Breaking the Sacred Ceiling

TENZIN KUNSEL TELLS many amusing stories. A Buddhist nun with a bright young face, she narrates them amid such peals of laughter that you would be inclined to think she is not 54, but at least a couple of decades younger. Most of these are about her childhood in Tibet, and how, unlike other girls in her village close to the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, she would spend her free time playing bas­ketball with the boys. Another one—which she recounted in a video uploaded by Dolma Ling Nunnery and Institute in Dharamshala on YouTube—is about how adept she was at collecting firewood for the family. Like many others in her village, she had quit school at a young age, so she could help her family with chores like collecting firewood and tending to the sheep and cows they owned. “After I came to India, I managed to contact my family over the phone. They told me, ‘We are still using the firewood you collected’.”

But the stories she returns to most often are the ones about her path to a life of renuncia­tion. She would keep pestering her parents, who did not want her to become a nun, and she even ran away from her home to join a nunnery a few times, only for her parents to cajole her into returning. This went on, until finally around the time she turned 18, Kunsel took a pair of shears that the family used to trim their sheep’s wool to chop off her hair. Her parents relented.

So, what made her so keen on becoming a nun?

“I think it was my momola [grandmother],” she says from her nunnery in Dolma Ling in Dharamshala. “I used to spend a lot of time with her, and she was always mur­muring prayers and counting the beads of her rosary.” This made such an impression on the young Kunsel that in school, where Chinese authorities had instituted strict rules against exhibiting any signs of religiosity, let alone saying prayers, she would smuggle a rosary into class, and during the library period, when they were allowed to read newspapers, she would secretly count the beads of her rosary under a newspaper.

Kunsel might have secured her parent’s approval to be­come a nun, but studying to become one was anything but easy. The Chinese imposed several restrictions on monasteries and nunneries in Tibet. So, when she learnt that there were more opportunities to study Buddhism within the Tibetan community in India, she decided to flee. She borrowed some money from friends and family members to pay for a guide and joining a group of over 50 individuals, most of whom were monks and nuns, she made the perilous journey out of Tibet into Nepal, and then India. After a little struggle, she was able to join a nunnery in Dharamshala.

But there was a problem. Historically, Buddhist monastic education in Tibet was never as easily accessible to women as they were to men. There were, according to some estimates, about 5,400 monasteries with a population of around 5 lakh monks when the Chinese first entered Tibet in 1951. By com­parison, it is said, there were about just 700 convents with some 27,000 nuns living in them. While most monasteries offered a basic education, there were a handful of very large and important monasteries—such as the Sera, Drepung, and Ganden monasteries near Lhasa, and Tashilhunpo in Shiga­tse, and Kumbum and Labrang further away in the north­eastern province of Amdo, in the Gelugpa tradition (one of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism, which has the Dalai Lama as its head)—which provided higher philosophi­cal studies and prestigious degrees. No such equivalent in­stitutions for nuns existed. Most nunneries simply taught how to read and memorise scriptures to participate in com­munal prayers and rituals. Of the few that provided some access to higher studies, the practice of debate—an essential component of the Gelugpa tradition—wasn’t a part of the curriculum. Even the geshe degree—the highest degree in the Gelugpa tradition that refers to a doctorate in Buddhist philosophy, and which can take a novice monk decades to attain—was barred for women.

When Tibetans fled to India after the invasion of their homeland and began re-establishing their old monasteries and schools of Buddhist monastic education in exile, they carried their old systems of exclusion with them. “Going into exile is never easy for anybody. But with that caveat, it was rel­atively easier for monks and monaster­ies to set themselves up in exile,” says Swati Chawla, an associate professor at the Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities in the OP Jindal Global University, who has studied the Tibet­an community in exile, and in particu­lar, looked at the life of Tibetan nuns. “When the monks migrated, they mi­grated in larger numbers. Often their teachers and students were together, so it was relatively easy for them. But the nuns were more scattered and they were in fewer numbers. In fact, many of them, when they came to India, had to return their robes. They could no longer keep their vows because they did not have this institutional support. It’s very tragic if you think about it. All that a young woman has to undergo, firstly, to become a nun in that political context [where Buddhism is repressed in Tibet]. And then, this perilous jour­ney they take into exile to keep vows. But when she reaches here in India, there is no institutional support.”

