Cave In The Snow: A Western Woman's Quest for Enlightenment

by Vicki Mackenzie

of youth was just beginning, and Tenzin Palmo threw herself into it with all the enthusiasm she could muster.

(he was my big renunciation when I became a Buddhist!).

And at that moment I heard this voice inside me again saying: “Don’t worry about it. When the time comes to renounce, you will renounce. You’re young, enjoy yourself! Then when the time comes you’ll really have something to give up.” Hearing that, I relaxed.’

school for young reincarnated lamas in Dalhousie, in northern India.

The nice thing was he had these three Bonpo lamas (the religion from pre-Buddhist Tibet), staying with him. They were the first Tibetan lamas I ever met.’

Cutting through Spiritual Materialism and Journey Without Goal,

Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, which has produced some of America’s most prominent Buddhist teachers.

Choygam Trungpa in his later years also became known for his unconventional and scandalous behaviour, which threw his organization into chaos.

‘Our mind is so untamed, out of control, constantly creating memories, prejudices, mental commentaries. It’s like a riot act for most people! Anarchy within. We have no way of choosing how to think and the emotions engulf us.

Meditation is where you begin to calm the storm, to cease the never-ending chattering of the mind. Once that is achieved you can access the deeper levels of consciousness which exist beyond the surface noise. Along with that comes the gradual disidentification with our thoughts and emotions. You see their transparent nature and no longer totally believe in them. This creates inner harmony which you can then bring into your everyday life.’

‘He came back absolutely appalled. “This is a terrible place. It’s hell.

Such is the fine-timing of fate. I remember crying myself to sleep that night, thinking of leaving my boyfriend. The next morning, however, I woke up and felt quite cheerful! Ah, never mind, I thought.’

She was cooking porridge made with some Tibetan cheese. It was disgusting.

Kabir Bedi, the famous Indian movie star), she had become a nun, the first Western woman ever to do so, taking the name Khechok Palmo.

’She was definitely a character – a strange mixture of Indian and English county. She never completely shed her roots. Everyone called her Mummy. I loved her very much,’ commented Tenzin Palmo.

‘The thing was she was very good at initiating ideas and excelle...

Her main fault, however, was that instead of buying property, which was very cheap then, and getting herself established, she dribbled the funds away on buying

things like bedlinen, towels and this and that. She was not very practical.

Dalhousie was a beautiful place, spread over a number of hills covered in stately pine trees and inhabited by gangs of raucous monkeys.

Later they decamped and went to Dharamsala, to southern India and other settlements, but in 1963 they were there in their masses, valiantly re-establishing replicas of the great monasteries that had flourished in their homeland, Sera and Drepung, and trying to resurrect at least the remnants of their unique culture. ‘It was a lovely place then. There were no cars and it had a very special atmosphere.

(The first of the Dharma Bums, the American poet Allen Ginsberg, had been there just before Tenzin Palmo, gathering the inspiration which would launch a cult.)

figures such as H.H. the Karmapa, head of the Kargyu lineage, whose reincarnations can be traced back back further than the Dalai Lama’s. He was held in immense reverence by all Tibetans.

‘I remember the first time I met the Karmapa, I was very afraid as he looked so severe, rather like Napoleon. I went in and started prostrating and heard this very high-pitched giggle. I looked up and there he was with his big dimples giggling, pointing a finger saying, “Who’s this, who’s this?” At that time we really got the red carpet treatment, not like nowadays.’ One day in June, just three months after she had arrived in Dalhousie, she met the Dalai Lama himself.

enigmatic phrase: ‘Oh, Ani-la, tukdam gong phel?’ (‘Oh, nun, is your practice progressing well?’)

The interpreter turned to Tenzin Palmo in confusion. ‘I don’t know why he called you Ani-la, and that greeting is only used when two hermits meet,’ he said. Had the Dalai Lama with his legendary clear-sightedness seen what was to come and maybe even what had gone before?

‘You should know that the best of all plans go astray,’ replied Tenzin Palmo, with a boldness that was to surface on a much later date when she was to address the Dalai Lama again on a much more serious issue.

The eighth Khamtrul Rinpoche had come a long way.

The journey out had been treacherous. Travelling by horse with a small band of followers, they had crossed

icy rivers in full flood, the horses swimming with just their nostrils above water, their meagre possessions transported on rafts. It was said that Khamtrul Rinpoche had calmed the waves by throwing sacred sand on them, but, whatever the reason, no life was lost and all their goods made it safely to the other side.

