By Sonam Chhomo

My family friends came to meet us a day after the beginning of the Tibetan New Year and Fagli, the new year celebrated by the people of the Pattan Valley in Lahaul. They were cheery and happy like always. They told me how they used to spend their winter days in Lahaul as children. It started from their school days and ended up discussing the pack of young boys who used to take notice of the shepherds from Zanskar and use their donkeys to ride in the fields. From picking apples from a neighbor’s farm to playing with a bow and arrow in the field, they concluded: “You have never experienced this joy in the cities.” I agreed with her since our city life was almost devoid of the community and nature that Lahual offered. In the next few silent minutes, my aunt finally asked me about my meeting with Jetsunma. She later revealed how she met Jetsunma Palmo. Her first meeting was surprisingly in that same cave that Jetsunma had resided in. She had gone on one of her expeditions with her father to the jungle. One day, as she was the youngest in that expedition, she was sent to her to ask for some salt. The first meeting was the simple act of getting salt from Jetsunma. The second time she met her was at a function organized by some monks from Kinnaur. At a random book collection for her daughter at Capital Book Depot in Chandigarh, she came across a book with a cover image of someone she knew. On further notice, she recognized Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo in her first book. Her meetings with her happened by chance as if fate was just unveiling itself as she opened one door to another.

My aunt was the one who had first introduced me to Jetsunma Palmo’s autobiography “Cave in the Snow”. The book explores her journey and transformation into a Buddhist nun ordained within the Drukpa Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Moreover, her autobiography was the first book to ever mention the name of Lahaul Valley. As a child who was drawn to both Buddhist philosophy and nostalgic remembrances of Lahaul, I immediately bought the book and read it in the next few weeks. The book cultivated a longing in me, to meet Jetsunma Palmo, and perhaps visit the cave in Lahaul where she lived for 12 years. Neither of my wishes came true as I shifted from one city to another in 6 years. The wish was put aside in the backseat of some part of my brain.

I finally got to meet Jetsunma Palmo in September 2023. If you believe in fate, which I very much do, you would agree that meeting her was a calling. When I reached my parent’s house in Dharmashala, my parents asked me for the itinerary for the next three days. I did not have any plans except for a trip to McLeodganj. At that moment, my mind clicked and I thought about Jetsunma’s monastery that Aunty always visits during her Dharamshala trips. I immediately looked up the name of her monastery/nunnery, checked the website, and found her contact message box. In a childish spree thinking “Let’s see if they reply”, I wrote to her saying that I would like to meet Jetsunma if she is in Dharamshala. To my surprise, I found a positive reply to my message the following day!

The next day, I took my parents, my sister who had just arrived in the morning of that day, and my cousin to Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery, the residence of Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo. The distance from our place (near Norbulingka) to the nunnery was almost one and a half hours’ journey. The car trip was accompanied by pangs of hunger as we reached quite early, around 1 pm. We had an hour before the appointment with her. Before we reached the nunnery, we had kind of made plans to eat our lunch at the nunnery. But to our surprise, the cafe inside the nunnery was closed and was bound to open in the evening. There was construction going on near the guest house area. The nuns, who we were expecting to meet in the campus, were nowhere to be seen. My cousin and I went inside the monastery to find one or two student nuns praying. We did not wish to disturb them so we again went back to the open space outside the closed cafe. On inquiry from the construction workers, we got to know that the nunnery was closed for some weeks due to study vacations. By eating some snacks from a nearby shop, we sustained our hunger before our appointment time. As soon as it was five minutes to 2 pm, my body became heavy. This is generally a result of anxiety and perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime fulfillment of a wish. I took my steps slowly towards the door. My mother, sister, and cousin- all three of them were relaxed and were pushing me to the front.

I opened the door and I found Jetsunma sitting on her desk chair. I could see that she was replying to some emails on her computer. I got a hint that perhaps Jetsunma herself had replied to my message. With a big smile on her face, she welcomed us all inside her sitting area with sofas and chairs and a table in the middle. We began introducing ourselves to Jetsunma, and while at it, we told her about “Cave in the Snow” and our aunt who visits her regularly.

I sat in the front seat and just looked at her. I could not form words or questions in my head. As a result, I was a silent spectator to the points that she was discussing with my sister and my mother. They discussed Lahaul, her experience in the cave, and the nunneries’ work in the Himalayan regions. Jetsunma’s focus was on women from Kinnaur, Spiti, and Lahaul. Through the nunnery, the nuns were empowered to do everything and participate in all discussions/competitions related to Buddhist studies. There was nothing that a woman could not do. In the middle of the silent admiration of her vision, my mother pointed out to me “Say something” and it woke me up from a dream-like state. I stammered a bit and then asked her the very first thing that came to my mind, “In what ways are the sects/traditions within Buddhism similar or different?” It was a question that many who were interested in Buddhism asked me and I would always find it tricky to answer. She replied (and I paraphrase) that the teachings and curriculum followed in monasteries/nunneries are the same. On further probing by my sister, we got to know that the nuns were taught English and other subjects that were relevant according to this time and age. When I told her about REWASUM, she was happy to know that we had taken the initiative to preserve history. She later told us about a Lahauli man, who was so knowledgeable about the history of Lahaul, who had somehow deduced the origins of the dialect that we use in our villages. But he died during the pandemic. The elders are the key to preserving traditional knowledge for the future. Somewhere in our conversations, she asked us where we were located. On hearing that we lived in Delhi, she asked us “Why are you living there when you come from here?” We responded by saying that we study and work there but even to me that seemed like an excuse to explore cities. Really, why are we living in such a polluted city when we belong to the mountains? It reminded me of similar pinings from novels/books about diaspora- Why do we come to such a faraway isolated city when we have everything in our place? The characters fail to answer the question, and I fail to answer mine.

Before this day, I never knew the importance of Jetsunma in my aunt’s life. She says that meeting her, and living in the guesthouse with the student nuns, she was inspired to do something in her life. The life that we know now amid capitalism and politics is nothing compared to the larger context of life. There is so much that we do not know. According to the lessons that she learned from the teachings, we needed to live in the present time. Our everyday acts of anger and regret needed some antidote. For anger, it was compassion. When I asked them, how I could ingrain compassion, they said “That’s something that you need to figure out. That is your journey.” From our conversation, both my uncle and aunt, told me about ways of perceiving others and the self. Vipassana and samta are two ways of meditating. Vipassana is the method of looking for the root cause of your distress. Samta, on the other hand, is the method of perceiving something just as it is and then letting go. Sometimes, whenever I go astray, I am suddenly surrounded by people whose words heal a wound within me. Through their conversation, I understood the essence: “There are some things that we need to let go of, whereas some things need to be reasoned with to find the underlying main cause of suffering.”