I was born during the Second World War in England and brought up in London.
My mother was a spiritualist, and in our house every Wednesday evening we had
seances. From a very early age, I absolutely believed in the continuity of
consciousness after death; death was something we talked about constantly in our
family, so I never felt any fear or reservations about it.
As a child I
believed that we were innately perfect, and that we were here to discover who we
really were, therefore we had to keep coming back again and again and again
until we uncovered our original perfect nature. And so the question was, "How do
we become perfect?" I asked many people who I thought might know: teachers,
priests, spirit guides. Everybody said, "Well you have to be good," or, "You
have to be good and you have to be kind."
Even as a child I thought, "Yes of
course but that's not it. Being good and kind is the basis but then there is
something more we need to do. So throughout my adolescence I was searching for
the answer to How do we become perfect? What does perfection even mean? I didn't
know. I tried various religions. But the problem was that all these religions
started with the explicit idea of soul and the soul's relationship with a
creator outside itself. And for me that had no meaning.
When I was eighteen
I happened to be working in a library and I picked up a small book called The
Mind Unshaken, by an English journalist about his time in Thailand. It gave the
very basics of Buddhism: the Four Noble Truths, the Eight-fold Path, the Three
Characteristics of Existence. It was an astounding revelation! Here was a
perfect path, already laid out, of all the things I already believed, but I
hadn't known that there could actually be a religion that taught it. Here was a
perfect path, which led inwards and made any external being, creator, god
superfluous.
It kept saying in the books I was reading that the essence of
the practice is to be without desire, so I gave away all my clothes, I stopped
wearing make-up, I gave up my boyfriend. Because I heard that yellow was a
monastic colour, I started going around in this kind of yellow Greek tunic
thing, and long black stockings!
After about six months I thought, "Maybe I
should find some more Buddhists, I can't be the only one." So I went to the
Buddhist Society were I found that the other people were not going around in
Greek tunics. These other Buddhists, who had been at it much longer than me,
actually wore ordinary clothes they even wore make-up and high heels!
At
that time I was very strictly Theravadin and I became quite closely associated
with the Singhalese vihara in London. I loved everything about the Theravada, I
loved the clarity of it. The way it's taught in the West there's no ritual, no
devotion, it's very logical, very clear, lots of emphasis on meditation, and
this appealed to me very much.
The only thing I didn't like about it was the
concept of an arhat. Somehow the arhat seemed kind of cold. And this worried me
because if you don't like the end result of the path you're on, why are you on
that path? When I thought of the Buddha, I would cry tears of devotion. I loved
the Buddha, I wanted to be like the Buddha, I didn't want to be like those
arhats.
And then one day I read about bodhisattvas: this was what I wanted
to be, this was what was missing, the element of compassion, that one was doing
this not for oneself but for the benefit of others. This was in the early
sixties and Tibetan Buddhism in those days was basically Lobsang Rampa and was
regarded as being degenerate shamanism, black magic, basically not Buddhism at
all.
A year after I became Buddhist, I was reading a general overview of
Buddhism and at the end there was one little chapter on Tibetan Buddhism which
mentioned the four traditions: the Nyingmapa, the Sakyapa, the Kargyupa and the
Gelugpa.
As I read the word "Kargyupa," a voice inside me said, "You're a
Kargyupa." And I said, "What's Kargyupa?" And the voice inside said, "It doesn't
matter, you're a Kargyupa." So I went along to the only person I knew who knew
anything about Tibetan Buddhism and I said to her, "I think I'm a Kargyupa." She
said, "Have you read Milarepa?" and she handed me Evans-Wentz's biography of
Milarepa. I went away and I read it and my mind went through a thousand
somersaults. It was like nothing I'd ever read before and, I guess, at the end
of it all, I recognised that, yes indeed, I was a Kargyupa.
Then it was
obvious that if one was going to take this seriously, one had to find a teacher.
One day I heard that there was a Kargyupa nunnery in India, in a place called
Dalhousie, and so I wrote to the person who was organising this nunnery, an
English woman called Freda Bedi, who had started a school for young incarnate
lamas. I wrote to her and asked her if I could come and work with her.
