tenzin Palmo came out, smiled happily and said, “Come in, come in, bring your friends, I’ve just baked bread. Would you like
tea?” It was as though she had seen me yesterday. She was totally normal. I remember sitting there thinking it was all so incongruous. There we were in the cave having this delicious fresh bread with roasted sesame on it and chatting away. It was as though we were
in the middle of England having afternoon tea.
‘As she walked us back down the path I asked her what results she had got from her retreat. I didn’t like to ask her outright if she’d got Enlightened but I was waiting for her to tell me of some transcendent experience she’d had. It was certainly what I would have
expected. Instead she looked at me and replied, “One thing I can tell you – I was never bored.” That was it. I was waiting for more, but nothing else was said. It has always puzzled me that that was the only statement she made. ‘ Tenzin Palmo was obviously being as tight-lipped as ever.
If Tenzin Palmo was revealing nothing, Lia, like Didi, could see for herself clearly her friend’s exceptional qualities. ‘Tenzin Palmo has deep-seated purity and, I would say, innocence. And the other thing is that she has true equanimity. Things that happen to her
she neither objects nor supports – she neither pushes nor obstructs. She has this neutrality. She deals with what is happening without attaching any ego involvement to it. It’s not that she’s trying, the ego is just not there. I was amazed by her reaction when she
was trapped in her cave and she thought she was going to die. I know if I had been in that situation I would have panicked. Instead she calmly did her death meditations. And when I heard that her supplies didn’t arrive and she almost starved, I was furious! I would
have wanted to know why. She never bothered to find out though. Nor did she blame the Superintendent for breaking up her retreat. She knows that people have their karma. Still, to me that amount of equanimity shows a definite degree of spiritual advancement.’
More relevant than people’s impressions of Tenzin Palmo was her response to them. Having been isolated from people and the ways of the world for so long, what was it like suddenly coming into contact with them again, having to make conversation, having to
deal with the noise and mundanity of everyday life? According to the testimonies of other Western retreatants, who had ventured into shorter periods of silence and seclusion, re-entry into the world was a shocking experience, an assault on the senses and the
psyche which left them reeling. They reported that it took weeks for them to recover and reintegrate back into society. Tenzin Palmo had been cut off from human contact for infinitely longer and had, by her own admission, been removing layer upon layer of outer
coverings. Her sensitivity must have been honed to finer levels than ever before. ‘At first talking to people was exhausting, not at the time, but afterwards I found myself very tired. But after a while it was OK,’ she conceded.
Curiously, rather than making her less capable of dealing with people, less willing to enter into relationship with the world as one might expect, the cave seemed to have the opposite effect. Palmo was not traumatized by meeting the world again, and was
witnessed being exceptionally sociable, very chatty, and super-sensitive to the needs and suffering of humanity. It was as big a sign as any that her meditations in the cave had worked.
’Tenzin Palmo has a large compassion – an unruffled compassion,’ commented Lia Frede. ’She’s really very unjudgemental and gives her ear and advice to anyone, be it a sinner or a saint. She’s neutral – she doesn’t mind whether someone has just affronted her
or been nice to her. It is something I’ve noticed in other spiritually advanced beings. Anyone who comes to her with a problem, she’s always willing to help. That’s why people seek her company, because it has a purifying influence when you are with a person like
that.’
‘I have the kind of mind that wherever I am that’s where I am,’ was Tenzin Palmo’s attitude. ‘I think I have two sides to my nature – one is this basic need to be alone, the love of isolation, the other is a sociability and friendliness. I don’t know if I am particularly
warm towards others but I do know that whoever I am with I feel they are the most important person in the world at that time. Internally there is always this feeling of wishing them well. So although I love to be alone, when I’m with others that’s fine too.’
Now, thrust into the mainstream of the world once more, Tenzin Palmo could see for herself if she had changed. Had there been a transformation? That, ultimately, was the only valid test of her spiritual practices, for no amount of retreat could have been said to
have worked unless there was a fundamental shift, a turning around of your old, habitual ways of seeing and being. Up there on her mountain, in splendid isolation, she may have been thoroughly absorbed in the eternal verities but could that experience stand up
to the challenge of everyday life?
’There is a kind of inner freedom which I don’t think I had when I started – an inner peace and clarity. I think it came from having to be self-sufficient, having nothing or no one to turn to whatever happened,’ she said. ‘Also while I was in retreat everything became
dreamlike, just as the Buddha described. One could see the illusory nature of everything going on around one – because one was not in the middle of it,’ she continued, using the impersonal pronoun in order to deflect attention from any realizations she may have
had! ‘And then when you come out you see that people are so caught up in their life – we identify so totally with what we’ve created. We believe in it so completely. That’s why we suffer – because there’s no space for us.’
‘Now I notice that there is an inner distance towards whatever occurs, whether what’s occurring is outwards or inwards. Sometimes, it feels like being in an empty house with all the doors and windows wide open and the wind just blowing through without
anything obstructing it. Not always. Sometimes one gets caught up again, but now one knows that one is caught up again.’
While being like ‘an empty house’ may seem desirable to a meditator, to the average person, brought up on the notion that passion and emotional involvement is what gives life its colour and verve, such a state could seem vapid and remote. Was being an
‘empty house’ the same as being a ’shell’ of a person – cold and unfeeling? And what is the difference between detachment and being cut off from your emotions anyway? A study conducted at a London hospital among children who were left for weeks without
visitors showed that it was at the point when they stopped crying and became in the eyes of the staff ‘good’, that the harm was done. Follow-up studies showed that these children had developed the potential for psychotic behaviour. The stage at which they
stopped crying was when some vital feeling part of them had ’died’. Was being detached being alienated?
Tenzin Palmo, as might be expected, refuted all such insinuations. ‘It’s not a cold emptiness,’ she stated emphatically, ‘it’s a warm spaciousness. It means that one is no longer involved in one’s ephemeral emotions. One sees how people cause so much of their
own suffering just because they think that without having these strong emotions they’re not real people.
‘Why does one go into retreat?’ she went on hotly. ‘One goes into a retreat to understand who one really is and what the situation truly is. When one begins to understand oneself then one can truly understand others because we are all interrelated. It is very
difficult to understand others while one is still caught up in the turmoil of one’s emotional involvement – because we’re always interpreting others from the standpoint of our own needs. That’s why, when you meet hermits who have really done a lot of retreat, say
twenty-five years, they are not cold and distant. On the contrary. They are absolutely lovely people. You know that their love for you is totally without judgement because it doesn’t rely on who you are or what you are doing, or how you treat them. It’s totally
impartial. It’s just love. It’s like the sun – it shines on everyone. Whatever you did they’d still love you because they understand your predicament and in that understanding naturally arises love and compassion. It’s not based on sentiment. It’s not based on
emotion. Sentimental love is very unstable, because it’s based on feed-back and how good it makes you feel. That is not real love at all.’
It may not have been psychological but there was severing going on in Tenzin Palmo’s life just the same. As it turned out, the Superintendent’s edict had a far more dramatic effect than terminating her retreat. It brought to an end an entire era. Now the utterly
unexpected happened. After a lifetime of being enamoured with the East in general and Tibetan Buddhism in particular, she began to feel the pull of her own culture. For the first time in the twenty-four years that she had been living in India, the West beckoned.
