I was asked recently: “What is the most influential book you have read”. I read so much, this was a hard question, but a book did come to mind almost immediately.
The book is The Cave in The Snow. It is a biography which profiles the life of JetsunmaTenzin Palmo, a Buddhist nun.
I revisited the book after I answered the question and realised that it was a really significant book because I read it at a time in my life when I was making the shift to discovering and exploring what I wanted my life to look like and how I wanted to be in the world.
Which ultimately lead me to move from the shadows and into my unique spotlight.
While I am interested in Buddhism, I realised it wasn’t for me but I have taken so much from this faith and incorporated it into my life. Vipassanā-meditation, the mindfulness of breathing is one of them.
I aim (not always successfully!) to live in loving kindness, not harming sentient beings, and living with love, compassion, joy, and equanimity. Another element is not having attachment to outcomes or situations – which I am pretty crap at!!
JetsunmaTenzin Palmo is an extraordinary woman. She was born Diane Perry in Woolmers Park, Hertfordshire, UK and she realized at the age of 18 that she was a Buddhist when she read a library book on the subject. She moved to India at 20.
In 1964 she became only the second Western woman to be ordained in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
Her remarkable story gets better. In 1976 Tenzin Palmo commenced living in a cave in the Himalayas measuring 10 feet wide and six feet deep and remained there for 12 years, for three of which she was in full retreat. The cave was high in the remote Lahul area of the Indian Himalayas, on the border of Himachal Pradesh and Tibet.
In the course of the retreat she grew her own food and practiced deep meditation based on ancient Buddhist beliefs. In accordance with protocol, she never lay down, sleeping in a traditional wooden meditation box in a meditative posture for just three hours a night. The last three years were spent in complete isolation. She survived temperatures of below −30° Fahrenheit (−35°C) and snow for six to eight months of the year.
Living at Khamtrul Rinpoche’s monastery as the sole nun among 100 monks provided Tenzin Palmo with first-hand experience of the discrimination that restricted women’s access to information that was imparted freely to men. Eager for instruction, she felt frustrated by the fact that she was kept out of most monastic activities because of misogynistic prejudices.
I heard her speak when she came to Australia several years ago. She said all she wanted to do was go back to the cave, but she realised that she had work to do in the ‘outside world’. She has worked tirelessly to improve access to education for Buddhist nuns and even asked the Dali Lama why he has not actively improved nun’s opportunities.
So, she is awesome! She had something to say, and was prepared to stand in her own unique spotlight and make a difference to the world. We need more people to do this. Don’t you think?