This is beginning to change. Kunsel today is one of 60 geshemas, the first of their kind in history, that is transform­ing the nature of Tibetan Buddhism. But this change hasn’t come easily.

THE AIM OF having more nuns become geshemas isn’t just for the improvement of women in the Tibetan society, but also the larger Tibetan and Hi­malayan society [where Tibetan Buddhism is practised], and the larger international community,” says Nangsa Choedon, a former civil servant in the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA, the Tibetan government-in-exile) who took up the post of president of the Tibetan Nuns Project after her retirement. “One of our main purposes is that they can go back to their communities and nunneries and places they came from, and really go anywhere, and serve those places.”

The Tibetan Nuns Project (TNP)—first set up in 1987, with Rinchen Khando Choegyal, the Dalai Lama’s sister-in-law and then president of the NGO Tibetan Women’s Association as its founding director—has been at the forefront of this move­ment to push for the higher education of nuns. It was initially set up to help deal with the large numbers of Tibetan nuns arriving in India, but over time, its scope expanded. “TNP was set up in great urgency, without any prior arrangements,” Choedon says. “There were a lot of atrocities going on in Tibet, and monasteries and nunneries were being demolished. So, a lot of monks and nuns were escaping to India. When a Tibet­an reaches the reception centre of the Central Tibetan Admin­istration, it looks after them for about 15 days. The monks would then go to the major monasteries that had been set up across India. But after 15 days, the nuns had nowhere to go. When His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] learnt about these difficulties, he guided the Tibetan Women’s Association to look into this issue. So, that is how Rinchen Khando, the president of the Tibetan Women’s Association then, started TNP.” Since then, TNP has established two nun­neries—the Dolma Ling Nunnery and Institute and Shugsep Nunnery, both in Dharamshala—and supports a to­tal of seven nunneries with about 800 nuns spread across India and Nepal. As it began to expand its focus on also providing higher education for nuns, it pushed for the opening up of the geshe degree to women.

The geshe degree requires a total of at least 21 years of study for a novice monk. Of these, 17 years go in monastic training, and the last four specifically for the geshe degree. Women were not allowed into the programme, but this changed in 2012 when the Dalai Lama also opened it up to women.

Chawla locates this moment in the conversations going on in Buddhism internationally about equal rights and opportunities for nuns. “If you think about what’s happening in Buddhist traditions across the world in the last 70 years, across various traditions in South Asia and Southeast Asia, women have been lobbying for equal rights and for more opportunity,” she says, as she points to the establishment of groups like Sakyadhita: International Association for Buddhist Women (whose founders included nuns from various Buddhist com­munities across Asia) and TNP, both of which coincidentally were set up in 1987.

