At Tara Mandala she has inaugurated the concept of a round place of worship by placing the shrine holding twenty-one figures of the female deity Tara in the centre. ‘You walk into a space of wholeness. It’s very difficult to describe but everyone feels how different it is. No one yet knows how women will change Buddhism because it is such early days and we have never lived in a society where the feminine was honoured, so we don’t know what it would be like. Women are only just beginning to take little steps out of the shadow of the patriarchy. It’s a very interesting time.’
Yvonne Rand, one of America’s leading Zen teachers, who invited Tenzin Palmo to conduct a weekend seminar at her centre in Muir Beach, California, is also feeling her way. She knew first-hand the difficulties facing women with spiritual aspirations. Before setting up her own independent centre she was chairman of the Board of the San Francisco Zen Centre, a position she found conflicted with her role as a parent.
‘As a woman I was expected to take on a lot of responsibility, but I felt like a second-class citizen. There wasn’t a lot of understanding about the issues for a single mother and I was always being dismissed for not being very serious about practice. For example, there was a lot of pressure to get up early in the morning and sit in the meditation hall, but for me to do that would have meant leaving young children alone in an apartment,’ she said. Eventually she deduced that the rules she was trying to follow came out of the Japanese psyche rather than Buddhism itself, and that the home was as good a place to practise as the formalized group gatherings. ‘I finally realized that what I am is a lay, ordained priest, a householder who practices periodically as a monastic. For the first time I saw how I fit in and it was a tremendous relief.’
She pondered on the question of how far a woman can get practising in the home. ‘I don’t know about Enlightenment but I’m sure women can get very far. Liberation becomes possible when I begin to experience the possibility of being in the moment, when I’m not still carrying the baggage of yesterday or when I was two,’ she said. ‘The most important thing is constancy. If you pick up a practice, say a mindfulness practice, you have to do it often. Twelve times a day can be very effective. For instance, there’s a great little practice called the half-smile where you slightly lift the corners of your mouth and hold it for three breaths. If I do it six or more times a day within three days it makes a surprising difference to the body and mind. You can do it during any time of waiting, when you’re kept on hold on the telephone, at the grocery store, in the airport at the stop lights,’ she added, sounding remarkably like Tenzin Palmo.
’There are so many things that you can do at home,’ she continued. ‘You can follow the practice of developing patience or using obstacles as your teacher. I used to sit with people who were dying, and then being with the body afterwards. That was an incredible teaching. I learnt not only about impermanence and the links between the breath and the mind, but that the way we die is the way we have lived. The issues of our living will arise during our dying. When you have chosen your practices and done them for some years you can go back and refine the ground. You don’t have to keep adding new ones until you’ve perfected the ones you’ve got. One of the hazards of being American is that we’re not very modest. We’re always in a rush, wanting it all at once.’
The Kitchen Sink Path still has its pitfalls, as Yvonne Rand, practitioner and householder for over thirty years, testified. While not as dramatic as confronting starvation or wild animals, they were equally real, she declared, and had to be worked out with the same diligence and constancy. ‘There are two main ones – confusion with priorities, and an unwillingness to give things up so that you become overwhelmed trying to do it all. In order to practise, study and teach, as well as being available to my husband and family, I have given up going out much. In fact, I have become a chicken. I get up at 5.30 a.m. and often go to bed by 7.30 p.m. It’s relatively easy for me because my children are now grown up and my husband is a dharma practitioner also. Those hours to myself in the early morning make a huge difference. I do sitting and walking meditation, and I take precepts such as not lying, not taking anything that is not freely given, and not killing or harming a living being. I have done these practices for such a long time that they’ve become part of my life.’
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 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 thought of it that way before.
Tenzin Palmo had thought out her own way of bringing about the revolution. A much quieter way. ‘It should be based on open discussion, patience, compromise, lots of equanimity and a soft, warm heart.’ They were the classic Buddhist values. ‘The Buddha said we must love all sentient beings. How can we then set sentient beings up as the enemy?’ Most especially, she advocated a calm, non-strident v
oice. ‘Of course you can raise your voice but first you have to check your motivation. Is it out of love for other women and their needs or out of anger? If we’re speaking out of negative emotions the result will only be worse,’ she repeated. ‘On the other hand we don’t have to be simpering.’
In her mind she knew what spiritually powerful women looked like. There was her favourite painting, by Piero della Francesca, of the Madonna, standing with her cloak wide open giving shelter to a multitude of people underneath. ’She looks straight out at the viewer. She’s strong, confident, in no way simpering but in no way angry either. There is love there, compassion, and gravitas. She’s a very powerful lady,’ she said.
There was also a young Tibetan woman who had begun to teach on the world stage called Khandro Rinpoche, whom Tenzin Palmo had high regard for. ’She is as sharp as can be, absolutely clear and at the same time completely feminine. I have never seen her angry yet everyone respects her enormously. She has inner authority and when she sits on the throne she sits there with complete confidence, an egoless confidence. There’s no pride there. Along with her precise wisdom she also has a warm, nurturing side. She’s absolutely in control, not at all weak or sentimental.’
She paused for thought, then added: ‘What is our image of woman? To me, it comes down to poise and inner strength. When you have those you have natural authority, and people will automatically want to follow you. These are the qualities that I shall try to encourage the women at Dongyu Gatsal Ling nunnery to develop.’
And with that Tenzin Palmo continued on her way, moving quietly across the world, collecting alms for a nunnery where it could all be possible.
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.
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