She saw a tall, large man, about ten years older than herself, with a strong, round face, almost stern in expression and a strange knob on the top of his head. It was similar to that depicted on effigies of the Buddha. ‘The feeling was two things at the same time. One was seeing somebody you knew extremely well whom you haven’t seen for a very long time. A feeling of "Oh, how nice to see you again!” And at the same time it was as though an innermost part of my being had taken form in front of me. As though he’d always been there but now he was outside,’ she explained.

Such is the meeting with a true guru – it happens rarely. Within hours Tenzin Palmo had also stated she wanted to become a nun, and would he please ordain her. Again Khamtrul Rinpoche said, ‘Yes, of course,’ as though it were only natural. Three weeks later, on 24 July 1964, it was done. ‘It took that long because Khamtrul Rinpoche said he wanted to take me back to his monastery in Banuri to perform the ceremonies there,’ she said, without any trace of irony. She had been in India only three months, but what seemed from the outside a recklessly hasty decision was to her mind utterly reasonable and completely logical.

Khamtrul Rinpoche, he had certainly recognized her. And so had the monks of his monastery. Tenzin Palmo bore a remarkable resemblance to a figure depicted in a cloth painting that hung in the Khampagar monastery in Tibet, which had been in their possession for years. The figure had piercing blue eyes and a distinctive long nose. Furthermore, the figure was obviously someone of spiritual importance because, as others later testified, the monks immediately began to treat Tenzin Palmo with the deference afforded to a tulku, a recognized reincarnation.

This special closeness between Khamtrul Rinpoche and Tenzin Palmo was maintained all his life.

“Don’t you know who you were in your last lifetime?” and when I said “No” and would he mind telling me he replied, “If Khamtrul Rinpoche hasn’t told you he must have his reasons.” But I never asked,’she said.

’The thing is we met and we recognized each other, and that was enough,’ she added. ‘Khamtrul Rinpoche did say that we had been very close for many lifetimes. He also commented that because this time I had taken female form far away from him in the West it had been difficult for us to be together but that in spite of this he’d always held me in his heart.’

He was considered to be one of the fierce forms of Guru Rinpoche (also known as Padmasambhava, the man credited with bringing Buddhism to Tibet from India in the eighth century),

He immediately got up and came over. “I’m so sorry I would never have done that for the world. I’m so sorry,” he said. He got one of the monks to take me home and I spent the whole night just shaking. It was like that. He had this enormous power which all the time he was trying to keep in.

It’s like with your mother – there may be other people who you admire and like but that special feeling you have with your mother you can’thave with anyone else,’ she said.

‘You see, the relationship with your lama is so intimate, and on such a deep level, it’s not like any other. How can it be? It’s a relationship that has been going on for lifetime after lifetime. Your real lama is committed to you until Enlightenment is reached. What could be more intimate than that?’

‘He was amazing. His mind stayed the same whatever happened. I noticed that he was exactly the same here in India, as a refugee, as he was in Tibet when he had so much power and status.

He’d didn’t mind that he had to go and buy the cement and build the monastery himself.

He’d throw his arm around the Indian shopkeepers, joke with all the locals, people really loved him. He was also very ecumenical, very broad. He would meet with Moslems and Hindus alik...

She was only a novice nun and Khamtrul Rinpoche in his wisdom had only given her the one vow ‘not to kill’. The Japanese boy was as attractive as ever.

said. ‘One time he swatted a mosquito. I said, “What are you doing?" I went on through this whole thing, how mosquitoes have feelings and that just as our life is precious to us, for a mosquito the most precious thing it has is its own life, and as we don’t want anyone to squish us, so we shouldn’t take the life of another being because while we could take it we could never give it back.

And so the idea of giving him up was a renunciation,’she recalled.

‘I thought, in ten years’ time which would I regret the most, the chance of being with the guru and practising dharma or the chance of a little samsaric happiness? And it was so obvious! One has gone through worldly pleasures over and over again and where has it got one? How could that compare to the chance of being with the lama?’ she said.

‘As I was praying I felt my whole body fill with this golden light coming from my head down to my feet and Khamtrul Rinpoche’s voice said, “Come back to India immediately!” After that I was perfectly happy. I was filled with bliss,’ she explained. The next day she went out and bought her ticket back to India. She never saw the Japanese boy again.

As the pyramids were to Egypt, so the monasteries were to Tibet.

‘Later people would ask me if I wasn’t lonely in my cave. I never was. It was in the monastery where I was really alone,’ she said.

‘One evening I looked inside and saw this grasping and attachment and how much suffering it was causing me. Seeing it so nakedly at that moment it all fell away. From that moment on I didn’t need to reach out.’