She explained: ‘I felt my time in India had drawn to a close, that I needed to get back to the West and rediscover my roots. After all, I am not Tibetan. When I worked in the library in Hackney I had a boyfriend who was into classical music, architecture, art, old
churches, that kind of thing. He loved to talk about it all and go to concerts and galleries. I was very fascinated. Then I became a Buddhist when I was eighteen and renounced all that! My whole focus turned. After twenty-four years of being in India and reading
nothing but dharma books, however, I felt there was this huge void in my life and that I hadn’t finished what I was supposed to have done.’
Having no idea of where she wanted to go, Tenzin Palmo did what she always did in such situations – remained still and waited for the ‘voice’ to speak to her. In the meantime her many friends, scattered all around the world, began to write inviting her to their
countries. She contemplated America, Australia, England, but none seemed right. Then an American friend, Ram, whom she had met in India, wrote saying he had found the perfect place – Assisi. Why didn’t she join him and his wife there? She had never been to
Assisi, but once she read the name the voice spoke out loud and clear.
’That’s it,’ she said, clicking her fingers.
Without sentimentality or sadness Tenzin Palmo prepared to leave the Cave of Great Bliss. It had consumed a colossal chunk of her life, her ‘prime years’ between the ages of thirty-three and forty-five, but to her it seemed nothing. ‘The thing that struck me most
was where had all the time gone? Time just condensed. The last three years in particular just flew past. It seemed like four months at most,’ she commented.
Without haste she packed her few belongings, bade farewell to her Lahouli friends and made her way to the West and the cradle of the greatest flowering of Western culture, Italy, birthplace of the Renaissance. She had come full circle. Coming into the world,
leaving it, and then returning. She arrived at the pretty medieval town of Assisi, built on the flanks of Mount Subasio in Umbria, in the dead of night but knew instantly she’d made the right choice. It could have been the small clusters of picturesque houses perched
on mountain-tops so reminiscent of Lahoul, or the aura of sanctity left by St Francis which still hung in the air, or even the fact that there were several Indian ashrams in the area, but the moment Tenzin Palmo arrived she felt at home.
‘I felt a very strong connection with Assisi. To this day it’s the only place I miss, including my cave. There’s a special, ineffable quality about it which is palpable in spite of the millions of tourists who flock there each year. It’s not an ordinary place. It’s the centre
for world peace and holds a lot of inter-faith conferences. And many people have reported having spiritual experiences there, strong transformative experiences,’ he said.
She moved into the bottom floor of a house belonging to a friend of Ram’s and proceeded to rediscover her Western roots with delight. She roamed the charming, narrow streets of the town, often at night and alone, feeling quite safe. She visited the famous
double basilica housing St Francis’s tomb, marvelling in the exquisite frescoes, especially those by Giotto. And she climbed the mountain, curious to see another cave, the one inhabited by St Francis who had prayed so hard to God to let him know the suffering of
Jesus that not only did the stigmata appear on his hands and feet but actual nails manifested too. Over the five years she lived in Assisi Tenzin Palmo developed a strong devotion to St Francis and would spend hours meditating in his cave when there were no
tourists around.
‘It was a very different cave from mine because it has this church built over it. But it was great! There are still doves in the tree outside, descendants of ones St Francis bought from a seller and left there to multiply. I loved his animal stories. Do you know he had
a cicada and they’d sing to each other?He was a very vivid saint,’ she said.
Once Tenzin Palmo revealed that she felt she had been a Christian monk in one of her many lifetimes. ‘The feeling when I go into cloisters is very strong. It’s almost deja vu. And I’ve always had an affinity with the enclosed orders. I think I probably decided to go
to the East when the Christian tradition stopped going anywhere. It would make sense,’ she divulged.
The austerities that she had submitted herself to for so long now gave way to a few indulgences. She learnt to eat pasta and developed a liking for cappuccino and tiramisu (although she claimed her favourite dish was still rice, vegetables and dhal).She watched
videos, especially old black and white 1940s movies. More than this, she buried herself in her friends’ vast library and music collection, soaking up her European heritage like a dry sponge. ‘It was as though the whole Western part of myself had been ruptured and
needed to be healed and put back together again.’ She now allowed herself to read novels, veering towards French authors and stories with a religious plot like Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. And she devoured anything she could find on medieval history,
devoting herself to this new learning with the same thoroughness with which she had tackled Buddhism. The period around the twelfth and thirteenth century, the time when St Francis lived, particularly appealed to her. ‘There was a lot of intellectual ferment and
scholastic debate going on then – a lot of stuff coming from the Arabs and Jews and they were slowly beginning to discover the Greeks. It was also the time of the growth of the mendicant orders when very great saints and artists were around,’ she explained.
She also plunged into the biographies and writings of the Christian saints and philosophers: St Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross, Thomas Aquinas, the Desert Fathers, Thomas Merton, the Philokalia, the scriptures from the Orthodox Church, and much much
more. As she read, her appreciation for the religion she had once dismissed grew and with it came a new understanding and pride in her Western identity.
’The Tibetans generally regard us as barbarians. They think we’re very good at inventing the motor car, but have nothing much inside, and so in terms of real culture are barren. At a certain point that is very disempowering. It is just like when the Christian
missionaries went abroad and denigrated whatever culture they found themselves in, thinking theirs was the only true one,’ she said. ‘I began to see it isn’t true. We are not all McDonalds and Coca Cola. We have incredible philosophy and art and an incredible
spiritual tradition. Western thought is very sophisticated and I discovered that in matters of the religion it was all there.
Personally, I still found the Buddhist analysis of the Path the most clear and complete for someone like me, but it was so good to see the same
insights being stated albeit in a different way. These things are important to know.’ Then she added with a wry smile, ‘Interestingly when Buddhism first went to Tibet the Indians thought the Tibetans were “barbarians” too. They didn’t want to hand over the
precious Buddha dharma to them because they thought they would mess it up!’
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 Fifteen Challenges - Guru
From being a cave-dweller Tenzin Palmo had become a jet-setter. From
being entirely stationary she had begun to move across the world at a
frantic pace. From being silent she now spoke for hours on end. From
living the most simple existence she was now exposed to the full gamut
of late twentieth-century life. The world that she had re-entered was a
radically different place from the one she had left in 1963 when she had
set sail for India. She saw for herself the stress and the insecurity, the job
losses and the new phenomenon of homelessness. She read about
increased crime, escalating violence and the drug problems. She
witnessed her friends pedalling faster and faster in an effort to keep up.
She noted governments everywhere swapping the principle of public
service for economic rationalism; and now the new luxuries were cited as
silence, space, time and an intact ecology. And she experienced first
hand the great need for spiritual values in an increasingly materialistic
society.
‘People are parched with thirst,’ she said. ‘In Lahoul there was a
richness to life in spite of all the hardships. Here people are hungry for
some real meaning and depth to their lives. When one has stopped
satiating the senses one wants more. That’s why people are aggressive
and depressed. They feel everything is so futile. You have everything you
want, and then what? Society’s answer is to get more and more, but
where does that get you? I see isolation everywhere and it has nothing to
do with being alone. It’s about having an alienated psyche.’
