Vicki Mackenzie - Cave in the snow. A western woman’s quest for enlightenment

The two sides of Tenzin Palmo inevitably clashed, throwing her into an inner struggle which was not to be resolved for some years. ‘On the one side I was this frivolous, fun-loving young woman and on the other I was serious and “spiritual”. I would vacillate between putting on my flared skirt and petticoats and the black stockings and flat shoes. Those two sides were at war. At the time I was frightened the frivolous side would win,’ she said. The split caused other difficulties. ‘I had friends who belonged to each side and who never mixed. One day I went to a gathering where I’d invited both sets. I arrived late, and by the time I walked through the door they were totally confused because the only thing they had in common was me and it seemed as though they were talking about entirely different people. That gave me a real sense of crisis. How am I going to resolve this, I wondered. And at that moment I heard this voice inside me again saying: “Don’t worry about it. When the time comes to renounce, you will renounce. You’re young, enjoy yourself! Then when the time comes you’ll really have something to give up.” Hearing that, I relaxed.’

She continued to date boys, go dancing and on one occasion got properly drunk on Chianti during an Italian holiday. Underneath the levity, however, she had not forgotten her quest to find a guru. On the Buddhist grapevine, she had heard of an Englishwoman called Freda Bedi who had married an Indian, become a Buddhist and started a small nunnery for Kargyupa nuns as well as a school for young reincarnated lamas in Dalhousie, in northern India. It was as good a place as any to begin her search. Tenzin Palmo duly wrote to Freda Bedi explaining that she was also Kargyu and would like to offer her services in whatever way she could, although she was only a trainee librarian and didn’t know really what she could do. Freda Bedi wrote back: ‘Please come, come.

Don’t worry, just come!’

The door was open but stepping through it was difficult. Getting to India required money, more than Tenzin Palmo could ever amass from the Hackney Library. She decided to look for a higher-paying job. She was never ambitious in the worldly sense - careers, success, personal accolades meaning nothing to her. ‘I have never been driven to prove myself in that sense,’ she said. Having made up her mind, fate or karma once again played into her hands.

‘Almost immediately I saw a job advertised at the School of Oriental and African Studies in Bloomsbury and went along for an interview with the Chief Librarian, a Mr Pearson. He had just come back from Burma and India, so I was absolutely fascinated and plied him with all these questions. He asked me if I would be willing to take library exams and I said, “No, because I’m going to go to India to help the Tibetan refugees.” With that I thought I’d lost the job. Mr Pearson then asked me when I planned to leave. “As soon as I can save up the money, in a year or two,” I replied. When I walked out of his office I saw all these other people lining up for the job. A few days later I got a phone call. It was Mr Pearson. “Well, we had such a fantastic interview I forgot to talk about things like how much money you want and the hours,” he said. “We’d be very happy to welcome you to our library. ‘"

Mr Pearson had clearly taken Tenzin Palmo’s personal mission to heart. Once she was installed in the library, he arranged for her to take Tibetan lessons at SOAS’s expense and during the library’s time with the renowned Tibetologist David Snellgrove, one of the rare people who had actually travelled to Tibet in the 1950s. These elementary lessons were to prove invaluable later when she was faced with being in an all-Tibetan community with only Tibetan texts to read. At the time, however, this unexpected boon had some dire moments. ’Snellgrove was terrifying. He used to stand in front of us and utter these crushing remarks. I used literally to shake before going into the classroom. The nice thing was he had these three Bonpo lamas (the religion from pre-Buddhist Tibet), staying with him. They were the first Tibetan lamas I ever met.’

Over the next year a few other Tibetan lamas were to trickle into England, lamas who spearheaded the first wave of the implantation of Tibetan Buddhism to the West. Tenzin Palmo, as one of the first Westerners ever to embrace the unfashionable faith, was in a perfect position to meet them. Her mother, Lee, always interested in new things and open to fresh ideas, especially in the matter of spirituality, would invite them home for lunch and dinner, and they, knowing no one in this strange land, were only too happy to mix with people who were showing some interest in Tibetan Buddhism.

Among them was Rato Rinpoche (who now runs Tibet House in New York and who starred in Bertolucci’s film The Little Buddha ) and the brilliant, charismatic and latterly notorious Choygam Trungpa. Trungpa went on to make his mark in a number of ways: he not only wrote a number of best-selling early Buddhist books including Cutting through Spiritual Materialism and Journey Without Goal , but he established the first British Tibetan retreat and meditation centre, ’Samye Ling’ in Scotland. Later he moved on to the USA where he founded the equally successful and still thriving Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, which has produced some of America’s most prominent Buddhist teachers. As well as being a high lama, an accomplished meditation master, a brilliant scholar and gifted communicator, Choygam Trungpa in his later years also became known for his unconventional and scandalous behaviour, which threw his organization into chaos.

None of this had yet happened when the nineteen-year-old Tenzin Palmo met the young and obscure Choygam Trungpa. Like the other lamas of that time he was wandering around lost and ignored, no one having any idea of the calibre of the teachers who had come among them. Tenzin Palmo happened to be at this cross-over point, ready.

’Shortly after I met him he turned to me and said: “You may find this difficult to believe, but actually back in Tibet I was quite a high lama and I never thought it would come to this but please, can I teach you meditation? I must have one disciple!"’

Tenzin Palmo was only too willing. She became a private pupil of the talented Trungpa. Now instead of having only a few books to turn to for guidance, she had a living resource. She was delighted. ‘I felt, this is the genuine thing at last, even though Trungpa was nothing like how I imagined a monk or lama should be. He wasn’t at all beautiful. He was very plain and didn’t know much English but there was something there,’ she said.

In the coming months Trungpa demonstrated some remarkable capacities. ‘On one occasion he began talking about the Tibetan lamas’ powers to “make weather", claiming that it was easy to bring about hailstorms but not so easy to prevent them once they were on their way. We were fascinated,’ recalled Tenzin Palmo. ‘The next week my mother and I went to visit him in Oxford where he was staying. It was a warm sunny day in mid-July, with a gorgeous deep-blue sky, and as we got off the coach this little black cloud came tripping along and the next minute we were in the middle of a small hailstorm right over our heads.’

On a more serious level, he was there to meet her barrage of questions and to engage in heated arguments which both of them enjoyed. He told her many things which she didn’t understand at all at the time but which made sense later on. And he gave her her first meditation lessons, teaching her how to observe the mind, how to make it relaxed but alert at the same time. Tenzin Palmo was in her element. ‘I thought it was wonderful. I always felt meditation was the essence of the path and I had great faith in Trungpa,’ she said. At the time she could not have articulated precisely why meditation was so important, nor what it did. Now after thirty years of solid practice she can explain exactly what the business of ‘looking inwards’ is all about: ‘Our mind is so untamed, out of control, constantly creating memories, prejudices, mental commentaries. It’s like a riot act for most people! Anarchy within. We have no way of choosing how to think and the emotions engulf us. Meditation is where you begin to calm the storm, to cease the never-ending chattering of the mind. Once that is achieved you can access the deeper levels of consciousness which exist beyond the surface noise. Along with that comes the gradual disidentification with our thoughts and emotions. You see their transparent nature and no longer totally believe in them. This creates inner harmony which you can then bring into your everyday life.’