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

by Vicki Mackenzie

‘You look like a bald-headed Virgin Mary.’

In the evening they held these dinner parties with their eighteen plates and cups. It was very sociable! It was also very difficult to meditate.’

Up in the mountains she called upon the dakinis, those ethereal female Buddhist spirits, known for their wildness, their power and their willingness to assist spiritual practitioners, to come to her aid. She had always had a particularly intimate relationship with them. Now she addressed them in her own inimitable way: ‘Look here – if you find me a suitable place to do a retreat, then on my side I promise I will try to practise,’ she prayed. ‘I felt very positive about it, very happy. I was sure something was going to happen,’ she commented.

’That’s true,’ the nun replied, ‘but last night I suddenly remembered an old nun who told me about a cave up on the mountain which has water nearby as well as trees and a meadow outside. Why don’t we go and look for it?’

The next day she gathered together a group of people, including the head lama of the monastery, and set off up the mountain in search of the cave the nun had heard about.

After two hours of climbing they suddenly came across it.

This ‘cave’ was nothing more than an overhang on a natural ledge of the mountain with three sides open to the elements. It had a craggy roof which you had to stoop to stand under, a jagged, slanting back wall and beyond the ledge outside a sheer drop into the steep V of the Lahouli valley.

She was 13,200 feet above sea level – a dizzying height. At this altitude it was like contemplating living just below the peak of Mount Whitney in the the Rockies or not far short of the top of Mont Blanc.

Tenzin Palmo took all this in, and in spite of the minute size and condition of the overhang was sold. ‘I knew instantly. This was it,’ she said. It had everything she needed. Here, perched like an eagle on the top of the world, she would most definitely not be bothered by the clamour and clutter of human commerce. She would have the absolute silence she yearned for. The silence that was so necessary to her inner search, for she knew, like all meditators, that it was only in the depth of silence that the voice of the Absolute could be heard. She could bury herself in the confines of her cave to pursue her spiritual practices without interruption. She could go out and look at the mountains and the infinite sky. She would see no one. No one would see her.

And down the way, not far from the cave, was a spot said to be inhabited by the powerful Buddhist protectress Palden Lhamo, traditionally depicted riding on a mule.

One day several years later Tenzin Palmo was to see footprints of a mule embedded in the snow at this very spot. Strangely there were no other footprints leading to or from it.

‘By the time they have climbed this high they will be so exhausted all they will want is a cup of tea,’ she responded.

In that one brief argument Tenzin Palmo overturned centuries of tradition, which decreed that women were not capable of doing extensive retreats in totally isolated places

in order to advance themselves to higher spiritual levels. In doing so she also became the first Western woman to follow in the footsteps of the Eastern yogis of old and enter a Himalayan cave to seek Enlightenment.

They put in a window and a door, which Tshering Dorje insisted open inwards – an insight which was to prove invaluable in the drama that was to follow.

And then there was the most unusual object of all, a traditional meditation box.

(responsible for such famous landmarks as the Lake Palace in Udaipur),

With the cave finished, Tenzin Palmo moved in and began her extraordinary way of life. She was thirty-three years old. This was to be her home until she was forty-five.

The first priority was water.

To supplement these basic provisions with a source of fresh food Tenzin Palmo made a garden.

The only things they wouldn’t touch were turnips and potatoes. Over the years I truly discovered the joy of turnips! I am now ever ready to promote the turnip,’ she enthused.

Every day she ate the same meal: rice, dhal (lentils) and vegetables, brewed up together in a pressure-cooker. ’My pressure cooker was my one luxury. It would have taken me hours to cook lentils at that altitude without it,’ she said. This meagre fare she supplemented with sour-dough bread (which she baked) and tsampa.

For desert she had a small piece of fruit.

For twelve years this was how it was. There was no variation, no culinary treats like cakes, chocolates, ice creams – the foods which most people turn to to relieve monotony, depression or hard work.

half a slice of toast, half a quantity of jam. Anything more seemed so wasteful and extravagant.’

And then there was the cold. That tremendous unremitting, penetrating cold that went on for month after month on end.

below the temperature would regularly plunge to -35 d...

Besides, if you are really concentrating you get hot anyway.’ And her comment begged the

further question of how far she had got in her ability to raise the mystic heat, like Milarepa had done in his freezing cave all those centuries ago and the Togdens, who had practised drying wet sheets on their naked bodies on cold winter nights in Dalhousie.

to curl up cat-like in front of a warm fire? In this, as in many things,

Tenzin Palmo was to prove them wrong.

Arguably, the most radical of all her deprivations was the absence of a bed.

It was not that the cave was too small, it was simply that Tenzin Palmo did not want one.

to the sages, sleep was nothing but a tragic waste of precious time.

I was so happy to see them. I smiled back and sent them lots of love. They stood there for a few minutes more and then left,’ she reported.

She also came close to encountering the rarest and most beautiful of the wild cats, the snow leopard. When Peter Mathiessen wrote his haunting book The Snow Leopard about this near mythic beast only two Westerners were ever thought to have seen one.

these big pug marks, very strange with a kind of hole in the middle. I drew it and later showed it to two zoologists and they both immediately said it was snow leopard, which apparently has a distinctive paw.’ While the elusive snow leopard might well have seen Tenzin Palmo, much to her sorrow she did not ever see it. More exotic and enticing still were the completely bizarre set of footprints that she found one morning in the snow running along the boundary wall. She looked at them in puzzlement:

Could it possibly have been the mythical Yeti? Had Tenzin Palmo inadvertently moved into a Yeti’s den?

‘Look here,’ she said, ’this boy has obviously got a lot of psychological problems, so please do something to change his mind and help him,’ she prayed.

‘A couple of days later I found on my gate a bunch of wild flowers. Then, when I went to my spring not only had it been repaired but it had been put back together so much nicer. After that, when I saw the boy he gave me a nice smile. He was completely transformed. Dakinis are very powerful,’ she added.

‘In winter, which lasted from November to May,

I said “no” because I honestly thought it wasn’t.

it got he might never have agreed to let me live there,’ she conceded.

a red-legged crow,

‘As I turned a corner I saw hundreds upon hundreds of vultures sitting in circles. They were grouped on the boulders, on the ground, all around. It was as though they had come together for a meeting. I had to walk through the middle of them! There was nowhere else for me to pass. Now these birds are big,

I took a deep breath, started saying the “Om Mani Padme Hung” mantra and walked right through them. They didn’t even move.

Later I remembered that Milarepa had had a dream in which he was a vulture and that among Tibetans these birds are regarded as ...

He should have forged my signature.

My hair is getting long and falling out all over the place.A great nuisance – no wonder the yogis just mat it.

“If you’re sick you’re sick. If you die, you die.” So that takes care of the problem,’