More specifically to her own story, by the mid-1990s the Western
world had got over the first flush of its love affair with Buddhism and
was beginning to take a cooler and more mature look at the complex,
exotic religion which had come among them. That it had taken the
Occident by storm was no longer in dispute. Thinking people of all ages
and from all walks of life throughout Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia
and New Zealand had been awed by the profundity of its message and
drawn by the quality of the lamas who had delivered it. As a result
Buddhist centres, specifically Tibetan Buddhist, had mushroomed all
over the globe.
But now the honeymoon was over. The early disciples,
after thirty years of investigation and practice, began to see a more
realistic – and human – face of the religion which had been transplanted
into their soil. Flaws emerged, discrepancies arose and while Eastern
mores may have forbidden outright criticism of its established religion
and spiritual figureheads, the West, with its right of free speech, had no
such scruples. By the time Tenzin Palmo hit the world circuit, certain
aspects of Buddhism were being loudly and publicly challenged – and
with them, by implication, Tenzin Palmo’s chosen way of life.
The first object held up for scrutiny was the guru – regarded as the
Guardian of the Truth, Infallible Guide and, in Tibetan Buddhism, as one
with the Buddha himself. ‘Guru is Buddha, Guru is dharma, Guru is
sangha also,’ went the prayer. The reasoning was logical. The Buddha
mind was absolute and all-pervasive but the guru was here on earth in
the flesh. The Tibetans had an analogy. The Buddha was like the sun,
all-powerful and shining on everything, but still unable to make a piece
of paper burst into flames. For that you needed a magnifying glass, a
conduit to channel the energy, hence the guru. Even so, it was a
precarious position for any human to maintain, let alone a man set down
in a distant land among foreign people and strange ways. Inevitably
several gurus quickly fell off their pedestals amidst a clamour of
publicity.
Tenzin Palmo’s old friend and mentor, Chogyam Trungpa, whom she
had met when he first arrived in England from Tibet, led the way, with a
series of scandals which came to light mostly after his death in 1987.
Trungpa, it was revealed, had not only frequently sat on his throne
reeking of alcohol, he had engaged in several sexual relationships with
his female students as well. It did not matter that he was not of a celibate
order, the confusion which ensued was widespread. Many students tried
to emulate him by also taking to the bottle and several of his female
partners claimed their lives had been destroyed by his philandering. This
notoriety was followed horribly quickly by the news that his chosen
successor, American-born Thomas Rich, who became Osel Tendzin, not
only had AIDS which he had kept secret but had infected one of his many
unknowing student lovers.
With the lid off, other ‘wronged’ parties came to light to blow the
whistle on their gurus. One woman brought a $10 million lawsuit against
a very popular Tibetan teacher for alleged sexual misconduct. It was
settled out of court, but not before rumours of the man’s philandering
had swept the entire Buddhist world. (In Dharamsala, however, the
Tibetans frankly did not believe a woman would dare denounce a lama
and put the whole episode down to a political plot.)Zen teachers
acknowledged that ’sexual misconduct’ was rife among their members.
British writer June Campbell, in her book Traveller in Space, told
eloquently of her secret affair with the highly esteemed lama, the late
Kalu Rinpoche, describing how confusing and undermining her
clandestine affair had been. Jack Kornfield, one of America’s most
established Buddhist teachers and authors, added to the controversy by
stating, almost casually, that he had interviewed fifty-three Zen masters,
lamas, swamis and/or their senior students about their sex lives and had
discovered ’that the birds do it, the bees do it, and most gurus do it’. He
went on to say: ‘Like any group of people in our culture, their sexual
practices varied. There were heterosexuals, bisexuals, homosexuals,
fetishists, exhibitionists, monogamists and polygamists.’ The point he
was making was that Eastern spiritual heads are no more special than
anyone else, but it didn’t help. The issue at stake was the supposed
infallibility of the guru and the abuse of spiritual authority and power.
Confronted by the revelations, the Dalai Lama openly declared himself
shocked. ‘This is very, very harmful for the Buddha dharma. Buddhism is
meant to benefit people – that is its purpose, its only purpose. When you
really examine it such shameful behaviour is due to a lack of inner
strength and shows that in actuality there is a discrepancy between
Buddhism and their life, that the Dharma has not been properly
internalized,’ he stated, before announcing that the only remedy for such
a dire situation was for all culprits to be ‘outed’. ‘You must mention
them by name, publicize them, and no longer consider them as a
teacher,’ he avowed.
The Western Buddhist world, with its idealistic new converts, was
rattled as disclosure followed hard on the heels of yet another
disclosure. It was true that hundreds of followers were perfectly happy
with their Tibetan teachers, finding in them supreme examples of
morality, wisdom and compassion. Some disciples of Trungpa even
spoke in his defence.
‘My teacher did not keep ethical norms and my devotion to him is
unshakable. He showed me the nature of my mind and for that I’m
eternally grateful,’ stated eminent American nun and teacher Pema
Chodron, director of Gampo Abbey, Nova Scotia, in the Buddhist
magazine Tricycle. ’Trungpa Rinpoche taught me in every way he could
that you can never make things right or wrong. His whole teaching was
to lead people away from holding on to some kind of security, to throw
out the party line. However, we’re always up against human nature. The
teacher says something and everyone does it. There was a time when he
smoked cigarettes and everyone started smoking. Then he stopped and
they stopped. It was just ridiculous.’
But these defenders of the faith were the silent majority. The
disaffected were making all the noise and the scandals were tarnishing
Buddhism’s previously squeaky-clean image. Those whose lives had
been touched by the fallen gurus rushed off to the psychiatrists (and the
press) to tell of their anguish and doubt. In particular the new breed of
articulate emancipated females were especially vociferous, claiming that
this was one more instance of male power exploiting and betraying
women.
They had a point. While religious teachers of any faith engaging in
sexual activity with their disciples was morally and ethically questionable,
within the context of Tibetan Buddhism it was arguably more so. Tibetan
Buddhism had tantra, the legitimate sexual coupling between spiritual
partners which was said to inspire both parties to higher levels of
attainment. To be chosen by a guru as a consort for such a mystic union,
therefore, was to establish you as a very special woman indeed. In many
cases it was irresistible. With the guru seen as Buddha, how could a
woman resist?
Tenzin Palmo arrived in the midst of the storm. In the dock was the
guru, dubbed by one American commentator ’this poor dysfunctional
model’. This was the pillar that Tenzin Palmo had trusted her entire
spiritual life on. To her mind the guru was the heart of the matter.
Khamtrul Rinpoche had been, quite simply, the most important person
in her life, the only ’thing’ she had missed in all those years in the cave,
the man whose memory could still induce uncontrollable sobs years
after his death. She surveyed the scene with her cool, detached eye.
‘Of course where a lama is acting dishonourably it is extremely
damaging. It creates an atmosphere of rivalry, jealousy, secrecy and
chaos. I have heard of some lamas creating a harem situation, or having
one or two secret liaisons. In such circumstances the women have a
right to feel humiliated and exploited. It’s also hypocritical. The lama is
posing as a monk, yet he’s not. I don’t see how that benefits the dharma
or sentient beings. It’s a very different situation from a lama who has not
taken celibacy vows having a consort openly, and a decent steady
relationship,’ she stated.
