Cave in the Snow
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[edit] Blurb
In 1964 English born Diane Perry, in pursuit of ‘perfection’, travelled to India by boat. After meeting Khamtrul Rinpoche, the man who was to become her teacher, she became ordained as a Buddhist nun at the age of twenty-one and took the name of Tenzin Palmo. She was one of the first western woman to ever do so.
Just over a decade later, after battling with blatant sexism within the monastic order, she secluded herself in a remote cave, 13,200 feet up in the Himalayas, cut off from the world by mountains and snow. There she engaged in a twelve-year intensive retreat. She faced unimaginable cold, wild animals, near starvation and avalanches; she grew her own food, meditated for twelve hours a day and slept in a traditional wooden meditation box, three-feet-square – she never lay down and spoke to nobody. Her goal was to attain enlightenment as a woman.
In 1988 she emerged from the cave with a vision to build a convent in northern India dedicated to helping women achieve spiritual excellence. From living as a mendicant on $100 a year, she has now become a globetrotting fund-raiser, talking to thousands of people, from the fount of her profound wisdom. As such, Tenzin Palmo had come full circle: being of the world, leaving it and then returning once more to help it.
Now operating out of makeshift offices in Tashi Jong, Northern India, Tenzin Palmo and her helpers have finally raised enough money to buy the land on which the nunnery will be built. The first twenty-four young women have arrived full of hope that they will be given an opportunity to pursue a spiritual path which doesn’t revolve around cooking food for the monks. Women’s liberation is finally hitting the Buddhist world and Tenzin Palmo is spearheading the struggle.
Her story has far reaching ramifications, given the controversial issue of female ordination within the Catholic Church and the existence of male hierarchies in almost all spiritual traditions. Whilst the film points to the broader topic of gender issues within spiritual traditions, it unfolds through the intimate portrayal of one woman’s life. Her commitment to the nunnery and her life’s work place her at the forefront of a revolution in female spiritual advancement. Through Tenzin Palmo’s personal story we have an engaging and intimate devise with which to explore the universal issue of gender inequity within spiritual systems.
Tenzin Palmo’s complete rejection of any semblance of a normal family life or relationships and her absolute commitment from a very young age to ‘be perfect’, and to ‘find perfection’, immediately make her an intriguing figure. Tenzin Palmo is someone we are quickly fascinated by and have a desire to know, as we feel the need to understand her motivations. Many others have pursued a spiritual quest, but what makes her story stand out is that it embodies a far larger issue. Her personal efforts in the female form, and her present day struggle to establish a humble nunnery in an opulently monastically dominated landscape, represent a symbolic challenge to the patriarchal structures that have dominated religious systems for centuries.[1]
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