“There is only one thing to understand—Knowing the one that frees all, sustain the natural face of self-awareness.”

— Guru Rinpoche

After living on spit and grit for two years in the Himalayas, returning to America in May 1998 was an intense shock. Kalu Yangsi’s father, Lama Gyalsten, who I had last seen at his precious son’s monastery in Salugara, India, told me matter-of-factly that I wouldn’t be able to go back home after living for so long in Asia.

American flag, neon lights, Times Square area, 2020 NYC (Photo: N. L.Drolma)

Lama Gyalsten was too right. The midtown Manhattan skyscrapers erected in my absence seemed ostentatious to me and out of place. But it was I, swathed in maroon robes among tourists and the business lunch crowd at a swanky, new public atrium who was “out of place,” not the soaring new chrome and steel; across a building’s facade, script in neon lights proclaimed:

Too Much and Never Enough

The huge advertisement extolling greed and discontent didn’t lure me to investigate further. I was much less the New Yorker now for having lived in the mountains of Nepal, among villagers who sell handwoven baskets, plastic ware, batteries, sugar cookies, and steaming cups of chai for a livelihood.

A view from my tsamkhang in Pharping, Nepal 2008 (Photo by N. L. Drolma)

I didn’t know what to make of the oversized fat cars that looked like blimps on wheels, crowding the narrow streets downtown. This was my first time seeing SUVs. As for the ads in the subway cars, I couldn’t figure out what they were selling, that’s how divorced I was from the cultural cues. It felt strange to be back in my apartment amid the ambient luxury of New York — a far cry from the raw simplicity of the monasteries and Himalayan villages where rubber flip-flops and a few

paved roads were the norm. I had to relearn attention to traffic lights. Cars seemed to come out of nowhere. In Asia, I didn’t have a phone, mailbox, or kitchen of my own. Now back on West 12th Street, I took a long look at my designer-tiled kitchen floor, waved a shy hello to the stove and fridge, and sighed.

I needed to re-adjust slowwwwly.

One afternoon while sitting in Abingdon Square Park just steps off my apartment building, I found myself staring at a homeless man gripping a camouflaged bottle of booze. The man mirrored back to me the extent to which I felt like an outsider in my hometown. What might I take hold of that could make me feel once more part of the city and attuned to its pulse? I had no plans, no job, no sense of community. Old friends in the city felt more like strangers to me now. The renunciant Buddhist lifestyle effectively rendered me a social misfit. My stomach somersaulted and fear leaned into me, claiming my seat on the park bench.

It was timely and cheering to hear from a dharma sister in Nepal. Her email included a long poem by Patrul Rinpoche in which the 19th c. enlightened vagabond—talking to himself—nailed me with four lines:

“Worldly and religious work is the province of gentlemen.

Patrul, old boy, that’s not for you...

When you are without any worldly or religious obligations,

Don’t keep on longing to acquire some!”

Fifth Avenue & 59th Street, New York City, 2023 (Photo by N. L. Drolma)

But, practically speaking, could I sustain this attitude of a kusulu in New York, a city that seems at times to be fueled by untrammeled ambition?

At a 1998 spring weekend teaching in Hong Kong, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche spoke cogently of the “futality” of practicing the eight worldly dharmas—attachment to gain, praise, pleasure, and fame; aversion to loss, blame, pain, and obscurity. “Futality,” though yet to be found in Webster’s dictionary, is an apt melding of futility and fatality. (Tibetan lamas sometimes coin words in broken English that articulate in a wonderfully fresh way what we westerners might otherwise fail to hear because of our habitual pattern of easy or selective listening.) Preoccupation with worldly concerns will undermine anyone’s intention to wake up to their wisdom nature. It was fitting for me to receive this teaching en route to America. The challenge was clear.

View of the Freedom Tower and financial district from Hudson River Greenway, West Village, NYC 2023 (Photo by N. L Drolma)

I had a significant mortgage on my West Village condo and didn’t know how I was going to put food on the table, let alone meet the bank’s monthly demand. What kind of job could I get as a Buddhist nun after quitting my career to study, engage in formal practice and solitary retreat?

The condominium carried a wealth of blessings: highly esteemed Tibetan masters had previously visited, taught, and resided on the premises. During a week-long residency in '93, Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche told me pointedly—out of the blue—not to sell. I revered Nyoshul Khenpo and his unsolicited counsel served as my lodestar in the years that ensued. To put the condo on the market would have trashed my dharma practice and enmeshed me in a web of activity (and financial details) that I had little taste for or savvy. So, without family to turn to for assistance or connections to snag a healthy paycheck, I borrowed against my credit reserve, maxing out my credit card to cover mortgage payments. I just trusted that things would work out. (Ah, that little word “trust.” It’s powerrrful.)

A new acquaintance who owned an Asian antiques gallery (and was a student of Dodrupchen Rinpoche) understood I was short of funds. He hired me part-time to answer his office phone and take messages. That little bit of cash went for simple groceries. I didn’t eat much anyway. The job was a sweet kindness because the phone rang infrequently and allowed me time to study Buddhist texts.

My circumstances underscored the practicality of a mind that wants for nothing in particular. I was born into New York’s suburban white middle class. Was it really possible for someone like me to hone a capacity for no preference? Taming of habitual desires would require not only an indefatigable sense of humor, but tenacity too.

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Yeshe Tsogyal (Victorious Ocean of Wisdom). Gouache and ink (on wood) by N. L. Drolma

“Are you a monk?” The first time this question was put to me in New York City, I replied matter-of-factly that I was a Tibetan Buddhist nun. I wore my robes daily and it was my maroon attire and buzz haircut that inspired people to stop me on the street and pop a few questions. The stranger paused, looking puzzled—as if I had recited The Tale of the Jabberwocky—and then said, “Gee, I didn’t know there were nuns in Tibetan Buddhism.” I’d have a tidy stash of cash today had I collected $1.99 every time someone asked me if I was a monk.