The woman who had laughed off Trungpa’s sexual advances when she
was just nineteen, and who still managed to remain friends with him,
was hardly going to take the high moral ground, however. ’Some women
are very flattered at being “the consort", in which case they should take
the consequences. And some women only know how to relate to men in
this way. I sometimes feel we women have to get away from this victim
mentality,’ she said crisply. ‘It is also necessary to understand the
strange situation these lamas have found themselves in. They were
brought up in a monastic setting among hundreds of like-minded men
and now find themselves in a strange land being the only lama in a
community of Westerners. There’s no one for them to turn to for
companionship and advice, and they’re surrounded by devoted disciples
who are only too willing to please. With the very heavy sexual
prominence in the West, I believe many lamas misread the signs and are
surprised to find the women are taking their advances towards them
seriously. It’s a lot of misread messages which is leading to confusion all
round.’
Much of the current problem, she deduced, was due to the fact that
Westerners had little experience and no education about how to look for
and find their real guru. Nor did they understand what the function of a
true guru was. Eastern masters were fashionable, Westerners’ thirst for
spiritual leadership, any leadership, was immense. Their naivety and
susceptibility therefore made them easy prey to misunderstandings and
in some cases spiritual and sexual exploitation. In Tenzin Palmo’s
experience the business of finding a guru was, in fact a highly specialized
task indeed.
‘In Tibet it was understood that when you meet your root guru there is
this instant, immediate mutual recognition – and instant trust. You
inwardly know. The problem with the West is that people might meet a
charismatic lama, have a surge of devotion and think this is it! Even if
they had a connection with Tibet in past lives the chances of meeting up
with their lama again are actually very slim. Their root guru could be
anywhere, or even dead, as most of the high lamas perished in the
aftermath of the Chinese invasion. Previously, it was much easier. The
lamas were reborn in their own districts and so it was much more likely
that you would refind your guru again,’ she explained.
‘Many Westerners have false ideas about what a guru is,’ she went on.
‘They think that if they find the perfect master with the perfect teachings
they’ll immediately get it. They believe that the guru is going to lead them
through every step of the way. It’s a search for Mamma. But it’s not like
that. A genuine guru is there to help people to grow up as well as wake
up. The real function of a guru is to introduce you to the unborn nature
of your mind and the relationship is one of mutual commitment. From
the side of the disciple she or he should see whatever the guru does as
perfect Buddha activity, obey whatever the lama says, and put into
practice whatever the lama instructs. The lama, on his part, is committed
to take the disciple all the way to Enlightenment, however many lifetimes
that may take. In that lies its glory and its downfall. If it is a genuine lama
you have the certainty of never being abandoned. If it is not a genuine
lama you open yourself to all sorts of exploitation.’
The Dalai Lama had his own recipe for distinguishing between an
authentic guru and a fake: ‘You should “spy” on him or her for at least
ten years. You should listen, examine, watch, until you are convinced that
the person is sincere. In the meantime you should treat him or her as an
ordinary human being and receiving their teaching as “just information”.
In the end the authority of a guru is bestowed by the disciple. The guru
doesn’t go out looking for students. It is the student who has to ask the
guru to teach and guide,’ he said.
Tenzin Palmo had other ideas, especially when it came to lamas
suggesting sexual liaisons. ‘One way to judge if he’s bona fide is to see if
he’s pursuing old, unattractive women as well as the young, pretty ones!’
she suggested. ‘If he were a genuine lama he would see all women as
Dakinis, young and old, fat and thin, pretty and ugly, because he would
have pure view! And if the guru were genuine you can always say no
without feeling you’ve blown it. A true guru, even if he felt that having a
tantric relationship might be beneficial for that disciple, would make the
request with the understanding that it would not damage their
relationship if she refused. No woman should ever have to agree on the
grounds of his authority or a sense of her obedience. The understanding
should be “if she wished to good, if not, also good", offering her a
choice and a sense of respect. Then that is not exploitation.
‘Actually real tantric liaisons are extremely rare,’ she continued. ‘I once
asked Khamtrul Rinpoche, “Seeing as sexual yoga is such a fast way to
Enlightenment, how come you are all monks?” And he replied, “It’s true
it’s a quick path but you have to be almost Buddha to practise it.” To
have a genuine tantric relationship first there must be no feeling of lust.
Then there must be no emission of sexual fluids. Instead you must learn
to send the fluids up through the central channel to the crown while
doing very complicated visualization and breathing practices. All this
requires tremendous control of body, speech and mind. Even yogis who
have practised tumo for many years say they’d need one or two lifetimes
of practice to accomplish sexual yoga. So these tantric weekends on offer
in the West these days may give you a jolly good time, but little else!’ she
said.
For all the accusations, the distrust, and the general uneasiness,
Tenzin Palmo’s own feelings towards Khamtrul Rinpoche never wavered,
not for a second. ‘I can say that Khamtrul Rinpoche was the one person I
felt I could trust completely. One of the greatest blessings of my life is
that never for a single moment did I doubt him as a guru, and as my
guru. He guided me infallibly. I never saw anything I needed to question.
He was always completely selfless and wise,’ she said emphatically.
To many Western Buddhists, however, the guru had been mortally
wounded. It was not just the scandals that had eroded his position, it
was the times themselves. In the last seconds of the twentieth century it
was being stated by some that the guru-disciple relationship had run its
course. The figure of the guru was, they said, a product of the patriarchy
with its emphasis on structure and hierarchy, and with the rise of female
spiritual power the patriarchy’s days were rapidly coming to an end.
Andrew Harvey, former Oxford scholar and poetic writer, spent many
years seeking spiritual truths at the feet of a variety of prominent masters
of different faiths, including several eminent lamas, the Christian monk
Father Bede Griffiths, who established an ashram in India, and the Indian
woman guru Mother Meera. He summed up the new feeling eloquently:
‘I am very grateful for all my relationships with my teachers but I’ve come
to understand that you can be frozen by that relationship into a position
of infantilism. It can enforce you in all sorts of inabilities to deal with the
world. It can also corrupt the master. We’re being shown that many of
the people we’ve revered are in fact very, very flawed,’ he said in a recent
radio interview. ‘We’re trying to come to a new understanding, a new
paradigm of what the relationship between teacher and pupil should be. I
think it will change very dramatically in the next ten to fifteen years. We
will not keep holding on to the old Eastern fantasy of avatars and
masters. It’s too convenient a fantasy now. We need something that
empowers us all directly.’
What the new thinkers were suggesting in the place of the guru was
the spiritual friend. A figure who did not claim to be Enlightened, who
did not wish to be regarded as infallible and given total obedience, but
who would walk the path with the seeker, side by side. It was a
democratic solution befitting Western culture. Tenzin Palmo agreed. She
may have gained invaluable experience from her relationship with her
own guru, but she was extremely fortunate – and most unusual.
‘Frankly, at this point I think it’s more important for the West to
practise Buddhism and rely on having good teachers, rather than gurus.