In
1964, when I was twenty, I sailed to India and went up to Dalhousie and worked
as the secretary for Freda Bedi in the Young Lamas' Home School. One day, I
received a letter about Tibetan handmade paper that some community was producing
and they wanted to know if we could find a market for this paper. The letter was
signed Khamtrul Rinpoche. As soon as I read that name, faith spontaneously
arose, and the next day I said to Freda Bedi, "Who is Khamtrul Rinpoche?" And
she said, "He's a high Drukpa Kargyu lama." And then she said, "Oh, he's the
lama we're waiting for! " - I knew that we were waiting for some lama to come
for the summer. "Can I take refuge with him?" and she said, "Yes, he's a
wonderful lama. When he comes you must ask him."
This was at the beginning of
May and we waited all through May, then all through June, and he didn't come.
Then on the last day of June, my twenty-first birthday, the telephone rang and
Freda Bedi answered it. Then she put down the phone and said to me "You're best
birthday present has just arrived down at the bus station." And I was
terrified!
I ran back to the nunnery and changed into a chuba, a Tibetan
dress, and I got a kata, one of these long white scarves, and when I got back to
the school, they were already there. I crawled into the room and all I saw - I
was too terrified to look at him - was the bottom of his robe and his brown
shoes. And I prostrated to the brown shoes. And Freda Bedi was saying, "Oh this
is So and So and she's a member of the Buddhist Society." I said to her, "Tell
him I want to take refuge." So she said, "Oh yes, and she would like to take
refuge with you," and Rinpoche said "Of course," in a voice that said, Well of
course she wants to take refuge, what else should she want to do?
When he
said, "Of course," I looked up and that was the first moment I saw him. And as I
saw him it was like two things at the same time. One was this sense of
recognition, like you're meeting an old friend that you haven't seen for a long
time, and at the same time as if the very deepest thing inside me had suddenly
taken external form.
Freda Bedi was very kind, she sent me every day to
Rinpoche so that I could be his secretary while he was there. And then I asked
him if I could be a nun. Again he said, "Of course." So about three weeks later
we went back to his monastery and that's where I took my first
ordination.
Ven Tenzin Palmo lived for ten years, until 1974, with Khamtrul
Rinpoche at his monastery in Dalhousie. Upon her guru's advice, she went into
retreat in Lahoul. She found a cave and remained there for fourteen
years.
Lahoul lies between Manali and Ladakh, and for about eight months of
the year it is cut off from the rest of India by snow, because on both sides of
the valley there are very high passes. For someone who wanted to do a retreat,
it was perfect.
You had this tremendous stretch of time where you knew you
were not going to be interrupted. In tantric retreat you're not allowed to be
seen or to see others if they're not in the retreat, so in the cave I didn't
have any of those worries. I melted snow in the winter and I could sit outside
and not fear that anyone was going to come and see me, which meant that the mind
became more spacious because you could look at the sky, look at the snow
mountains, look at the trees.
In the summer there was a very beautiful little
spring about a quarter of a mile away and in front I had a garden with potatoes,
and turnips as well, which are very good because you get the green part and you
get the bulb and you can chop them up and dry them for the winter. You have this
long, long stretch of winter when nothing is growing. And once it snows, that's
it if you've forgotten the matches, too bad! So you had to spend the short time
in the summer getting ready for this long, long winter.
There were many
animals there. Once it had snowed you would see all these footprints and hoof
marks and paw marks everywhere. There was even the paw mark of a snow leopard,
which put its paws on my window sill to look in. And there were wolves. One time
as I was sitting outside, this pack of five wolves came trotting up and stood
and looked at me very peacefully and I looked back at them. And they stayed
there for several minutes just looking quietly and then they turned and just
trotted off. And they would sit above my cave and howl, it was very lovely. .
Usually in the winter I was in retreat and in the summer I was getting ready for
the winter. In the autumn I would go down to Tashi Jong to see my lama to tell
him what I had been doing, and to get instructions or further direction.
I
spent my last three years there in a three-year retreat. And then I didn't go
anywhere, and I had one Lahouli brother bring up supplies every year. One year
he didn't bring up the supplies for six months. It was quite interesting.
It
was wonderful, I was very happy up there. Sometimes I would think, "If you could
be anywhere in the world where do you want to be?" And that was where I wanted
to be. And I would think, "If you could do anything in the world, what would you
want to be doing right now?" And that was what I wanted to be doing.
Looking
back, I was deeply grateful for that opportunity because Lahoul is a very
wonderful place. First of all it is blessed by the dakinis: Lahoul in Tibetan is
called Garsha Kandroling, which means the Land of the Dakinis. There is a sacred
mountain there of Vajravarahi and Chakrasamvara and it is considered to be
indeed a Land of the Dakinis. It's a very sacred place actually and I really
felt the dakinis very close there.