A slight variation on that question was: “Are you a monk or…?” More often than not, I’d simply nod “yes” instead of uttering the three-letter word for re-nun-ci-ant. To live as a Tibetan Buddhist nun in the city was more than outside the box. Once when I was asked outright: “Are you a monk, or what?” I replied,

Oh, I’m an orwhat!”

“What?” the gentleman countered.

“An orrrwhatt,” I said, proudly. Then I spoke frankly to the stranger, admitting that nuns in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition are mostly a faceless, unsung, and unsupported population.

Khenpo Ngakchung (Color enhanced vintage photo. Source: Saraswati Devi Facebook post, April 16, 2023)

Facelessness guarantees hardship. The good news, however, is that all hardship can be used by Buddhist practitioners as fuel for spiritual attainment.

I had no idea ordination would push me close to living as a social outcast. It is challenging to stand alone. In A Guide to Words of My Perfect Teacher, Khenpo Ngakchung says, “To live willingly as a social outcast is the fearless conduct of a supreme practitioner.” But my fearless lion’s roar was sometimes more a rabbit’s pink wet nose and silent quiver.

Precious Buddhist texts exhort us to engender such confidence and trust in the dharma that one is prepared to die in retreat—or on a deserted street like a stray dog. Was I willing to die in retreat or like a stray dog? Willing, may be... but ready? No. Nor was I ready to revive allegiance to New York City. Instead, I headed northwest to Whistler, Canada for a six-month solitary retreat at Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche’s center “Sea to Sky” with views of a glacial lake and the crystalline jagged peaks of the British Columbian Mountains.

~~~~~~~~

En route to retreat in Canada, I booked a stop-over in a suburb of Dallas to visit with my dharma sister Barbara and her three cats: Khyentse, Shambhala, and Miss Peaches. Barbara’s enthusiasm for dharma practice was bubbling over.

On my arrival, Barbara asked if I knew of Tulku Thubten based in California; he was scheduled to give a talk at her local bookstore. We set off without delay as I had met the lama at the “Nang Jang” teachings bestowed by Thinley Norbu Rinpoche in '96 and sensed Barbara would connect with him readily. I brought rainbow-colored bread as an offering. (Rainbows signal auspiciousness in Tibetan Buddhism.) That I found such a magical loaf at the local bakery tickled me. I encouraged Barbara to invite the lama for lunch.

Tulku Thubten appeared on Barbara’s doorstep some days later, carrying a bagful of laundry. Barbara asked him if he would like the maid to wash his clothes. “Yes, thank you,” said Tulku Thubten.

“I’m the maid,” Barbara replied good-naturedly, slinging the laundry bag over her shoulder. We proceeded with lunch and Barbara was charmed. I knew she would appreciate Tulku Thubten’s sense of humor, especially after hearing her explanation days earlier of why a children’s stuffed plaything that resembled a huge worm was placed on her shrine. Barbara confessed matter-of-factly that in a past life she had been a worm at Shechen Monastery.

(Did I dare tell Barbara that I had been a high-flying bird over Kathok Monastery?)

Perhaps because of her previous incarnation as a worm, Barbara was quite uncomfortable with the swarm of dead locusts populating the sidewalk and parking lot of the town supermarket. She told me she had taken great precautions to make sure no locusts enter her “dream house,” for her cherished home was, as she put it, a dream of hers come true. The sign posted on her front door said as much:

Happy Everything!

I noticed a few locusts either dead or snoozing soundlessly in Barbara’s garage but refrained from comment. Later that afternoon, while chopping vegetables in preparation for our dinner, Barbara politely inquired about the “esoteric practice” she saw me performing by the pool in the wee morning hour: what were those mudras?

N. L. Drolma poolside, Dallas, Texas 1999 (Photo by B. Small)

“Oh, the Ugly Duckling ritual hand gestures!” I chuckled in appreciation of her innocent query. “I was rehearsing a musical offering for our next meeting with Tulku Thubten.” In an attempt to recall the lyrics to a children’s song about a shy ugly duckling who turns into a beautiful swan, I fell into the dance steps and hand gestures of a five-year-old, which is about how old I was when I loved to sing and dance to the Danny Kaye recording of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale.

On what was to have been my last night in Texas, I was greeted by a big black locust sitting in the middle of the gleaming white floor of the guest bathroom. My first thought was: Do nothing, so I crawled back into bed. But when my head hit the pillow, I thought Barbara is going to freak out if she finds this bug in her dream house. I threw back the bedcovers and tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen for a jar in which to trap the locust. So many glass jars, and no lids! For a split second, pristine clarity arose: This was all just a dream and I was sleep-walking!

I tip-toed back upstairs and managed to trap the bug in a jar without clipping its wings or legs. (A thin scrap of cardboard sufficed as a lid.) To remove the locust from the spotlessly clean, white-carpeted, happy premises, I headed back downstairs to the sliding glass doors that exited out to the pool. Dammit, the doors were locked tight! I turned about, and made my way quietly past the kitchen, past Barbara’s bedroom, and through the living room to the front door of the house. I jiggled the doorknob... BRRRREeeeeeiiiiiiiiiNNNG!!! The house alarm system went off, loudly. The pain in my ears made me see stars. I dropped the jar, my heart was in my teeth, the locust scuttled across the living room, and Barbara’s bad back went out, way, way out, from bolting upright in bed at the terrifying sound of the alarm. My easygoing friend was furious with me. First thought, best thought. Why didn’t I let the innocent locust just sit like a yogi on the bathroom floor!

Are You a Monk or What?

Happy Everything!

Short Hair and Love in Sikkim