They’re not necessarily the same thing,’ she said. ‘A guru is a very special
relationship but you can have many, many teachers. Take Atisha (a
tenth-century founder of Tibetan Buddhism). He had fifty teachers. Most
teachers are perfectly capable of guiding us. And we’re perfectly capable
of guiding ourselves. We’ve got our innate wisdom. People can put off
practice for ever, waiting for the magic touch that is going to transform
them – or throwing themselves on someone who is charismatic without
discriminating whether or not they are suitable. We should just get on
with it. If you meet someone with whom you have a deep inner
connection, great, if not the dharma is always there. It’s not helpful to get
off on the guru trip. It’s better to understand Buddha, dharma and
sangha.’
As it had done with priests in the Christian religion, the whole spate of
sex scandals around the lamas had brought into focus another area of
radical questioning – celibacy itself. This was an issue very close to
Tenzin Palmo’s heart, and the difficult choice she had made. Was it
relevant in the 1990s? Was it possible? Was it even desirable? Tenzin
Palmo had no doubts.
‘Celibacy is still extremely relevant,’ she insisted. ‘There’s a point to it.
It not only frees the body but clears the mind as well. By not being
engaged in a sexual relationship your energies can be directed into other,
higher directions. It also frees up your emotions too, allowing you to
develop great love for everyone, not just for your family and a small circle
of close friends. Of course it’s not for everybody, and that’s where the
problems arise. Far too many men become Buddhist monks, because it’s
a good life and they have devotion. The Dalai Lama has publicly stated
that only ten out of 100 monks are true candidates.
‘And from what I see many Roman Catholic priests are in a very
difficult position. I think they should have a choice whether to marry or
not. For some it would help a lot to have a close relationship in order for
them to learn the laws of marital existence before handing out advice to
others. In Tibet there were many married lamas who were incredible.
Lama just means guru, it doesn’t necessarily mean monk. Even
nowadays many have married, like Sakya Trizin and Dilgo Kheyntse
Rinpoche. They started training at a very young age, and did several years
of retreat before taking a consort. Often they only do so on the
instructions of their guru and live in the monastery with their wife, and
children, by their side. That can be very nice because with a wife and
daughters they understand women, and have an appreciation for the
female point of view. You don’t have to be celibate, it’s just that for many
people it’s beneficial.’
She had noted the sexual revolution that had taken place while she
was in the cave. How could she have missed it? The world that she had
emerged into was ablaze with naked, entwined bodies, on billboards, on
television, in movies, in newspapers, and in magazines in every high
street newsagent. The taboo had been well and truly broken and to prove
it sex was discussed, displayed and disseminated like never before.
Logos of condoms were paraded on T-shirts, the sex industry had
replaced prostitution, people no longer ‘made love’, they ‘had sex’. It was
a far cry from the days when an Elvis Presley record sent shivers down a
teenager’s spine.
’There’s no doubt that the West is obsessed with sex, thinks that you
can’t live without it and that if you do it’s going to make you warped and
thwarted. It’s absurd! Some of the most glowing and fulfilled people I’ve
met have been chaste,’ she continued. ‘When I look at the monks of
Tashi Jong and the laymen of the community the difference in the
physical and spiritual quality is stunning. The monks look healthy, clear,
happy and the laymen often look quite sickly and dark. This is a
generalization, of course, but it’s quite appropriate. You can see a
different look in their eyes.
‘I remember that once a high Indian official came to Dalhousie shortly
after I had just arrived there and said to me, “You’re a woman of the
world, so where are the monks getting it?” “Getting what?” I asked,
naively. “Well,” he replied, “I have eight children and I still can’t do
without it so how come these monks look so happy?” He found it quite
unbelievable that a celibate monk could look so well. And you should
have seen him, he was a complete wreck! I have also met plenty of
Christian monks who keep their vows purely and who certainly aren’t
warped or troubled either. The Trappists live very long lives – and they
only eat vegetables and cheese,’ she added.
By 1997 Tenzin Palmo herself had been celibate for thirty-three years.
At the age of twenty-one she had made the radical decision to live
without any form of sexual contact or sexual fulfilment, without any
comfort of physical intimacy – all in the name of her vocation. She was
now fifty-four and still very much alone. At best it seemed heroic, at
worst unnatural. What had happened to the girl in the stiletto heels who
had a retinue of boyfriends? ‘I think she got integrated. I like music, I
enjoy seeing beautiful art, being in beautiful scenery. I like being with
friends and laughing – which are expressions of the sensuous side of my
nature. I am not nearly as serious as I used to be and no longer see “the
other girl” as a threat,’ she said.
As for her own celibacy, she had no regrets: ‘I feel absolutely fine! Now
I just don’t think that way towards men. They know it and say I’m the
only woman they’ve met who has no sexual vibration. For better or worse
that’s how I am. I have lots of men friends and enjoy male company.
Actually I love men I think men are very interesting. (I also love women
and find them very interesting too.) One of the joys of being a nun is that
it makes one’s relationship with men in some ways much deeper
because they don’t feel threatened. They can talk to me and tell me
things which they probably wouldn’t be able to tell many other people.
Actually, I tend not to think in terms of male and female any more. As for
physical affection, that’s what I missed out all those years when I was in
the monastery. Now the need has gone. If people want to hug me (which
they do a lot in America), it’s OK. But it’s perfectly fine also if they don’t.
As Masters and Johnson said in their conclusion, sex is one of the joys
of life but it’s certainly not the only one, nor is it the most important. In
my opinion there’s so much more to life than relationships.’
There were other challenges to face, apart from sex, celibacy and
gurus. By the time Tenzin Palmo was travelling across the world on her
dharma circuit, the new disciples were beginning tentatively to form
‘Western Buddhism’, prising the golden nuggets of the Buddha’s
wisdom out of their eastern casing to adapt them to their own culture. It
was a quieter, infinitely more substantial revolution than the more
sensational events that were grabbing media attention. It was also one
that was absolutely in keeping with Buddhist history. Throughout the
ages Buddhism had travelled from one Asian country to the next and
such was the flexibility of its thought that it had changed its colour,
chameleon-style, to suit whatever environment it found itself in. As a
result Japanese Buddhism looked very different from Sri Lankan
Buddhism, which in turn looked radically different from Thai, Burmese,
Vietnamese or Tibetan Buddhism. Underneath the surface the
fundamental truths were the same – the suffering of cyclic existence and
the necessity to find the path of escape. Now, for the first time in 2,500
years, the Buddhist tide had turned irrevocably westward and hit the
many shores of Europe, the Americans, and Australasia, all of which
carried their own distinctive culture and psyche. Each in time would
endow Buddhism with its own unique characteristics.
Now senior students began to rewrite the liturgy, attempting to imbue
the powerful symbolism of Tibetan imagery and language with words
that had more meaning for Western audiences. They began teaching,
finding ways of putting the ancient truths into a contemporary context. It
was a delicate business, requiring much gentle sifting if the baby was not
to be thrown out with the bathwater. At the same time the greatest
influences of Western thought started to be grafted on to the Eastern
religion in an organic way. It was not just East meeting West, but West
meeting East. The ethos of social service, of compassion in action
(rather than just on the meditation cushion), was introduced. Buddhist
hospices and home-care services for the dying sprang up everywhere, as
did leper clinics and refuges for the homeless. Buddhist centres
inaugurated meditation sessions for stress relief, counselling services,
and programmes for alcohol and drug abuse. And the insights of the
West’s Masters of the Mind, Jung, Freud and other psychotherapists,
were galvanized to add a fresher meaning to the Buddha dharma. The
process had begun, a new form of religion was in the making. It was an
exciting time.