And it is a place where the people are
basically very honest and very peaceful. The whole time I lived there I never
had any problems from them, ever, which for a woman living by herself is
something. In India or even in the West, one couldn't be living alone in that
kind of solitude and feel so confident, so safe.
Being alone for such a
period of time gives the mind a great opportunity to become very spacious. Not
spaced out, because you have to be very clear you have to be very present but
the mind has this time and space to become very open and wide.
When you are
alone in that kind of situation, whatever happens, externally or internally, you
have to deal with it. You can't get on the phone and call a technician or call
your best friend. You can't turn on the television to divert yourself, in the
winter you can't even go for a walk. You just have to sit there and deal with
it. One developed the confidence to know that one could deal with it and that
one didn't need to keep running to somebody else. So that was really very useful
for me because I had always thought, "Oh I'm not very practical and I can't do
these things, and I don't know, should I go and ask advice of this one and that
one?"
So through those years of having to deal with everything myself, I
learned not only how to make mud walls and chop wood and be practical, but also
how to deal with the mind, because one had this infinite amount of time without
external distraction. So one could see what was going on, how the mind
functions, how the thoughts and emotions arise and how we identify with them.
And to learn how to disidentify with them and to dissolve all the thoughts and
emotions back into spaciousness.
At the end of my three-year retreat I had been in India for twenty-four
years, so I felt it was time to reconnect with the West. I felt the need to
appreciate Western culture again, my Western roots. I had no idea where to go. I
thought, "Where do you want to go?" There wasn't anywhere I wanted to go, but I
felt nonetheless that this was the time to move on. Then some friends of mine,
an American couple I had known in India, who had been travelling around in
Europe, wrote to me and said, "We've found it! This is a perfect place, come to
Assisi! " and I thought, "That's it, Assisi!"
Italy seemed a very logical
step after India. It's very like India, the bureaucracy, the hopeless postal
system, the general nothing-quite-works. I felt very at home immediately. Assisi
is a wonderful place. Of course, it's the birthplace and the home of St. Francis
and it's very spiritual, despite all the commercialism and the millions of
tourists running all over the place. That's basically where I have been living
since I left India, although I would visit Asia again from time to
time.
QUESTION: It sounds like you were blessed with confidence, clarity
and
so forth.... I'm very interested in this nervous disorder called lung,
which so many retreaters get, especially as it manifests as doubt and panic. I
wonder if you have any advice about that?
VEN TENZIN PALMO: Basically the
reason people get lung is because they try too hard. They set themselves
impossible goals, they set themselves the ideal of the ideal practitioner and
they push. The problem is that Tibetan practice encourages that because it gives
you these vast numbers of things to accomplish. And when you come out of any
kind of retreat the first question you are asked is "How many mantras did you
do?" Not "How well did you do it?" or "What experience did you get?" but "How
many?" This creates a lot of tension, which creates the lung
So what we need
to learn is just how to relax, how to make the mind very spacious and clear so
that we practice within openness, not within tension. Longchen Rabjam talks a
lot about that, about being in retreat and having the mind, on the one hand, not
thinking about the usual things - the body in the cave and the mind in the
bazaar - not letting the mind just go anywhere it wants to, keeping the mind
within boundaries of what it's doing, but at the same time keeping the mind very
relaxed and not tensing up.
Once you get lung the only advice is to go and
find a nice sunny beach and lie out on it because there's nothing you can do.
The more practice you do the tighter you become, it's a vicious circle as you
know. It's very important therefore, right from the beginning when one starts
practicing, to start a little loosely, not too much, as you would with physical
exercise. Then gradually building up as you get into it, until you're going
fully for it, but still with this very relaxed mind and then at the end tailing
off, so that when you come out it's again not a shock to the system.
We have
to really look and see how to work with the mind so that the mind feels
happy
or comfortable in a retreat. Retreat should be a pleasure not an ordeal. It
should be a delight because if the mind is delighted with what it's doing, then
it goes for it, it becomes one with what it's doing. If the mind is pushed too
much, then it's rigid and then it rejects it. This conflict makes the
lung.
What we need is to understand our own capacity, to have compassion for
ourselves and to learn how to use the mind so that it is an ally. Even in one's
sessions one should stop before one is tired because if one stops just before
one is tired, while one is still enjoying the experience, then the mind
remembers, "That was fun, let's do it again!" Then already there's this
enthusiasm for more. If we push to the point where we are exhausted, then the
mind says, "Enough!" The mind remembers that it got bored and tired, so there's
this resistance to try again.
I was wondering what you did when your Lahouli
brother didn't bring you your
supplies?
I got very thin! I rationed out my
food; I was already only eating basically once a day and then I got smaller and
smaller portions. And prepared to starve to death if necessary. Milarepa said
somewhere that he always prayed that he would die alone in a cave, and from my
heart I also prayed that.
One time we had this huge blizzard that raged for
seven days and seven nights and the whole cave was covered and was in complete
blackness. When you opened the windows there was just a sheet of ice, when you
opened the door there was just a sheet of ice. And I was in this tiny little
space and I thought, "This is it." I got my little dutsi pills, these pills
you're supposed to take at the time of death, and arranged them all nicely,
ready for the last breath. I was sure the air was already getting much thinner
and I was already taking deeper breaths.
I prayed to my lama from my heart. I
really understood at that moment that the
only thing that matters is the
lama. And I said, "Rinpoche, at least please guide me through the bardo." But
then I heard Rinpoche's voice inside me saying "Tunnel out." So at first I used
a shovel, and of course I had to bring the snow inside, there was nowhere else
for it to go, and then I used a saucepan lid and then I made this tunnel, and
then I was just clawing with my hands.
You looked behind and it was all black
you looked in front and it was all black, and there was this tiny little icy
tube. Eventually I got out and I looked up and it was still blizzarding. So then
I crawled back in again and it filled up. And I did that three times. It took
about an hour to scramble out. On the third day I got out and I looked, and
there was nothing, just white. There were no trees. My prayer flags, which were
very high, had disappeared, no cave, nothing. It was just white. And then there
were all these helicopters coming over. Later I learnt that several
villages
had been totally destroyed and two hundred people had died and the helicopters
were flying out the wounded and bringing in supplies. So I survived. I spent
weeks clearing away the snow and got snow blind, but I survived to tell the
tale.
What did you find was your most powerful meditation or reflection to
keep you
inspired in retreat?
I remember one spring when the snow melted
and the cave became completely flooded and soaking wet. I also had a cold. I was
feeling extremely not well, and I was thinking, "They're right what they said
about living in caves. Who wants to live in this horrible wet place!" I was
feeling horrible, it was cold and miserable and still snowing. And then I
suddenly thought, "Are you still looking for happiness in samsara? Didn't Buddha
say something about dukha, suffering?" And when I thought that, I suddenly
thought, "Yes, it doesn't matter, it really doesn't matter. Samsara is dukha so
it's fine, there's no problem. Why expect happiness ? If happiness is there,
happiness is there; if happiness isn't there, what do you expect anyway? It
really doesn't matter!" When I felt that - it was something not just in the head
at all, it was really in my heart - this whole weight just went away: hope and
fear. We're always hoping that everything will be pleasant somehow, we're always
fearing that it won't be. And in that moment the whole thing dropped away, and
it just didn't matter. This was an enormous relief, and at that moment I felt so
grateful to the Buddha for the Four Noble Truths.
So to be there was such an
incredible blessing. To be in a situation where one had
an infinite amount of
time and space to practice, where one had the practice to do, where the people
around were so sympathetic and helpful, where my health was fine, where
basically the problems were irrelevant. That's what kept me going. For me it was
a great joy. And I felt that I was also fulfilling my lama's wishes, upholding
the lineage. I thought also that this was exactly what I was meant to
be
doing and it was how eventually I would benefit other beings.
Later
when I left retreat I went to see the Dalai Lama and one of the things I wanted
to ask him was whether I should help to start a nunnery in the West or go back
into retreat. I was sure he was going to say, "After eighteen years of doing
practice, of course you should. Where's your bodhicitta? Go out and help
others!" And so it was almost irrelevant to ask him this question, but I
thought, "Well I will anyway." And he said, "Of course, to start a nunnery is
very good and you should do that, but don't give it too much of your time, one
or two years is enough, then go
back into retreat because for you it is most
important to serve beings by being in retreat." And that is what I felt and that
is what sustained me probably, that I felt I was indeed fulfilling the lama's
intention.
Was there a set number of hours that you meditated each day?
