At that moment Padma Sambhava heaped praises upon her. His words not only reflected the glory of Yeshe Tsogyel’s accomplishment, but surprisingly revealed the superiority of female capacity to reach such an exalted state:
Yeshe Tsogyel left this earth at Zapu Peak in central Tibet on a palanquin of light shaped like an eight-petalled lotus.
As she dissolved into radiant light her disembodied voice could be heard pouring forth final words of wisdom and exaltations of joy.
For all its inspiration and soaring heights of poetry, the Yeshe Tsogyel story took place 1,300 years ago. How much of it was believable? Over the centuries it had inevitably been embossed with symbolism and exaggeration, so that to most Westerners the Sky Dancer represented more metaphor than real woman.
Certainly to Tenzin Palmo, Yeshe Tsogyel was no help at all.
’She never meant anything to me,’ she declared.
More plausible was the other great heroine of Tibetan Buddhism, Machig Lapdron. Although she also belonged to an entirely different age, having lived from 1055 to 1145 AD, she was responsible for founding one of the most important and widespread rituals still practised to this day. At a purely external level Chod is blood-curdling stuff. In essence it involves the practitioner taking him or herself off to a charnel ground or cemetery in the dead of night and there, surrounded by decomposing corpses and the stench of death, visualizing the systematic dismemberment of his or her own body right down to the eyes, brain and entrails. When it is done all the pieces are visualized being put into a pot, boiled up and offered to all beings to satisfy their every craving. While the Tibetans may have been a wild, unruly bunch with a love of swashbuckling stories, Chod contains meaning of profound significance. By these seemingly gruesome visualizations, what the meditator is doing is giving up the object of greatest attachment – the body. Chopping it up and putting it into a sacred cauldron to transform into nectar before offering it to all sentient beings thus becomes the ultimate exercise in relinquishing the ego the supreme act of selflessness.
In her day Machig Lapdron’s exceptional talents inevitably caught the attention of the patriarchs who, roused by jealousy and fear, thought to discredit her once and for all by challenging her in the very public arena of spiritual debate. This was a speciality of Tibetan Buddhism, the platform on which all the scholar-saints had to prove themselves. Their plan dramatically backfired. The story tells how Machig Lapdron made intellectual and spiritual mincemeat of her male opponents, thereby establishing her permanently as one of Tibet’s most important spiritual figures.
To the modern woman, however, Machig Lapdron is particularly interesting for the fact that she combined her spiritual career with marriage and children. Unlike most women with these appendages, however, she was not attached to them, nor did she demonstrate any particular sense of responsibility towards their upbringing. She happily wandered off to meditate in caves whenever the will for spiritual advancement took her, leaving them with their father for months on end. Among her many claims to fame is that she started her own lineage, using her children as her lineage holders. She died aged ninety-nine, passing on, as legend has it, to the land of the Dakinis.
More typical of the fate of women mystics was what befell Jomo Menmo, a simple young girl of the thirteenth century. Legend has it that she suddenly acquired profound wisdom from Yeshe Tsogyel, the Sky Dancer, in a dream, which she then imparted to all who asked her. As usual this raised the ire of the lamas, who branded her insane. Devastated, Jomo wandered the country refusing to speak but benefiting countless people in ’the secret way’ i.e. by the sheer force of her physical presence. It was success by stealth, a ploy much used by women of all cultures.
Weighty though such characters as Machig Lapdron and Jomo Menmo were, they were too distant to have any real impact on Tenzin Palmo’s life, or to help her in her own mission for female Enlightenment. There was, however, one woman who did offer some inspiration. A-Yu Khadro was a woman of her own time. The major details of her extraordinary life were taken down from the woman herself by a very living lama, Namkhai Norbu, now based in Italy. He in turn related them to Tsultrim Allione, who included A-Yu Khadro’s story in her ground-breaking book Women of Wisdom. A-Yu Khadro was a youthful-looking 113 when Namkhai Norbu met her, with long hair still black at the tips. She was also still giving teachings and conferring secret initiations.
Aside from her unusual dedication to the life of the spirit (and the fact that marriage literally made her sick), A-Yu Khadro’s story is noteworthy because of her ‘egg-shaped rock’. Apparently this object was first revealed to her in a dream, but when, after months of searching for it, she finally saw it, access was barred by a raging river in full flood. Camping on the bank, looking at the rock on the opposite side, A-Yu Khadro determined to wait until the river subsided. On the third night she dreamt that a bridge had materialized over the turbulent waters, allowing her to cross over. When she awoke she inexplicably found herself on the other side.
This most mysterious occurrence was overshadowed, however, by what happened next. Having reached her ‘egg-shaped rock’, A-Yu Khadro proceeded to enter it via a cave and there, in total darkness, lived and meditated for seven years. Paradoxically the complete black-out was necessary to practise attaining the famous ‘body of light’.
Her efforts must have paid off because when she died in 1954 aged 115 (without any signs of illness), she reportedly stayed in the meditation posture for two weeks after her external breath had stopped. Her body had not decayed – it had just become very tiny. Like Tenzin Palmo’s guru, Khamtrul Rinpoche, she had demonstrated in death that she had reached an exceptionally high level of spiritual development.
But these few women, inspirational though they may have been, were of little help to Tenzin Palmo. They lived far away and long ago. When it came to finding out what female spiritual qualities looked like she was having to make her own journey of discovery. Over the years in her cave she came to a few conclusions about women’s strengths and weaknesses: