The Meaning of Life

I am starting to worry that people might get the impressed from my blogg that I am mildly depressed. Actually it isn’t so, I have just always been endowed with a very black sense of humor (not such a good trait in a nun!)

I had an idea to collect a list of all the stupid things that the people here have said to me recently, at which I would laugh out loud about it if there was another Westerner around to laugh with me, but now I feel guilty about being so negative and teasing everyone all the time. (so I will save it for another blogg)

When I first started up my blogg nearly three years ago I used to try and write things about Buddhism and the Dharma, those little insights about the nature of life I though might be beneficial to others. I guess I was still in my Buddhist honeymoon phase and still somewhat of a romantic youth. During this current ‘blogg revival’ I haven’t been doing that, I guess I am getting old and grumpy I have just turned 26 but feel 45. I get the feeling no one is reading it anyway so I usually just kind of write jokes for my friends.

Would you like a little insight into the meaning of life? These last three weeks have been extremely difficult for me as there is a big gathering at my nunnery with several hundred people. We have several classes a day and are debating for more than 7 hours a day. I go to bed around 12 and am meant to get up at 5am (but that doesn’t always happen!) The first 8days there was no break and then they sent us to His Holiness’ teaching in McLeod but we all had to get back to the nunnery quickly afterwards as there was evening debate. During that time I came down with a cold that now, three weeks later is just getting worse and worse. So I am really, really tired. There is one more week to go and it is over so everyone is kind of holding on by their knuckles until Sunday when it will all be finished. Last night I went to have a cup of tea with some class mates and our teacher before going to bed (somewhere between 12-1am) and my teacher asked me why I became a nun and came here to India. I told him I had no other choice. He asked the obvious next question… I said that if I went home I would probably go to uni, eventually get a job, probably get married and have kids and in the end it would all have no meaning. After death as peoples memories of me fade all the good times and bad will prove to have been in vain, but here if I work hard I can really achieve something that will have huge benefit for myself and for others in this lifetime and the ones afterwards too. So what other choice do I have?

There is a lady running around at the moment making a little doco for French television about the debate gathering. I watch her float around, sit and drink tea she even came and asked me if I knew a good place in town where she could get a massage. I saw her from the debate ground and thought “that could be me. I could live like that if I chose to. If I gave up my lifestyle right now I could be in that situation…and would it be crap!” So the point of my story is that although I am exhausted, sick and have all my minor decisions made by a series of bells (which just keep ringing and ringing these days). Am ultimately much more content than I was when I was at home doing as I pleased (when I wasn’t slaving away at work).

So there, has your life been changed forever?

If not, don’t worry.

Life on the inside

I thought it may be of interest to write about some boring things I take for granted, you never know what interests people.
I arrived at my current nunnery just over a year and a half ago. Before that I was in another nunnery that was built especially for Western nuns. So altogether it is just over 3 years that I have called India home (but feels like decades, I don’t know if I mean that in a good way or not.)

This nunnery is special because it was built not for Tibetans but for nuns from the ‘Himalayan region’ like North India and Nepal, Bhutan etc. There are some Tibetans here but they are in the minority. The place is also special because it is run by the nuns them selves and it is especially focused on study. For a Westerner it is probably the best they could get. There are only two or three nunneries in India that allow Westerners and when I first arrived I was the first they had ever had (beside a Mongolian some years ago). Since then several Taiwanese and Koreans have come and gone but as yet no other Westerner, although it is probably only a matter of time. Most of the local Tibetan/expat community have never even heard of the nunnery because it is so small (85nuns) and tucked away in a field behind a very poor Indian village no Tibetan has reason to wander into. Many of the neighbors still have no running water and live in mud brick houses next to their livestock. We are about an hours travel by local transport to the main Tibetan community in McLeod Ganj.

I have two classes everyday, except Sunday which is a holiday but when you have to wash everything by hand it doesn’t feel like much of a holiday! I study Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan grammar. We also have about 4 hours of debate a day, if you don’t know what debate in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition is, look it up on ‘You Tube’.

I get up around 5am and usually get to bed by 11pm although if I can sneak it in I will go to bed a bit earlier. We get some time in the afternoon to take a nap to catch up on sleep but still for me it is not enough so usually on Sundays, after all the washing is done, I go to sleep for 3 or so hours to try and catch up.

The food is good compared to most nunneries and monasteries around here but it took me a while to get use to it and I still take a multivitamin every day…..thanks Mum!

