c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Kathy Hoffman and her son were standing in front of the Washington Monument when they spotted a group of sightseers with shaved heads, their bodies draped in maroon robes.

“Are you men Buddhist?” Hoffman asked.

“We’re Tibetan Buddhist nuns,” Tenzin Dechen replied.

“May I ask you a question?” Hoffman continued, unfazed. “This may sound dumb. But every time I see Buddhists they seem so at peace. Everything seems to upset me. Can I learn more about your religion?”

It wasn’t the first time that Tenzin Dechen and the nine nuns with whom she was traveling had been asked about serenity or been mistaken for, as one nun put it, monks with soprano voices. Tibetan monks have been coming to the United States for years, and many Western Buddhists have embraced the Dalai Lama as their spiritual leader.

The nuns, by contrast, are relatively unknown in this country in part because they began visiting only recently. They came this time to attend the Tibetan Freedom Concert and a rally at the U.S. Capitol, and to testify before Congress about religious repression in Tibet just days before President Clinton’s trip to China.

In Tibet and northern India, however, the nuns are increasingly recognized as ardent campaigners for Tibetan independence, said John Ackerly, president of the International Campaign for Tibet. And as they become better educated in Buddhist philosophy, Western observers say, Tibetan nuns will likely emerge as spiritual teachers in both the East and West.

A 1996 Human Rights Watch/Asia report says while there are only about 1,200 to 1,600 Buddhist nuns in Tibet, they make up a disproportionate 25 percent of the Tibetan prison population due to their pro-independence activities. Estimates of the number of nuns are rough, said Ackerly, because while hundreds of nunneries have been destroyed since the Chinese took control of Tibet in 1959, an undetermined number of nuns still reside in remote nunneries beyond the scope of Chinese authorities.

Tenzin Dechen and the nine nuns visiting the United States are among the approximately 1,000 nuns who fled Tibet because of repression and for greater educational opportunities in Dharamsala, India, home of the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile.

Delek Yangkyi, 24, was a nomad tending yaks in the mountains when at age 16 she visited the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and met nuns for the first time.

“I told my mother, `I feel like a nun,”’ she said. Her mother insisted she wait a year before leaving Tibet. So she cut her hair and wore long robes until she could make the 26-day trek to Dharamsala to enter the Dolma Ling Nunnery.

Ngawang Pelmo was just 12 when she entered the Gari Nunnery north of Lhasa. The most famous nunnery in Tibet, its nuns in 1987 were the first to demonstrate nonviolently for Tibetan independence. The Tibetan Nuns’ Project, a private aid group, reports that at least 40 Gari nuns are now in prison, where, former prisoners say, nuns have been beaten and raped with electric cattle prods.

Ngawang Pelmo’s friend, Ngawang Sangdrol, 21, was sentenced to three years in prison at age 16 for demonstrating. Such actions, notes the Tibetan Nuns’ Project, are often small gestures of defiance: a Tibetan flag waved in the marketplace; a poster put up at night.

Six years were added to Ngawang Sangdrol’s sentence, Amnesty International reported, after she and 13 nuns recorded pro-independence songs on a tape recorder smuggled into the prison. And her sentence was doubled after the tapes were circulated. The Body Shop, the British-based cosmetics and toiletries firm, recently launched a campaign for her release.

“It is very sad because her father and brother are also in prison,” said Ngawang Pelmo. “Her mother died of sadness.”

Ngawang Pelmo eventually went to Dolma Ling, one of two new nunneries built by the Tibetan Nuns’ Project to house the overflow of nuns in exile and a nuns’ institute offering courses in general studies and Buddhist philosophy, a curriculum the Dalai Lama strongly supports.

Nuns and monks perform most of the same rituals, but nuns take fewer vows at ordination and generally receive less respect in the Tibetan community. Monks visiting the United States, for example, usually stay in hotels, while nuns double up on futons in private homes.

Still, it is primarily Western practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism who advocate full ordination for women. Tibetan nuns, said Lobsang Dechen, 37, co-director of the Tibetan Nuns’ Project, are more concerned with improving nuns’ education at institutes like Dolma Ling’s.

The 125 women at Dolma Ling Nunnery gather each morning at 5:30 for chanting. Classes in English and Tibetan and general studies are held from 7:00 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. From 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., the nuns study Buddhist philosophy.

In the past, nuns focused on meditation, ritual and a basic understanding of the Buddha’s four noble truths: We experience life as unsatisfying; the cause of unhappiness is desire; the cessation of desire brings freedom from suffering; the path to freedom is eight-fold and includes right intention, speech, action and livelihood.

Now more nuns take a seven-year bachelor’s course that concentrates on The Perfection of Wisdom, a scripture about the path to understanding reality that frees people from suffering. And some nuns, like Tenzin Dechen, go on to more advanced Buddhist studies.

Sunday is free for visiting family and friends. And twice a month the Dolma Ling nuns gather in the dining room to watch TV, Delek Yangkyi’s favorite entertainment.

“It’s my nature to like TV,” said Delek Yangkyi, her cherubic face breaking into a smile. Like the other nuns, she laughs easily and often, their girlish teasing a striking contrast to their solemn chanting.

During her first morning in the United States, she caught re-runs of “Chips” on her host’s TV, before joining the others on a sightseeing trip through Washington. “Here all the people are very busy,” she said as she peered out the van window. “In India, people move slowly in groups. Here they are alone.”

The younger nuns shoved one another playfully. Delek Yangkyi smacked her gum and passed around a green plastic bug. But in an hour they were a somber group in long robes walking the halls of the United States Holocaust Museum. They clicked their tongues in horror at the film footage of emaciated prisoners, and nodded at a photograph of a guard beating a man with a metal pipe.

“That is like Tibet,” Tenzin Dechen said.

As they entered the museum’s Hall of Remembrance, the women conferred and then sat on the floor to chant in front of an eternal flame commemorating the dead. Visitors stood silently as the nuns’ voices echoed through the pavilion.

“It’s a prayer for world peace composed by His Holiness (the Dalai Lama),” Tenzin Dechen explained afterward. “We dedicated it to all the people who died so that in the next life they should have much happiness, and we continue to pray for all people who suffer.”

Buddhist teaching also heals the nuns, said Lobsang Dechen, particularly those who have endured torture.”We believe in impermanence. If happiness is impermanent, unhappiness is also momentary.” Without such understanding, she said, “half our population would be crazy.”

DEA END LIEBLICH