When a man earned the geshe degree, he came to be known as geshe. Women who earn these degrees are known as geshemas (female geshe). While the Dalai Lama did open up the programme to women in 2012, those pushing for this change did have to overcome some hurdles earlier. The catalyst appeared to be the unexpected news in 2011, that Kelsang Wangmo, a German national who goes by her ordi­nation name, was being awarded the geshe degree. “Follow­ing the announcement, the Tibetan Nuns Project started a new campaign directed at some of the great religious mas­ters and the Department for Religion and Culture… to find a solution for the many Tibetan nuns who were waiting to proceed with their studies,” the Tibetologist Nicola Schneider writes in the journal Religions. This was taken up at the 11th Tibetan Religious Conference in 2011, where several speak­ers pronounced themselves against the decision to confer the geshema title, arguing that nuns only study three out of five courses required by the curriculum. “By saying this, they meant that nuns had not studied the entire Vinaya, which was indeed true, but also that they had not completed the Abhid­harma class, which was a major misunderstanding. When Rinchen Khandro Choegyal heard about what had happened, she got upset. How was such a misunderstanding possible after all these years and discussions with so many religious dignitaries?” She took up the matter, and a new meeting with the heads of the three monastic universities in south India, a representative of the Department of Religion and Culture, and one from the TNP was organised. Elsewhere, different nunneries’ representatives were also assembling to discuss steps to be taken. “During the Tibetan New Year festivities in February 2012, some Tibetan nuns were invited to debate in front of the Dalai Lama at the main temple; it is said that His Holiness was delighted to see the nuns’ progress in de­bating and personally asked the Department of Religion and Culture to push the issue of geshema,” Schneider writes. Later that month, the Department of Religion and Culture called a meeting, where the proposal was reviewed and approved.

When Kunsel arrived in Dharamshala, she refused to enrol herself into one of the many secular schools the CTA runs. She was afraid, she says, that this would veer her away from her aim of becoming a nun. This was the time the work at building Dolma Ling was going on. Kunsel then began to do odd jobs, like working at an incense stick manufacturing workshop, and joined the many nuns who worked at the con­struction site to build Dolma Ling.

In 2016, four years after the geshe programme was opened to women, Kunsel was among the first batch of women to earn the degree. “I feel extremely fortunate for being able to become a geshema,” Kunsel, who currently teaches at Dolma Ling, says. “I used to teach before, too, at various schools while I was studying. But, now teaching as a geshema, I feel very for­tunate to share all the Buddhist knowledge I have gained.”

Since the first batch graduated, every year, a few women earn the degree. “This year, we have about 11 geshemas who are expected to sit for their final exams around August,” Choedon says. “Ever since the programme has opened up to women, more and more numbers are taking it up. In fact, there is a batch, I think in the current second year of the geshe degree, which has about 52 nuns. So, when that batch finishes its final year, that’s going to have a large number of geshemas.”

In the past, most nunneries relied on monks to teach higher courses. This is now beginning to change as gesh­emas like Kunsel take up these positions. Many geshemas also conduct teachings for both monastic and lay indi­viduals, some of which are now held online. In 2020, one geshema, Delek Wangmo, was appointed as an election commissioner for the elections conducted by the Tibetan government-in-exile.

According to Chawla, one can already begin to see the impact of opening up the degree to women, from young nuns enrolling into the 17-year programme to become eligible for the geshe degree, to the examples being set by geshemas who are joining the nunneries as teachers. “Young nuns now have an example. They are seeing women teaching, which didn’t happen before. And they now know they can also become scholars and rise to these positions,” she says. “The other thing I anticipate will hap­pen, but this will take a few more years, is that many of these nuns come from very small and under-resourced nunneries in places like Ladakh and Zanskar—more of these Himalayan women will graduate with these degrees, and they will return to their communities, and this will propel more changes in those places there.”

Chawla, who has returned to Dolma Ling many times after the first summer she spent there during a fellowship in 2004, marvels at the changes that have taken place. “If you think about it, just 40 years back, these nuns couldn’t even read their names, let alone aspire to such high degrees. From that to earning such a degree and becoming a teacher, that’s a tremendous accomplishment.”

One of Kunsel’s colleagues at Dolma Ling is Gyaltsen Lochoe. Born in central Tibet, she is hesitant to speak about her family that still lives there. She became a nun in Tibet, she says, because of the suffering she observed with the ma­terial world. Having arrived in India as an 18-year-old, she became a geshema in 2019. “It was the Dalai Lama’s message to us nuns that we should study Buddhism that made me take this up,” she says. “Today, with this degree, I feel I can be of more use to people around me.”

(Click here for more pictures on the Buddhist nuns of Dolma Ling Nunnery)

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