[Buddha-l] Enthronment of Jetsunbma Tenzin Palmo

[Christopher Fynn]

jkirk wrote:

> Thanks Chris for this clarification--I figured it wasn't a tub but some
> special contraption designed for the meditation. Also thanks for the
> description of her retreat chamber--a vernacular architecture of a special
> kind. 

> Would you please tell us how people on such distant retreats get their food
> and water supplies; what must they do for toilet breaks; and don't they ever
> get out and walk or do excercises or yoga? Twelve years of sitting-only
> strikes me as counterproductive so far as health goes.
> Joanna
> ================================

When I visited her she told got food by collecting barley from households in 
local villages once a year and having this roasted and ground into Tsampa. This 
is what most of the monks, nuns and hermits in that area do. Anyway she seemed 
to be mainly existing on a vegetarian diet of tsampa, rice and pulses etc. 
Potatoes, buckwheat and small apples are also grown in that area and she would 
also have been given these. She told me villagers also cut her enough firewood 
for the winter, Anyway she was *extremely* thin (and I saw her just before the 
winter set in when she was must have been comparatively well fed).

She mentioned at the time that she was receiving some sponsorship from John 
Blofeld and a Thai princess. She said she didn't really need this and had told 
them so. Anyway she certainly had enough to buy things like rice, oil sugar & 
tea leaves if she needed to. She did leave her retreat every year to visit her 
teacher Khamtul Rinpoche which would have been two or three days journey each 
way from there - as well as to collect barley and get supplies. Anyway it wasn't 
like she stayed isolated in this cave 12 months a year - probably more like ten.

There would have been some water on the mountain - and plenty of snow to melt in 
the winter. It truly was a real Milarepa like situation and it is difficult to 
imagine how an ordinary person could survive - she must have a tremendously 
strong constitution and a tremendously strong will. Of course no one but herself 
compelled her to live in retreat in such isolation.

- Chris


> Hold on - Gelongma Tenzin Palmo has just been  given the title "Jetsunma"
> which means something like "Venerable Lady" by the head of the Tibetan
> branch of the Middle Drukpa Kagyu School.  While this is a great and well
> deserved honour calling it an "enthronement" is rather over the top - and I
> think Ven. Tenzin Palmo herself would not want anyone to think of it as
> anything like that.
> 
> In 1974 I visited Tenzin in her cave (an overhanging rock with a mud wall
> built round the front to form a small retreat place) which was at a great
> altitude in the Himalyan valley of Lahoul - about an hour's walk from anyone
> else. The year before her retreat had been buried under an avalanche and she
> couldn't light a fire for weeks.
> 
> The "tub" may refer to the meditation seat she sat and slept in which has
> wood on all sides so you have to sit upright even when you sleep - these are
> about the size of a bathtub - but not as long.
> 
> 
> - Chris
> 
> 
> Jessica Marie Falcone wrote:
>> :)
>> Vicki Mackenzie wrote a book about Tenzin Palmo's many years in ... a 
>> cave.  It must have been a mistranslation of some kind.
>>
>> The book is:
>> Cave in the Snow: Tenzin Palmo's Quest for Enlightenment.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Jessica
>>
>> X-POSTED--
>> Never heard of this nun--sounds like some kind of progress.
>> But 12 years in a....... tub??
>> Joanna
>> ==============================
>>
>>

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