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| Western Nuns, Eastern Philosophies Can a shaved head, red robe, and abstention from sex guarantee enlightenment? In a unique nunnery in Sidhpur, Himachal Pradesh, lie some of the answers By Mridu Khullar What motivates a British woman with a full life to leave everything and get ordained as a Buddhist nun? Can a former promiscuous drug addict live the life of celibacy? Why does a woman from a western culture become an eastern nun? The Thosamling Nunnery in Sidhpur, the first and only Buddhist nunnery in India geared towards western nuns, is home to women from many western countries, and many different cultures. These nuns face unique challenges due to language and culture differences as they embrace the Dharma, and the nunnery gives them space and training to embrace the religion at their own pace. Typically, Asian women receive ordination when they are young and often have no choice in the matter. Western nuns, on the other hand, are often ordained as adults. They are educated, have had successful careers, and many even had families and children. Being a Buddhist in the West Ani Yeshe Chodron was 14 when her father died, sending her into an endless spiral of suicidal depression. She began to question the meaning of life, the meaning of her life, and came up with no answers. She left school at 15 and became a hippie. "I was really looking for some kind of spiritual path," she says. "So I lived in communes. I tried yoga and I tried vegetarianism and I tried fruitarianism and I tried drugs and I tried boys and I tried every extreme there is. And none of those things satisfied me in the long term." At 17, Ani Yeshe traveled to India and Nepal, where browsing through a bookstore one evening, she came across a book titled Reborn in the West by Vicki MacKenzie. "Wow," she thought as she read it. "This is for me." It was predicted, she says, that "when the iron bird flies in the sky and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered like ants, and the Dharma will go to the land of the pink-faced savages." Indeed, Buddhism is the fastest-growing religion in the west, even as the number of eastern practitioners decreases. But for western Buddhists, faith comes at a price. Unlike in traditional Asian societies where the monastic community is held in the highest regard, monastics in the West are seen as non-conformists—people who are trying to escape relationships or running away from life. People often stare at them, and once, one nun says, someone saw her bald head and assumed she was going through chemotherapy to cure her cancer. There are few monasteries, and monastics are required to pay to stay in one. "It was very difficult," says Ani Yeshe. "Even though it is against my vows, I tried to go out and work. In the day time I worked in a lay person's job, wore lay people's clothes, and at night, I'd come home and run the Dharma center. I had no time for meditation and didn't get any of the traditional training that Tibetan monks and nuns get." Ani Yeshe eventually decided to live solely on faith, take her bowl, and see what life would bring her. She ended up sleeping in her mother's garden shed and in backpacker hostels and on the beach. "I would wake up in the morning and I'd be like, where am I going to stay today? What am I going to eat? "And then I found that with that kind of surrender, there's a certain kind of power that comes. You find that your true home is in your heart, and not in a place." And that's when she says, all kinds of things started happening. She was offered work in a Dharma center, and HarperCollins wrote to her offering her a deal to write a book about her experiences as a nun. The book was published in 2006 with the title Everyday Enlightenment: How to be a Spiritual Warrior at the Kitchen Sink. Being Western in the East Every morning at six, the temple of the Thosamling Nunnery is abuzz with activity. Nuns perform their daily rituals, and then proceed for breakfast, before going back to their classes or meditation. Ani Choekyi came here five years ago, at age 21, very soon after her ordination in Australia. She feels being in India gives her the space and the freedom to pursue the Dharma without constantly wondering how to survive. Back in Australia, she says, her parents took it quite well. "For the first time in my life, I sat them down," she laughs. "Because I said that I'm breaking up with my boyfriend. And in the next breath that I'm becoming a nun." Life as a nun can be tough in the east as well. "Tibetans don't make any compromises," says Ani Yeshe. "They say if you want to be a Tibetan Buddhist monk or nun, you have to adopt our culture. You have to speak our language, you have to eat our food. You have to give up being a westerner, basically." Which, she says, can be very hard. "It's not realistic because westerners can not only have problems getting a visa, they have to pay three times as much to stay in Tibetan monasteries and nunneries." While a lot of Tibetan monks and nuns have families who respect and support them, most westerners are looked down upon by their society as weird and incapable, and hence have very little support. But there are also many advantages that westerners have. "There is the advantage of having had a worldly life, having genuine renunciation, knowing what we're giving up. We still have temptation, but we know what it is, we're not curious. And I think in some ways we have a unique ability—if we can get training, if we can persevere, we have the unique ability to bring the Dharma to the West." Why Become a Nun? "Monks and nuns were the happiest people I'd seen," says Ani Yeshe. She always knew she wanted to become a monastic, but that she needed more life experience. "To me, it was very clear that spirituality is the purpose of life," she says, "And I wanted to totally commit myself, to marry myself, to make this my career, my every breathing moment. And to show other people that I was committed to it, through the way I dress, the way I act." Ani Choekyi agrees. "If I externally change my experience, every time I get dressed, every time I look in the mirror, every time I look down, I'm reminded that I’m committed to changing my mind. Because if I don't have that level of responsibility, I would easily rationalize my negative behaviors." Not everyone, they say, should become a monastic. For certain people, a lay life is better. Ani Choekyi says that it also changes how people who associate with you. Men no longer see her as a woman, but as the Dharma itself. "I'm out of the contest," she says. Do they miss being in relationships, dating, and sex? "It's been a little bit difficult in that respect because I was in six-year relationship before I became a nun," says Ani Choekyi. "At that time I was still very dependent on my parents and friends for attention. So it was the first time I had to think for myself." That's why living in a community, she says, especially as a new nun is extremely important. "If you can stay among other nuns and learn, then maybe after five years of ordination or when you've developed a lot of certainty, you can go out and live by yourself." Being in a community, she says, keeps you strong, and keeps you learning. "Obviously I've been through a really hard time as a nun," says Ani Yeshe. "But if the joys didn't outweigh the sorrows, I would have given up long ago. When you know that this freedom of spirit is possible, when you know that this purity of mind exists, and that you can experience it with your own heart, then to give up everything else is not so hard." |
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