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 ow
n 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.
As had happened in other fields of feminism, spiritual women now 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 a
n 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 Enlightenment. The tantric teachings actually came out of a protest movement of the lay community against the monastics which resulted in two systems with two different sets of ideals. There is both the tantric paradigm and the monastic paradigm which one can follow.’
Cave in the snow. A western woman’s quest for enlightenment Page 22