I
got up at three and did the first session till about six. Then I had some tea
and tsampa, roasted barley flour, then started again around eight, did another
three hours till eleven, then had lunch. After lunch I used to paint, and I was
the scribe so I would copy texts. I had a number of Tibetan books so sometimes I
would read. After another cup of tea I would start the third session of the day
and then at six have another cup of tea, then do the evening session and then go
to sleep. I had a meditation box in which I practiced and slept. So that makes
some twelve hours. For some time I slept sitting up; it was very good for one's
awareness, one didn't sleep very long but one slept very deeply, and the moment
you woke up, you just straightened your back and there you were. It's very good
for the awareness, the mind doesn't get very spaced out. But it was not very
good for my back, and so eventually I would just curl up in my box.
Please do
you have advice for those of us who are wandering aimlessly in
samsara?
Normally I talk absolutely about how everybody can use their daily
life as Dharma practice because I think this is extremely important. It is not
necessary to go and spend years and years just living in caves. That's very nice
if it is your karma, but it's not essential. The essential thing is to learn how
to develop a practice which one can use moment to moment to moment in one's
everyday life. How to develop awareness and how to develop all those qualities
which are necessary for Buddhahood apart from meditation.
In order to attain
enlightenment; you need the Six Paramitas, all six, not just one or two. We need
generosity, ethics, patience, effort, meditation and wisdom. Meditation is only
one; what about those other five? All of them are important and certainly
generosity, ethics, patience and effort need a social context in which to be
practiced. You need other people. It's very easy to think that one is living a
lot by oneself, but when one is dealing with one's family, one's colleagues at
work, one's own Dharma brothers and sisters, then that is where one needs to
learn how to open up the heart and develop these qualities.
It's very
important to realise that the Dharma isn't something you do when you go to your
Dharma centre or when you sit on your cushion, Dharma is moment to moment in
your everyday life. Everyday life has to be your Dharma practice, how we relate
to people, how we relate to ourselves, how much presence we bring into our
everyday life, how much kindness we bring into our everyday life, how we speak
to people. Everything is a Dharma practice, moment to moment to moment and once
one understands that, then there is no question about not having time to
practice or that we are wandering in samsara.
Then why did you want to be in
retreat?
Because there are certain practices which are better done if one
gives a lot of time to do them in, certain tantric practices, which are not very
relevant to other people. I'm a nun, so that's my job, being a Dharma
practitioner. There are certain practices which you need, which will succeed
only if you give it quite a long extended time in which you're only doing that
and nothing else. That's why I did it.
Also because in that situation, where
one has no external interruptions, at least from other people, it gives one time
to really just become one with one's own mind. The mind is like an onion, you
know, you peel off layer after layer after layer, and for me personally it was
very useful to be alone in order to be able to do that. All my lamas had always
said to me, "For you it is best to be alone." I see this very much as my
practice. Other people are different, we are all coming from different
directions, at different points on the circumference. We have different needs.
For me it was extremely beneficial; for other people not necessary, even counter
productive.
What sort of practices did you do in retreat?
The practice
of my yidam, my personal deity, certain purification practices, certain inner
yogic practices, also the kind of mind practices known as mahamudra and
dzogchen.
What did your mother think about all this?
My mother? She came
to India, she lived with me for about ten months. She loved India, she adored
the Indians, she adored the Tibetans, she was in floods of tears when she left.
She took refuge with Khamtrul Rinpoche, she was very devoted to Tara. She was a
wonderful mother. When I said to her, "I'm going to India," she said, "Oh yes,
and when are you leaving?" She was genuinely the reason why I was reborn where I
was reborn because she was wonderfully supportive. She never used emotional
blackmail to get me back.
From time to time after I had been away every ten
years, she'd say, "Wouldn't you like to come back just for a holiday?" And so
every ten years I would go back for a month and see her. For some years she
supported me to the best of her abilities. She was a wonderful mother and I've
always been very grateful to her. She died about ten years ago, when I was in
retreat. My father died when I was two so he was not in the picture.
You
said that you had so much time to have expansiveness of mind and I'm wondering,
what your insights were about the purpose of the mind?
The purpose of the
mind is to be aware. If we didn't have a mind we wouldn't be aware. We need to
understand the mind and to become ever more conscious, ever more awake. Because
our minds are usually half asleep, even though It seems as if we're thinking a
lot and are very vital and very present. In fact we are almost somnambulant and
robotic in our reactions. So the whole point is to learn how to wake up, to
become more clear, more aware, more absolutely in the moment and not have so
much of this robotic kind of automatic response, but to be conscious in the
moment without all our usual projections and opinions and ideas and mental
chatter going on. Because fundamentally we are awareness. We need to learn to
connect with that awareness and to learn how to develop it and to be with it.