Cave in the snow. A western woman’s quest for enlightenment Read online

  Cave in the snow. A western woman’s quest for enlightenment

  Vicki Mackenzie

  The biography of the Englishwoman who has become a world-renowned spiritual leader and a champion of the right of women to achieve spiritual enlightenment. Following Tenzin Palmo's life from England to India, including her seclusion in a remote cave for 12 years, leading to her decision to found a convent to revive the Togdenma lineage.

  Amazon.com Review

  It sounds like a legend out of medieval Tibet: the ascetic who leaves home to join the Buddhist order, then spends 12 years in a cave, 15 hours a day in a meditation box. This is no legend, but you could call Tenzin Palmo legendary in her single-minded pursuit of higher realizations. From the East End of London to halfway up the Himalayas, she is now back in society, attempting to pull medieval Tibetan Buddhism into the modern era--women's rights and all. As biographer Vickie Mackenzie says by way of background, a group of elite women practitioners called "Togdemnas" still existed just decades ago. Tenzin Palmo, having studied with her male counterparts, is now canvassing the planet, welcoming women into full participation in Tibetan Buddhism and building support for an academy of Togdemnas that she plans to establish in the Himalayas. Mackenzie helps raise awareness for women's roles in Tibetan Buddhism by going into some detail about obstacles still faced by women as well as heroines who have overcome those obstacles, such as Yeshe Tsogyel (Sky Dancer) and Machig Lapdron, a mother who started her own lineage. If Mackenzie has it her way, it won't be long before Tenzin Palmo joins that list of heroines. –Brian Bruya –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

  Vicki Mackenzie

  Cave in the snow

  A western woman’s quest for enlightenment

  For my mother, Rene Mackenzie (1919-1998), the first spiritual woman in my life; with deep gratitude for her unfailing love, wisdom and support.

  Chapter One

  The Meeting

  In retrospect, it was a curious place to meet her. The time was midsummer, the place Pomaia, a little town perched among the magnificent hills of Tuscany about an hour’s drive from Pisa. It was late afternoon and the air was filled with the aroma of dry heat and the scent of pine needles. The once-grand mansion with its ochre-coloured walls, high arched doorways, and castellated roof shimmered in the August sun and only the sound of the cicadas broke the silence of the siesta. In a few hours’ time the town down the road would come alive for the evening. The small shops selling that odd assortment of salami, biscotti and sandals would open and the old men would gather in the square to discuss municipal business and the affairs of the regional Communist party. The sheer lusciousness of Italy, where all things seem to conspire to bring pleasure to the senses, could not have contrasted more radically with the world that she had come from.

  The first time I saw her she was standing in the grounds of the mansion under the shade of a copse of trees – a somewhat frail-looking woman in early middle age, with fair skin and a rather rounded back. She was dressed in the maroon and gold robes of an ordained Buddhist nun and her hair was cropped short in the traditional manner. Standing all around her was a group of women. You could see at a glance that the conversation was animated, the atmosphere intimate. It was an arresting scene, but on a month-long Buddhist meditation course not particularly unusual.

  I and about fifty others had gathered there, drawn from all over the world, to attend the course. These events had become a regular and welcome part of my life ever since I had stumbled upon the lamas in Nepal back in 1976 and discovered the richness of their message. Lively discussions, such as those I was witnessing, were a welcome break from the long hours of sitting cross-legged listening to the words of the Buddha or attempting the arduous business of meditation.

  Later that night, eating dinner under the stars, mopping up the olive oil with large chunks of bread, the man sitting next to me drew my attention to the woman again. She was sitting at a table, once more surrounded by people, talking enthusiastically to them.

  ’That’s Tenzin Palmo, the Englishwoman who has spent twelve years meditating in a cave over 13,000 feet up in the Himalayas. For most of that time she was totally alone. She has only just come out,’ he said.

  The glance now was more than cursory.