Breakfast is chapatti with fried onion, tomato and chili. Surely it can’t be good to have chili everyday for breakfast but it is the tastiest meal of the day. With that they give Tibetan butter tea (reflecting the mix of Indian and Tibetan culture typical around here)
Lunch is white rice, dhal and one veg. During the monsoon sometimes there is no veg as it gets expensive. Unfortunately they give whatever is cheapest at the market so cabbage, cauliflower, potato or eggplant is most common.
Dinner is either tingmo (steamed knotted plain Tibetan bread ) or rice and veg (the same vegetables mentioned above) and sometimes fried rice. It is all cooked the same….fry onions and tomatoes add veg and cook. I have taken to Spicy Indian pickle which makes everything taste good but everyone says it will give me an ulcer. Probably they are right!
There is also tea at 3pm which is more like sugary water the colour of faded milk. I often add coffee. Luckily up in McLeod you can get pretty much everything you want and a lot more. The only thing India really lacks is good cheese and decent fresh fruit and vegetables but I guess beggars can’t be choosers.

So that is a view of the place from the outside. As for the inside, I was sifting though some things and saw an e-mail I sent to a senior nun friend of mine earlier in the year. She has been a nun for something like 30 years and unlike most Western nuns, she has spent most of that time in a monastery. I often write her questions but unfortunately her answers can be a bit cryptic, so the e-mail is a few answers from the previous e-mail and some more questions from me. I thought it might give you a bit of a glimps of the inside (mildly edited).

Dear Sister,
I must say that although there is your usual gossip and bitching the nuns at my nunnery are quite harmonious. They take responsibility for everything (ie. Don’t rely on men or foreign women to run everything for them) and take on heavy duties gracefully, (despite their studies and everything else they have to do on top.) It also means that they avoid the sheep mentality that Tibetan nuns are so good at.

There are definitely a few lessons that Western nuns could learn from them, but the Tibetan tradition is very different from the ideal I think most Westerners expect (which is I think derived from their idea of the Christian tradition) and has more in common with the Chinese tradition to a certain degree.

“A monastery is a place for training the mind”, here the main practice is study. Traditionally the nuns only did mantras and ngondro together. Because they don’t have full precepts- (actually they don’t even know what they are,) even their Getsulma (novice) precepts are observed with a pinch of salt. (ie. only if convenient). In the past many nuns only received parma rabjung (ie. Lay people’s vows with permission to wear the robes) and this is still common in the Nyigma and Kagyu tradition. I have friends who have been nuns for 10 years in nunneries in Nepal and India and only when they come here for study do they get the opportunity to take Getsulma ordination. My roommate thinks I am the most boring person in the world, she went though my mp3 player one day when I wasn’t there and complained bitterly that there was nothing but philosophy class and ‘om mani padme hum’.

The purpose of the pratimoksha is to tame the mind through taming our actions but this is not usually the way the nuns are taught the vows.
So how to tame the mind? For me I get to practice cultivating contentedness with the food (ie. White rice and cabbage for dinner) and surely I am cultivating something with the hours of puja or weed pulling.
We have senior nuns who are like mentors, and if the juniors are having problems with study or personal things they can go to their senior nun. I have one too, she helps me with the studies but with personal stuff it is difficult because we are from different worlds.

Still, ultimately this ideal of a small community of women practicing together, all there because they want to work toward enlightenment (ie not because their mother forced them or they didn’t want to get married) is not the reality here.
It seems the Tibetan tradition as a whole is light-years away from what you seen in the vinaya literature.
I recently asked Geshe-la about it. The Gelongmas living in Dharamsala, not only can they not keep the majority of their precepts but even when they break a shangavasessa (second most important category of vows), they can not purify it. (I think generally the monks are in the same boat). My main question to Geshe la was can you received the same benefits as far as mind training is concerned, with things the way they are? How do you feel about that ( as far as keeping the precepts and no sojong etc)?

I hope it is not too personal a question, I am not looking down on the local Gelongmas at all. I have an idea of how I would like to practice, but here it is not possible. Nether the less it must work somehow because the Tibetan tradition turns out some amazing masters, the more I stay here the more I see that we are not so different. Studying is a valid path, I just wish I could do everything at once. (just to prove I am still a young person!)

So you have no e-mail, does this mean you have moved in? Do you have a regular program for locals? What about candidates for nuns? (or is it still too early?)

Is that too many questions?

Hopefully not………

Best regards,