Tenzin Palmo, who had had no choice but to weld herself to Tibetan
Buddhism in its purest form, looked on in fascination at the changes that
were unfolding. ‘I believe the West is going to make some really
important contributions to Buddhism. Tibet was a very unique and
special situation and they created a kind of Buddhism which was ideal
for them. But the circumstances which Buddhism is facing now in the
West are obviously very different and the dharma has to change. Not the
essence of course but the way it is presented and its emphasis,’ she said.
‘I think the skilful incorporation of certain psychological principles is
going to be very significant. I also like the idea of social involvement, of
genuinely going out there to help others rather than just sitting on the
meditation cushion thinking about it. It’s opening the heart through
practical application and it suits the West. Actually, it’s not inimical to
the dharma, it’s always been in there, but lying a little bit dormant.
Different aspects of the dharma emerge when they resonate with certain
qualities in the psyches of the people it is meeting. It’s an absolutely
necessary process if Buddhism is going to be applicable to one’sown
country.’
‘But these are very early days. The dharma took hundreds of years to
get rooted in Tibet. There’s no Western Buddhism yet. Buddhism will not
be rooted in the West until some Western people have gone and taken
the dharma and eaten it and digested it and then given it back in a form
which is right for Westerners. At the moment it is like that period in Tibet
when they went to India to bring scriptures back and Indian masters
visited Tibet. Only gradually did the Tibetans evolve it into a form which
was right for them, just as the Thais or the Burmese did. Westerners are
going to do that too eventually, but it has to come very naturally.’
In the context of Tenzin Palmo’s story, however, it was the rise of
feminism in the West which brought with it the most interesting rewards,
and the sharpest challenges.
==
Chapter Sixteen Is a Cave Necessary?
While Tenzin Palmo had been secreted away in her cave doggedly
pursuing the path to perfection, the women of the West had been busy
out in the world organizing their own revolution. By the time she came
out they had made significant inroads into the male strongholds of both
the public and private sector and were turning their determined and
increasingly confident eye on the last bastion of male domination,
religion. Buddhism was not spared. It might not have had a ‘God the
Father’ to contest, believing as it did in a genderless Absolute, but like all
the world’s great faiths it had been formulated by men according to
men’s rules in a time when men were the undisputed leaders. But times
were rapidly changing and the old order was giving place to the new. The
emerging breed of powerful feminist Buddhists began to query some of
the very fundamentals that lay at the heart of the ancient tradition that
Tenzin Palmo was following so faithfully, and started to demand a more
feminine face for the Buddha.
Their questions were sharp and far-ranging. Instead of the masculine
hierarchical structure, which had been in place for millennia, which
placed the head at the top and the rest of the community fanning out
underneath in a triangle, why shouldn’t the head be in the centre of the
circle with everyone else at equidistance all around? Why were places of
worship always built in straight lines? Why weren’t they round instead,
following the more feminine principles of the circle and the spiral? Why
wasn’t the quality of nurture included in the practice? Why wasn’t there
more emphasis on the sacredness of the body and embodiment, rather
than the ideal perpetually being depicted as something transcendent?
Why wasn’t earthiness as holy as the de-material? Why weren’t
relationships more honoured? And why were the female consorts of
divine art always depicted with their back to the viewer, their role thereby
being subtly projected as secondary to the man’s, although in effect they
were as essential to the process of spiritual unfolding as their male
partner?
More significantly to Tenzin Palmo’s quest, they asked, is a cave
necessary? A cave, they said, was a male prerogative which seriously
disadvantaged women with children, spouse and house to care for.
While men can (and do) walk away from their families, as the Buddha
himself had done, to engage in long bouts of solitary meditation to
improve their spiritual chances, women cannot, or do not want to. Why
should the maternal instinct, which after all was responsible for bringing
forth all beings into the world, including the Buddha, the Christ and all
the other holy beings, thus be regarded as a handicap? The cave (or the
forest hut), with its call for total renunciation of the world, was, they said,
a patriarchal ideal which had held dominance for too long.
stated they wanted it all. Spirituality and family. The cave and the hearth.
To this end they began to initiate practices which included children and
families. They introduced emotional healing as a way of meditation
rather than the enemy of it. They made moves to change the liturgy and
the sexist language of the prayers and ritual. And they brought home the
point that the kitchen sink was as good a place to reach Enlightenment
as the meditation hall or the remote Himalayan cave. It was revolutionary
stuff, which promised to change the face of Buddhism for ever.
Tsultrim Allione, an American woman, was at the forefront of the
movement. She had been ordained in 1970 but had disrobed four years
later to get married and have children. She went on to write Women of
Wisdom, one of the first books to laud the place of the feminine in
Buddhism, and later established the Tara Mandala Retreat Centre in
Pagosa Springs, Colorado, which she set up along the new, experimental
feminist lines. She was in a prime position to know both sides of the
story. ‘I disrobed because I was the only Tibetan Buddhist nun in the
USA at that time and felt very isolated and unsupported,’ she said from a
loft in Seattle, where she was presenting a talk and slide show of her
recent visit to female holy sites in India and Nepal. ‘I was twenty-five, my
sexual desire was there, and celibacy began to feel like suppression.
What came out of that was that I went from being a nun to a mother and
a writer in a year. It was an intense experience - and definitely the best
decision for me. From having all the time to myself I had no time to
myself. From thinking I’d overcome jealousy and anger, and all those
negative emotions, they were now all thrown back in my face. It made me
realize that as a nun I was protected from feeling them. I had to grind
deeper into the layers of the five poisons to see what they were and learn
to work directly with them and not cover them up. If I had stayed a nun I
could have become very arrogant, thinking I was above them all,’ she
said.
Tsultrim Allione went on to have four children in five years (one of
whom died in infancy), an experience which made her dispute the rigid
‘official’ line that motherhood was an obstacle to spiritual progress. ‘We
have to ask ourselves what spiritual realizations are. The whole maternal
impulse is the same as the urge of love and self-sacrifice. Realizations
have been defined by men and as such they are events which are “up
there and out there”. They are not the experience of embodiment. The
giving instinct of a mother is detachment. And there’s a quality of really
understanding the human condition from being a mother and a lay
person which you do not get as an ordained person. As a mother I was
constantly disillusioned with myself. I chose how I failed, not if I failed.’
For herself she had no doubts that a cave was unnecessary. ‘I believe
women can become Enlightened in the home,’ she said. ’That’s the
whole point of tantra. There’s a story about a woman who always used to
do her practice while carrying water. One day she drops the water and as
she does so her consciousness breaks open and she experiences
It wasn’t only feminists who were asking the difficult questions. Male
practitioners were also challenging the value of the cave. Vipassana
teacher Jack Kornfield, one of America’s most renowned meditation
masters, introduced the concept of a ‘few months in’ and a ‘few months
out’ as an alternative to years of uninterrupted retreat in isolated places.
He was also advocating half-way houses when the retreat was finished.
His argument was that prolonged periods of meditation away from
mainstream life made it extremely difficult for the person to reintegrate
back into society. The Western psyche was unsuitable for such austere
practices, he said, as the many who were beginning to try it on their own
home soil had found out. Prolonged solitary retreat was causing
psychosis and alienation.