  Over the years, I had certainly read about such characters the great yogis from Tibet, India and China who forsook all worldly comfort to wander off to some remote cave to engage in profound meditation for years on end. These were the spiritual virtuosi, their path the hardest and loneliest of all. All alone, I read, dressed in a simple robe or flimsy loincloth, they faced the fiercest of elements – howling gales, raging blizzards, freezing cold. Their bodies became horribly emaciated, their hair grew matted and long to their waists. They faced wild animals and gangs of robbers who, having no regard for their sanctity, beat them into bloody pulp and left them for dead. But all this was nothing compared to facing the vagaries of their own minds. Here, cut off from the distractions of ordinary life, all the demons lying just beneath the surface began to rise up and taunt. The anger, the paranoia, the longings, the lust (especially the lust). They too had to be overcome if the victory was to be won. Still they persevered. What they were after was the most glittering prize of all – Enlightenment, a mind blown wide open to encompass universal reality. A state in which the unknowable was made known. Omniscience, no less. And accompanying it a sublime happiness and an inconceivable peace. It was the highest state of evolution humankind could ever achieve.

  So I had read. I never thought I would actually meet such a person but here in Pomaia, Italy, was a character who had seemingly stepped out of the pages of myth and legend and who was now sitting casually among us as though she had done nothing more momentous than just got off a bus from a shopping trip. Furthermore this was not an Eastern yogi, as the tales had told, but a contemporary Westerner. More astonishing still, a woman.

  The mind buzzed with myriad questions. What had driven a modern Englishwoman to live in a dank, dark hole in a mountainside like a latter-day cavewoman? How did she survive in that extreme cold? What did she do for food, a bath, a bed, a telephone? How did she exist without the warmth of human companionship for all those years? What had she gained? And, more curiously, how had she emerged from that excessive silence and solitude as chatty as a woman at a cocktail party?

  The immediate rush of curiosity, however, was quickly followed by unabashed admiration and a little awe. This woman had ventured where I knew I would never tread.

  Her thirst for knowing, unlike mine, had pushed her beyond the safe confines of a four-week meditation course with its exit clause guaranteeing a speedy return to ordinary life. Retreat, I knew from pitifully small experience, was infinitely hard work involving endless repetition of the same prayers, the same mantras, the same visualizations, the same meditations – day in, day out. You sat on the same cushion, in the same place, seeing the same people, in the same location. For someone steeped in the modern ethos of constant stimulation and rapid change, the tedium was excruciating. Only the tiniest shimmer of awareness, and the unaccustomed feeling of deep calm, made it worthwhile. Ultimately retreat was a test of endurance, courage and faith in the final goal.

  The next day I saw her again in the garden, this time sitting alone, and seeing my chance I approached. Did she mind if I joined her for a little while? The smile stretched from ear to ear in greeting and a pair of the most penetrating blue eyes gazed steadily into mine. There was calmness there, and kindness, laughter too, but the most outstanding quality was an unmistakable luminosity.
The woman virtually glowed. In fact she was a most interesting-looking person – she had sharp features, a long pointed nose and small neat ears. Maybe it was her cropped hair and lack of make-up but there was also something decidedly androgynous about her, as though a sensitive male were lodging within.

  We began to chat. She told me that she was now living in Assisi in a small house in the garden of a friend’s place, and was enjoying it immensely. She had been called there, she said, when her time in the cave had come to an end. It seemed a natural place to go. I learnt that she had been ordained back in 1964, when she was just twenty-one, long before most of us even knew Tibetan Buddhism existed. That made her, I reckoned, the most senior Tibetan Buddhist nun in the Western world. Thirty years of celibacy, however, was a long time. Hadn’t she ever wished for a partner, marriage or children in all those years?

  ’That would have been a disaster. It wasn’t my path at all,’ she replied, throwing back her head and laughing. I hadn’t expected such animation after twelve years in a cave.

  What had led her there, to that cave, I asked.

