’To me the special female quality (which of course many men have as well) is first of all a sharpness, a clarity. It cuts through – especially intellectual ossification. It’s very sharp and gets to the point. To me the Dakini principle stands for the intuitive force. Women get it in a flash – they’re not interested in intellectual discussion which they normally find dry and cold with minimum appeal. To women that’s the long way of going about it. They go through the back door! This reveals itself as women being more practical in their approach, less abstract and idealistic than men. They want to know, “What can we do?” They’re not entranced by theories and ideas – they want to be able to crunch it between their teeth,’ she said. ‘Of course, Prajnaparamita is female,’ she added, referring to the Mother of All Buddhas. ’She’s the Perfection of Wisdom which cuts away all our concepts and desires to make something very stable and settled. We build up our ideas. We try to make them concrete. She cuts away, cutting, cutting, cutting. She cuts things back to the bare essentials.
‘At the same time women have a nurturing, a softness, a gentleness. Women tend to be more into feeling than men, which makes it easier to develop Bodhicitta. Loving kindness is innate in women, because of the mothering factor. A mother is prepared to die for her child. That impulse can be developed towards all beings. Again it’s a matter of feeling, not intellect. These are not just useful qualities – they’re essential.’
‘Female spiritual energy is also very quick. Like Tara. You don’t have to be a great yogi to communicate with Tara. She’sthere! Like a mother she has to be very quick because she can’twait until her child has reached a certain level before she gives it her attention and compassion. She has to be right there with it – from the moment it’s born – a little wriggling worm. Whether it’s a good child or a bad child she’s there to help.
‘And then women can often attain the experience of tumo often more swiftly than men,’ she said, talking about the famous inner ’mystic heat’ that can be raised through meditation. ‘It’s something to do with our physiology. Milarepa had a lot of trouble getting heat and bliss whereas his woman disciple Rechungma got all the experience in three days. So many lamas have said that women are especially good at tumo. Not only can they generate the bliss, they’re able to handle it better as well. For myself, however, I cannot claim to be a tumo yogini. It wasn’t my main practice.’
If women had their strong points it followed that they should also have their failings. The biggest and most insidious stigma attributed to women on the spiritual path was their menstrual cycle. The Curse! This, in the eyes of the male priests in most religions throughout the world, was what rendered women unclean and therefore unsuitable canditates for higher spiritual office. Consequently, at the time when her period was upon her it was decreed in many parts of the world that a woman may not enter the sanctity of the temple. Nor may any priest touch her! This reproachment was certainly an obstacle to be overcome if her body was to incarnate the Divine. On a more profound and serious level, to the serious female practitioner her period was said to create havoc with her meditations bringing with it ‘irritability’, ‘irrationality’, ‘pain’ and PMT – all of which supposedly disturbed her concentration and peace of mind. Her period thus became one of her greatest hinderances to full spiritual development.
Tenzin Palmo, having trod the path, was having none of it. ‘Hormones were no obstacle to me! Personally I’ve never been affected by my periods and I think that all this talk about menopause and PMT is just making an issue of it. Besides, I’ve noticed that men are often more moody than women. All humans fluctuate in their moods, that doesn’t mean you have to cling to it,’ she said in her usual pragmatic way.
‘One lama did tell me, however, that women’s main problem is that they have a volatile mind. It swings up and down, which makes it more difficult to attain steadiness in meditation. But he also added that when a woman learns to check that energy she can go very fast in her practice – much quicker than men because there’s this fund of energy which has not been dissipated. In fact many, many lamas have said that once women get going on meditation their experiences are much more rapid and higher than most men’s. But again, because women weren’t into writing books or publicizing it you don’t hear about them.’
That additional major drawback, women’s craving for physical comfort, didn’t apply to Tenzin Palmo either. But she was unusual. The grim living conditions which seem an inescapable part of all advanced spiritual trainings had blighted many women seekers. Irina Tweedie, the great Sufi teacher and author of Chasm of Fire (the diary of her own spiritual path), admits to being constantly crushed by the searing heat, the noise, and the dust of the Indian village where her guru lived. He had made her give up everything she owned, including her money, which only exacerbated her misery and the discomfort-factor further.
‘We women need comfort, we need security, we need love, we need this and that. We women need, need, need. In Western society for a man to give up everything is much easier than for a woman. I know it because I did it myself, so I can speak,’ she said from her home in north London just before she died. ‘You see, the training for a woman is different. The man has to learn to control his sexuality. The woman has to overcome attachment to worldly objects. Ours is the way of detachment. A woman’s awakening will lead her to complete detachment. One of the reasons why we are so attached, of course, is because our bodies are made to have children and for that you need comfort, security and love. It is a great thing to have children but if you reach the stage where you love the whole world exactly like your children, that’s something. You don’t love your children less, oh no. But you love the whole world more.’
But Tenzin Palmo had never wanted children and was able to withstand the cold, the absence of a bed, the lack of hot water and every other creature comfort with disarming ease. She had also conquered the most insuperable difficulty of all – living in an isolated place in absolute solitude. What then were her chances, or any woman’s, of becoming another Yeshe Tsogyel? What were the odds of her ever attaining her goal?What, for that matter, were the chances of anyone, male or female, reaching the stage of omniscience, given the limitations that a human body automatically imposes?
Tenzin Palmo had no doubt on either score. ‘The Buddha proved that Enlightenment was possible,’ she said. ‘When he finally broke through all the veils of delusion his mind became vast – he remembered all of his past lives stretching back eons and eons, which he dictated to his disciples. At one point he picked up some leaves from the forest floor and asked his followers: "Which is greater – the leaves in my hand or those on the trees of the forest?” When his disciples replied: “The leaves on the trees,” the Buddha said: “The leaves in my hand represent the amount of knowledge that I can give to you.” But that didn’t mean that he didn’t get toothache. He had his personal physician for the times when he did get sick,’ she said.
‘As to the continuing controversy about whether women can get Enlightened, most of that is only due to cultural discrimination and on-going male chauvinism. Personally I have no doubts. And the benefits of having women up there among the men are obvious. For one thing women are half of the human race. So women who have got a lot of genuine practice and understanding are necessarily going to raise the level of humanity because there are so many of them,’ Tenzin Palmo stated.
Irina Tweedie agreed: ‘I personally feel that we women can reach exactly the same heights as men – providing we keep our femininity. We are all created in the image of God – God is masculine and feminine both, so we have all capacities, all abilities in us. It is in the female nature to be powerful. The problem is that men are afraid of powerful women, it’s the competition! But I don’t think women are! Thousands of years ago there was a matriarchal society then the pendulum swung back (too much in my opinion) – now women are ascending once more. The result will be a world which is more balanced, more full of love. There will not be so much hardness in it.’