In England another well-known Buddhist teacher, Stephen Bachelor,
director of studies at Sharpham College for Buddhist Studies and
Contemporary Enquiry, tended to agree. He had been a monk for ten
years both in the Zen and Buddhist traditions, before becoming one of
Buddhist’s most famous sceptics, openly questioning such fundamental
doctrinal principles as reincarnation. As a friend of Tenzin Palmo he was
in a good position to comment on whether a cave was necessary for
advanced spiritual practice.
‘It doesn’t make a lot of sense to make generalizations. So much has
to do with the temperament of the person who is going to the cave,’ he
said. ‘Knowing Tenzin Palmo it has obviously been an experience of
enormous value, something which has had its knock-on effect
afterwards. She is so clearly warm, outgoing, engaging in life. But Tenzin
Palmo doesn’t conform to the standard norm of the solitary hermit, who
is usually introverted and world-denying. I can think of other instances
where people are not so psychologically solid and where prolonged
periods of meditation in complete solitude can lead to psychotic states.
People go in looking for answers for their insecurity and alienation and
can get locked into their neurotic perceptions rather than going on
beyond them. You have to be wired in such a way to be able to cope with
this sort of isolation.’
As a monk, Stephen Bachelor had conducted his own retreats, on one
occasion doing three months in, three months out for a period of three
years. He knows the kind of traumas such an exercise can induce. ‘You
do confront your own demons (if you have any), which is of enormous
value. You come up against yourself and you have to respond to your
reality using the tools you have been given. My long retreat eroded my
belief system,’ he acknowledged. ‘I was in a Zen monastery where all we
did was ask the question, “What is this?” My retreat was about
unlearning. It was a very different approach from Tenzin Palmo’s. In Zen
there is no devotion to a particular teacher. One of Tenzin Palmo’s great
strengths is that she has great faith in her guru and the tradition she is
part of. Frankly it is a faith which I find inconceivable.’
All this put Tenzin Palmo’s twelve years of determination and
extraordinary effort in the cave on the line. Had she wasted her time?
Could she have performed her great retreat in London or Assisi? Was she
an anachronism? If she had not disappeared to the East when she was
twenty would she have done it any differently? As always she stood her
ground and put up a compelling credo for the cave.
‘It’s a poverty of our time that so many people can’t see beyond the
material,’ she said. ‘In this age of darkness with its greed, violence and
ignorance it’s important there are some areas of light in the gloom,
something to balance all the heaviness and darkness. To my mind the
contemplatives and the solitary meditators are like lighthouses beaming
out love and compassion on to the world. Because their beams are
focused they are very powerful. They become like generators and they are
extremely necessary.
‘Even as I travel around the world I meet people who say how inspired
they’ve been by my being in the cave,’ Tenzin Palmo continued. ‘I got a
letter from a woman who said that her son was dying of AIDS and that in
the moments of her deepest depression she’d think of me up in my cave
and that would give her solace. It’s true of many people leading this life. I
know Catholics who feel inspired that Christian contemplatives are
praying for the world’s sinners.
What people have to remember is that meditators in caves are not
doing it for themselves – they’re meditating on behalf of all sentient
beings.’ And her words were reminiscent of that old Eastern saying that if
it weren’t for the meditators directing their prayers to the welfare of all
humanity the sun wouldn’t rise every morning in the East. And didn’t
Pascal say that the whole of the world’s troubles was because man could
not sit still in his room?
But for Tenzin Palmo, the woman, the option had been easy. She had
never for a second yearned for a child. She had never known the ache of
maternal instinct unfulfilled. Nor had she ever had to balance the
demands of motherhood and domestic responsibility with the call for
spiritual development, like so many women were trying to do. Western
mothers like Tsultrim Allione tried to get round the problem by allowing
her children into her meditation sessions (where they climbed all over
her). Other women were reduced to getting up before dawn to get in the
prescribed hours of practice before getting their children off to school.
They would then juggle other sessions between the cooking and the
laundry and would finish off late at night doing their final session after
the children were in bed. Tibetan mothers like Machig Lobdron (the
famous yogini of Tibet) solved the problem by simply leaving her
children with her husband for months on end in order to practise. In
reality therefore was motherhood a disadvantage to spiritual progress?
‘We do different things in different lifetimes,’ Tenzin Palmo answered.
‘We should look and see what in this lifetime we are called to do. It’s
ridiculous to become a nun or a hermit because of some ideal when all
the time we would be learning more within a close relationship or a
family situation. You can develop all sorts of qualities through
motherhood which you could not by leading a monastic life. It’s not that
by being a mother one is cutting off the path. Far from it! There are many
approaches, many ways. What is unrealistic, however, is to become a
mother or a businesswoman and at the same time expect to be able to
do the same kind of practices designed for hermits. If women have made
the choice to have children then they should develop a practice which
makes the family the dharma path. Otherwise they’ll end up being very
frustrated.
‘Actually, everything depends on one’s skilful means and how much
determination and effort one puts into it,’ she went on. ‘Whether one is a
monk, a nun, a hermit, a housewife or a businessman or woman, at one
level it’s irrelevant. The practice of being in the moment, of opening the
heart, can be done wherever we are. If one is able to bring one’s
awareness into everyday life and into one’s relationships, workplace,
home, then it makes no difference where one is. Even in Tibet the people
who attained the rainbow body were often very “ordinary” people who
nobody ever knew were practising. The fact is that a genuine practice
should be able to be carried out in all circumstances.’ She paused for a
moment, then added: ‘It’s just that it’s easier to do these advanced
practices in a conducive environment away from external and internal
distractions. That’s why the Buddha created the sangha. Very close
relationships can be very distracting, let’s admit it.’
It was an essential codicil. What Tenzin Palmo was in fact saying was
that while much spiritual development can be achieved within the home
or the office, the cave remained the hothouse for Enlightenment. It was
what they had always said.
’The advantage of going to a cave is that it gives you time and space to
be able to concentrate totally. The practices are complicated with detailed
visualizations. The inner yogic practices and the mantras also require
much time and isolation. These cannot be done in the midst of the town.
Going into retreat gives the opportunity for the food to cook,’ she said,
ironically launching into the language of the kitchen to get her meaning
across. ‘You have to put all the ingredients into a pot and stew it up. And
you have to have a constant heat. If you keep turning the heat on and off
it is never going to be done. The retreat is like living in a pressure-cooker.
Everything gets cooked much quicker. That is why it is recommended.
‘Even for short periods, it can be helpful. You don’t have to do it all
your life. I think it would be very helpful for many people to have some
period of silence and isolation to look within and find out who they really
are, when they’re not so busy playing roles – being the mother, wife,
husband, career person, everybody’s best friend, or whatever fagade we
put up to the world as our identity. It’s very good to have an opportunity
to be alone with oneself and see who one really is behind all the masks.’
In this light, she declared, the hermitage or cave would never be an
archaic ideal, as some were suggesting. And for as long as certain
individuals, like herself, had the yearning to pursue the lonely inner path,
away from the hustle and bustle of ordinary life, then the cave would
always exist, in one form or another. ‘Is the search for reality
old-fashioned?’ she stated more than asked. ‘As long as the search for
spiritual understanding is valid, so is the cave.’