  ‘My life has been like a river, it has flowed steadily in one direction,’ she replied, and then added after a pause, ‘The purpose of life is to realize our spiritual nature. And to do that one has to go away and practise, to reap the fruits of the path, otherwise you have nothing to give anyone else.’

  Wasn’t there anything she missed?

  ‘I missed my lama, apart from that nothing. I was very happy there and had everything I wanted,’ she said quietly.

  But wasn’t going to a cave an escape, an evasion of the trials of ‘ordinary’ life, I went on, quoting the argument most levelled at hermits by those of us engrossed in the mundane.

  ‘Not at all. To my mind worldly life is an escape,’ she retorted, quick as a flash. ‘When you have a problem you can turn on the television, phone a friend, go out for a coffee. In a cave, however, you have no one to turn to but yourself. When problems arise and things get tough you have no choice but to go through with them, and come out the other side. In a cave you face your own nature in the raw, you have to find a way of working with it and dealing with it,’ she said. Her logic was irrefutable .

  It was a memorable meeting. Tenzin Palmo was, as I had witnessed from a distance, remarkably open and affable.

  She was talkative and highly articulate too, and displayed a sharp, penetrating mind. She had also revealed a distinctive down-to-earth quality which immediately dispelled any cliched notion of a ’spaced-out meditator’. And behind the vivacity was a profound stillness, an immense inner calm as though nothing could, or would, disrupt her, no matter how galvanic.

  All in all, I concluded, she was a woman of stature. When the course was over I thought it unlikely our paths would ever cross again. Then one day, some months later, I picked up a Buddhist magazine and found inside an interview with Tenzin Palmo. About half-way through, buried in the middle of the text, was one small sentence:

  ‘I have made a vow to attain Enlightenment in the female form – no matter how many lifetimes it takes,’ Tenzin Palmo had said.

  I stopped. The effect of her words was electrifying, for what Tenzin Palmo had stated in that casual, almost throwaway manner was nothing short of revolutionary. What she had promised was to become a female Buddha, and female Buddhas (like female Christs and female Mohammeds) were decidedly thin on the ground. Certainly there had been plenty of acclaimed women mystics and saints in all parts of the world, but the full flowering of human divinity had, for the past few thousand years at least, been deemed the exclusive domain of the male. The female body, for some reason, had been seen as an unfit or unworthy vessel to contain the most sacred. Now Tenzin Palmo was publicly announcing that she was intending to overthrow all that. It was a bold, courageous statement. A reckless one, even. One that could easily be dismissed as a piece of bravado or wishful thinking, had it not been Tenzin Palmo with her track record of exceptional meditational ability and tenacity who had made it. It could just be possible that she might do it! If not in this lifetime, then maybe the next or the next.

  My hopes rose. This was something I had been waiting for for years. From the very beginning of my search into Buddhism I had been told that we all possessed the seed of full awakening, men and women alike. It was our birthright, our natural inheritance, the lamas had said from their high brocaded thrones. Buddhahood was there shining within, like a pearl of great price, and all we had to do was to uncover it. The responsibility was ours, and ours alone. How the philosophy had appealed to an independent woman making her own way in the world! It took lifetimes of diligence and effort, the lamas continued, but if we set out on this journey eventually the magnificent prize would be ours.

