Tenzin Palmo grew up the daughter of a fishmonger in London. Hers was an ordinary adolescence. She had a boyfriend, a job, a crush on Elvis Presley. At age 20, she traded in her life of convention for one of contemplation. She bought a one-way ticket to India and became one of the first Western women to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist nun. She then went into a cave in the high Himalayas and meditated for 12 years.
Since she’s “come down” she’s been hard at work, becoming an inspirational saffron-clothed globetrotter, teaching Tibetan Buddhism and building a nunnery in the Kangra Valley of northern India.
Quotes
“I had planned to stay in my cave, but life has a way of serving you up with what you need rather than what you think you want.”
“People have this idea that Enlightenment is something in a distance — a very fantastic and magnificent happening which will transform everything once and for always. But it’s not like that at all. It’s something which is so simple you hardly see it. It’s right in front of us, so close we don’t notice it. And it’s something that can happen at any moment. And the moment we see it, there it is. It’s been there all the time, but we’ve had our inner eye closed. When the moments of awareness all link up — we become a Buddha.”
Links
Tenzin Palmo home page: http://www.tenzinpalmo.org
Snow Lion short biography: http://www.snowlionpub.com/pages/palmo.php