The North American tour of the nuns of Khachoe Ghakyil Nunnery (KGN) typifies the remarkable efforts made by the Tibetan people to preserve and reconstitute their rich culture following the takeover of Tibet by the Communist Chinese. From the beginning of their exile, the preservation of religion and culture was identified by the Dalai Lama as the foremost task confronting the exile community in India and Nepal. But the Tibetan people have chosen not merely to preserve the fixed forms of their ancient traditions, but to regenerate and adapt them to the new world in which they find themselves.

It is this dynamic union of pure tradition with creative innovation that has empowered the Tibetan community in exile, and has inspired so much admiration and interest from the outside world.

The tour of the Khachoe Ghakyil nuns is a perfect example of this vital process of innovative cultural preservation. In old Tibet there were many nunneries, but they carried on as poor sisters, always in the shadows of the great monasteries, which were filled with thousands of monks and led by famous, learned lamas.

In contrast to this rich curriculum at the monasteries, by and large the nunneries were limited to ritual recitation. The daily practice of meditative rituals is one of the core practices of all Tibetan Buddhists, and is not in itself limiting, as it holds the potential to lead the practitioner to ultimate awakening or Buddhahood. Nevertheless, the traditional path for monks began with some twenty years of scholastic training, through the medium of textual study and debate; and that was followed by a period of training in meditative practices which included training in the ritual arts.

Nuns, on the other hand, were not provided with the vast and profound training in Buddhist thought that formed the basis of a monk’s education, in much the same way that women in the West rarely gained access to higher education until the twentieth century. In addition, because the social status and material resources of the nunneries in Tibet were miniscule compared to the great monasteries, very few were able to reconstitute themselves in India and Nepal when the Tibetan people fled their homeland.

About the nuns

Khachoe Ghakyil Nunnery (KGN), however, is one of a new generation of nunneries established in exile in Nepal and India.  Located near the sacred Buddhist town of Boudhanath in Nepal's Kathmandu valley, KGN was founded in 1986 under the direction of Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, Spiritual Director of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT).   It is now home to some 220 Tibetan Buddhist nuns ... with a steady flow of eager applicants continuing to request admittance.

Not surprisingly, once given access to scholastic training, Tibetan nuns have shown an intense determination to excel in their studies. In fact, there is a legend that centuries ago Tibetan nuns were educated in philosophy and debate. But one day a brilliant young nun defeated a famous scholar in the debate courtyard of his own monastery. Soon there came down an edict that henceforth nuns were not to be trained in debate!

One of the primary reasons for their North American tour is to raise funds so that facilities can be expanded to meet the ever-increasing needs of these new arrivals.  (During the 1999 North American tour, the population of KGN went up by ten per cent!)

Boudhanath

There are plans at Kopan to establish a geshe program of its own (the geshe degree is the monastic equivalent of a Doctor of Divinity).  When this becomes a reality, many of the nuns at Khachoe Ghakyil expect to enroll in the geshe program - the first such program ever to include nuns as well as monks.  Until now, the opportunity to study and receive a geshe degree has been restricted to monks living at the monastic universities.  This is an especially welcome development!

Traditionally, ritual arts and scholastic study have been a prerogative of Tibetan Buddhist monks, with their ordained sisters receiving little or no training in these areas.  In the Tibetan community-in-exile, however, this is changing.  Nuns are now training in classical Tibetan debate, the performance of ritual music, the creation of sand mandalas, and other ritual arts.  This tour will be the first opportunity for most North Americans to see the accomplishments of this first generation of newly-trained young nuns.   (Please see the performance page for more details of the tour program.)

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the spiritual director of the FPMT, wrote an open letter in support of the Khachoe Ghakyil tour in the Jan-Feb 99 issue of the FPMT's Mandala Magazine.

Khachoe

is the name of the Pure Land of the Dakinis.   A dakini is a "Sky-Dancer":  a dynamic, dancing, female emanation of enlightened mind.  In The Dance of the Dakinis, the KGN nuns perform a twirling ritual of homage and praise to the divine feminine principle symbolized in the Sky-Dancers of Tibetan Buddhism.

Ghakyil

means joy-swirl or bliss-swirl, a Tibetan Buddhist symbol which resembles the yin-yang symbol of east Asia.

Ling

simply means "place" or "[Dharma] centre".

...hence the name of the nuns' new CD recording:  The Bliss Swirl of the Sky Dancers.

(Just a note:  if you have trouble pronouncing Khachoe Ghakyil, say "Catcher gah keel" instead.  That will be close enough!)

On Khachoe Ghakyil:

• To see images from the daily life of the nuns of Khachoe Ghakyil, go to Gallery 2 on this site.
• Please see the sponsorship page for information on sponsoring nuns or making a donation to KGN.
• See the Khachoe Ghakyil sponsorship page from the Kopan Monastery website.  (However, North American donors are requested to send funds via the North American sponsorship office.)
• An Australian page about Khachoe Gyakyil (rather dated).
• Himalayan Buddhist Meditation Centre's cyberShop (Kathmandu) sells incense made by the KGL nuns.

On Tibetan Buddhist nuns:

• Ven. Thubten Chödron, an American nun, examines the history of women's ordination in Buddhism in Nuns in the Buddhist Tradition: A Brief History.
• Details of the dismantling of a sand mandala by the nuns of Keydong Thukche Choling Nunnery, also of Kathmandu, during a visit to Hartford, CT in 1998.
• History in the Making is an article about the historical significance of Tibetan nuns creating sand mandalas, from the Hartford Advocate.