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View of a different mountain

by Diana Reynolds Roome

Editor's Note: Diana Reynolds Roome, a Mountain View resident and longtime contributor to the Voice, has been traveling in India and Nepal, retracing steps she took there many years ago and discovering much that has changed.

DHARAMSALA, India — The mountain I see from the grounds of the Tibetan Buddhist nunnery where I'm staying is crowned with an early sprinkling of snow. As the sun comes up behind its sharp profile, it sparkles under the blue sky. At around 9,000 feet, this is a mere foothill in the Dhauladar section of the Himalayan range, which stretches for thousands of miles east towards Afghanistan, west towards Everest and Bhutan, and north to Tibet.

This is the direction that matters most to the nuns here (called ani-la), as well as to the 100,000 Tibetans living in exile in Dharamsala. Many know these mountains only too well, having traveled over them on foot or by yak from Tibet, a journey that takes weeks and is fraught with dangers.

They come to escape a foreign occupation that has marginalized most of them in their own country. Some have been imprisoned — for demonstrating, or just for owning pictures of their spiritual and secular leader, the Dalai Lama.

Here in Dharamsala, even though it's not their country, they can live close to the Dalai Lama (though he is often abroad, teaching Tibetan Buddhism and promoting understanding and peace — he visited Mountain View and gave teachings at Shoreline Amphitheatre in May 2001). His yellow and red monastery, Namgyal, sits atop a hill here, surrounded by colorful prayer flags.

Beneath the monastery, the town of Dharamsala is a maelstrom of activity, with Indian and Tibetan street stall holders, cows, beggars, monks (sometimes on motorcycles), tourists, automobiles, and dogs jostling for passing space among strong odors of exhaust, incense, cow dung and cooking oil. Just smile at a Tibetan, and you're likely to be asked to join in a cup of salt-butter tea or a plate of steaming momos — dumplings stuffed with vegetables or buffalo meat. Or you might find yourself charmed into buying — as I did recently — a carved image of the Buddha, an intricately painted thanka (devotional image), or a striped Tibetan apron traditionally worn by married Tibetan women.

Life is calmer here at Dolma Ling nunnery, which was completed last December and inaugurated by His Holiness. Kalij pheasants swoop from tree to tree with their long tails sweeping behind them, and mynah birds, with bright yellow eyeliner, whistle cheekily. Orange lantana, scarlet hibiscus and bougainvillea grow everywhere. However, the nuns, in maroon robes and with shaven heads, have been up since 5 a.m., attending puja (prayer session) with melodious chanting in the gompa (temple) under a magnificent wall painting of the Green Tara, the female emanation of the Buddha of compassion.

Today they are preparing for exams — but that doesn't mean sitting at desks. Instead, they're out in the spacious courtyards, stamping and clapping their hands to emphasize obscure points of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. Until recently only monks have practiced this form of debate, but nuns are now taking on many of the same academic challenges. For the exams, they will have to engage in rigorous argument against an opponent on points of Buddhist doctrine.

Many were expelled from their nunneries in Tibet or had few educational opportunities there, so the chance to learn here is precious. The nuns also learn English and computer skills, as well as carrying out more practical duties such as cooking, cleaning, milking the cows, or making handicrafts to sell. I've already bought handmade incense, little embroidered bags, and Christmas decorations in the form of vajras or dharma wheels (Buddhist symbols) from their small shop.

Watching the smiles on the nuns' faces, it's hard to believe that many suffered severely under the Chinese communist regime in Tibet — prison, destruction of nunneries, deaths of friends by torture or execution — and risked their lives getting out. (More about the Tibetan Nuns Project, a nonprofit that is helping to support and educate Buddhist nuns in exile, can be found at www.tnp.org.)

If I go through a gate at the back of the nunnery, I can walk up the hill and see the locals — members of the indigenous Gaddi people — starting their day. Farmers are harnessing their oxen to plough the terraced slopes before planting wheat or rice. Women cross the crystal clear streams (tempting but hazardous to drink) as they carry huge bundles of animal fodder on their backs.

But just now I'm off to breakfast in the nunnery dining room. With any luck there'll be chapattis and cheese, fruit, tsampa (roasted barley flour mixed into a kind of cream of wheat with butter tea), and yogurt from the cow — which got loose yesterday and danced over the grass, leaving a cow-pat offering just outside the butter-lamp shrine.