Tenzin Palmo, out in the world, had come into contact with many of
the new women agitating to put a more feminine face on the Buddha,
and applauded their efforts. ‘The push by the women to introduce these
changes is going to be one of the greatest contributions the West is
going to make to the dharma,’ she said. Over the years she had
developed an interesting relationship with the strongest proponents. Like
them, her goal was equality of opportunity for all women in the spiritual
arena. Like them, she abhorred the latent misogyny of the Patriarchal
system. Like them, she was fiercely independent, intent on forging her
own way ahead regardless of the obstacles. Like them, she was
outspoken against discrimination and injustice wherever she found
them. But, unlike them, she did not think the full-frontal attacks often
employed by the feminists worked. And, in her inimical fashion, she told
them so.
’These angry feminists! I come up against them all the time. They have
to be alone with oneself and see who one really is behind all the masks.’
In this light, she declared, the hermitage or cave would never be an
archaic ideal, as some were suggesting. And for as long as certain
individuals, like herself, had the yearning to pursue the lonely inner path,
away from the hustle and bustle of ordinary life, then the cave would
always exist, in one form or another. ‘Is the search for reality
old-fashioned?’ she stated more than asked. ‘As long as the search for
spiritual understanding is valid, so is the cave.’
Tenzin Palmo, out in the world, had come into contact with many of
the new women agitating to put a more feminine face on the Buddha,
and applauded their efforts. ‘The push by the women to introduce these
changes is going to be one of the greatest contributions the West is
going to make to the dharma,’ she said. Over the years she had
developed an interesting relationship with the strongest proponents. Like
them, her goal was equality of opportunity for all women in the spiritual
arena. Like them, she abhorred the latent misogyny of the Patriarchal
system. Like them, she was fiercely independent, intent on forging her
own way ahead regardless of the obstacles. Like them, she was
outspoken against discrimination and injustice wherever she found
them. But, unlike them, she did not think the full-frontal attacks often
employed by the feminists worked. And, in her inimical fashion, she told
them so.
’These angry feminists! I come up against them all the time. They have
this whole idea of righteous indignation which they use as fuel to oppose
whatever they think is unjust. They direct an enormous amount of anger
towards men, as though they were the perpetrators of all evil. Frankly I
don’t think all this anger helps. And I tell them so. Anger is simply anger,
we use it to justify our own negative states. We all have a huge reservoir
of anger in us and whatever we direct it to only adds oil to the fire. If we
approach something with an angry mind what happens is that it leads to
antagonism and defensiveness in the other side. The Buddha said hatred
is not overcome by hatred, but only by love.
‘Admittedly men have done some pretty awful things but they have
often been aided and abetted by women. If one looks at the situation
fairly, the people keeping women down are often other women! It’s not
men against women, but women against women. After all, the greatest
opponent of the suffragettes was Queen Victoria! If the women stood
together what could men do? The whole issue is not a matter of
polarizing the human race. It’s more subtle than that.’
Her words had wisdom. If the last several thousand years of patriarchy
had been a backlash against the previous millennia of matriarchy when
the Earth Goddess had reigned supreme (as many pundits were saying),
what was the point of having another radical pendulum swing back
again? If a new order was emerging then balance between male and
female (as well as East and West) was obviously the best solution. And
because she spoke sense the women listened and told her they hadn’t
==
Chapter Seventeen Now
It has been nine years since I first met Tenzin Palmo in the grounds of
that Tuscan mansion and was catapulted into the slow but inexorable
business of writing her life story. In that time much has changed. She
has lost some of that luminous glow she had when she first came out of
the cave, though her eyes are as sparkling and her manner as animated
as ever. The years on the road, forever on the move, teaching incessantly,
have taken their toll. It has been a long, tough haul. At the time of writing
she has collected enough money to buy the land and lay the foundations.
By anyone’s standards it’s a tremendous achievement, but for one
woman to have to have done it single-handed, without the aid of
professional fundraisers, it is extraordinary. Still, there is a long way to
go, and so she travels on, gathering yet more funds to boost the coffers
for her nunnery. For all the slowness of the process she remains
strangely unconcerned, showing no signs of impatience to hurry things
along and get the job done. She has no personal ambition in this
scheme. At one level she really doesn’t mind.
‘My life is in the hands of the Buddha, dharma and sangha, literally.
I’ve handed it over. Whatever is necessary for me to do to benefit all
beings, let me do it. I don’t care,’ she admits. ‘Besides, I’ve discovered
that if I try to push things the way I think they should be done everything
goes wrong.’
Having surrendered to the Buddha, the practicalities of her life
curiously seem to take care of themselves. People are only too pleased to
have her company for as long as she can be with them – offering her
plane tickets, their houses, food, transport, money, so that all her
physical needs are met. This is how she says it should be. ‘A true
monastic lives without security, dependent on the unsolicited generosity
of others. Contrary to what some Westerners might think, this is not
being a parasite, this is going forth in faith. Jesus also said, “Give ye no
thought unto the morrow what ye shall eat and what ye shall wear." We
should have faith that if we practise sincerely we won’t starve, we will be
supported not just materially but in every way.’
And so, living out her faith absolutely, Tenzin Palmo stands in a
strange counter-flow to the rest of twentieth-century society with its
emphasis on acquisition and satisfaction of desire. She has no home, no
family, no security, no partner, no sexual relationship, no pension plan.
She has no need to accumulate. She still owns nothing except the barest
of essentials – her robes, some texts, a jumper, a sleeping-bag, a few
personal items. Once she splashed out and bought a luxury, a neck
pillow for travelling, but lost it soon afterwards. ‘It serves me right. I was
getting far too attached to it,’ she comments with a laugh. Her bank
balance remains as meagre as ever, Tenzin Palmo refusing to touch any
of the donations intended for the nunnery – even for travelling to raise
Yet you know in your heart that if she never saw
you again she really would not miss you. And her lack of emotional need
is disconcerting, for the ego likes to be flattered, wants to be wanted.
From her, however, you’ll never get it. This is her hard-earned ’detached
engagement’, which allows her to wander freely in the world without the
entanglement of close personal relationships.
‘I don’t think it’s a bad thing,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t mean that one
doesn’t feel love and compassion, that one doesn’t care. It just means
that one doesn’t hold on. One can be filled with joy to be with someone
but if one is not it doesn’t matter. People, especially family, get upset if
you are not attached to them but that’s only because we confuse love
and attachment all the time.’
Her plans for the future, as much as she will allow herself to have any,
revolve around a single theme, the one she has had all her life, to gain
Enlightenment. With this goal still set firmly in her mind, she intends,
once her task of building the nunnery is done, to go back to the cave. As
such she will have come full circle. Leaving the world, returning to it, and
then departing once more to live in solitude to follow the inner life. For
all the brave new assertions that Enlightenment can be achieved out in
the world, she feels that the cave is still relevant in our modern world,
and that is ultimately where she belongs.
‘I would like to gain very deep realizations,’ she says softly. ‘And all my
teachers, including the Dalai Lama, have said that retreat is the most
important thing for me to do during this lifetime. When I am in retreat I
know at a very deep level that I am in the right place doing the right
thing,’ she says.