  That, at least was the theory. In actuality, however, examples of female spiritual excellence were decidedly thin on the ground. Yes, there were female Buddhas aplenty in paint and plaster paying homage to the ideal of feminine divinity in all its diverse and wonderful forms. You could find them dotted all around temple walls and throughout the monastery gardens, worthy objects of veneration and prayer. Some were beautiful, some peaceful, others powerful or overtly erotic. But where were the living examples? The more I looked the more I could see no sign that women were getting anywhere in the spiritual selection stakes. The lamas who taught us were male; the Dalai Lamas (all fourteen of them) were male; the powerful lineage holders who carried the weight of the entire tradition were male; the revered Tulkus, the recognized reincarnated lamas, were male; the vast assembly of monastics who filled the temple halls and schools of learning were male; the succession of gurus who had come to the West to inspire eager new seekers were male. Where were the women in all of this? To be fair, it was not just Tibetan Buddhism which was so testosterone-heavy, but Buddhism from Japan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Burma – in fact from all Eastern countries with the possible exception of Taiwan. (Even my own home-grown religion, Christianity, with its insistence on a male God and its fear of female priests, was no better.) Where were the female gurus for us women to emulate? What in fact did female spirituality look like? We had no idea. The fact was that in spite of the Buddha’s word that we could all advance up the spiritual evolutionary ladder to Enlightenment there was no proof that women could actually do it. To the women practitioners sitting at the lamas’ feet earnestly trying to follow The Way, it was discouraging to say the least.

  How urgently we needed hope that the impossible could become possible. How badly we women needed champions to lead the way. It was time. The twentieth century had seen the steady and inexorable emancipation of women in all areas of life, except that of religion. Now, at two minutes before the millennium, it seemed that the last wave of female emancipation was poised to begin. If it happened it would also be the greatest. The ultimate women’s liberation was surely a female Buddha, an omniscient being. In the light of her great intention, Tenzin Palmo’s already remarkable achievement of enduring twelve years of meditation in a Himalayan cave was suddenly thrust into the realm of universal endeavour.

  I decided to seek her out again. There was now so much more to know. Who exactly was she, where had she come from, what had she learnt in that cave, what had prompted her to make that vow – and would she mind being the subject of a book? Reluctantly, very reluctantly, she agreed, and then only on the grounds that it would inspire other women, and help her own project currently under way to facilitate women’s enlightenment. And so over the next year I tracked her down, in Singapore, London, Seattle, California and India where she was leading a very different way of life, and gradually pieced together the elements of her extraordinary and, some would say, most unnatural life. I spoke to people who had known her and visited the places which had been central to her life. With great difficulty I even found her cave and, having climbed to that thin-aired altitude and witnessed for myself her dwelling place, marvelled with new appreciation at what she had accomplished.

  This then, is Tenzin Palmo’s story – a tale of on
e woman’s quest for Enlightenment.

  Chapter Two

  The Wrong Place

  The world that Tenzin Palmo came from could not have been further removed from the one that she was to find herself in.

  She was born in a stately home, Woolmers Park, in Hertfordshire, in the library to be exact. This was not because she was of blue blood, far from it, but because on 30 June 1943, the day of her birth, Hitler’s Luftwaffe were blitzing London and the capital’s maternity hospitals had been evacuated to the relative peace of the home counties. Something must have gone terribly wrong with the mathematics, because although she was technically overdue and was induced she arrived into this world with no eyelashes, no fingernails, no hair and was, even her mother said, quite ugly; however, in spite of the wizened child’s unprepossessing appearance, her mother was filled with romantic aspirations for her and promptly named her Diane after a popular French song that had caught her fancy – but, she insisted, it had to be pronounced in the French way which, with the English pronunciation, came out as ’Dionne’. This was how she was known until her ordination as a Buddhist nun some twenty-one years later, when she took the second name of Tenzin Palmo.

  Home for the first twenty years of her life was above a fish shop at 72 Old Bethnal Green Road, Bethnal Green, just round the corner from the historical Old Roman Road in the heart of London’s East End. It was about as far away as you could get from the soaring snow-capped mountains and vast open vistas of the Himalayas where her soul was to run free. Today, 72 Old Bethnal Green Road does not exist and Bethnal Green itself, with its elegant squares, tiny lanes and proximity to the City, is in danger of becoming chic; but when Tenzin Palmo got there it was a mass of rubble after the Blitz, and this was how she thought it had always looked before she was old enough to know better. It was crowded, blackened, smog-filled, with hardly a tree in sight. For as long as she could remember she never felt she belonged: ‘I had this intense feeling that I was in the wrong place. Even now I never feel “right" in England,’ she said.