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Chandra Chiara Ehm, "Queens Without a Kingdom Worth Ruling: Buddhist Nuns and the Process of Change in Tibetan Monastic Communities" (Vajra Books, 2024)
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Podcast Host
Hello and welcome to the New Books Network New Books in Buddhist Studies podcast. I'm here today with Chandra Kiara Aim, a postdoctoral researcher at the Ecole Franciste de Extreme Orient and the Krakow Research center. She received her PhD in a double degree program in Buddhist Studies at the LMU in Munich and in anthropology at the ecolepractique des Haut Etudes in Paris. She employs multiple academic methods, notably both philology and qualitative ethnographic work. I hope I got the pronunciations right there. So we're here today because she just published the wonderful Queens Without a Kingdom Worth Buddhist Nuns and the Process of Change in Tibetan Monastic Communities, which is a fascinating study of Buddhist nuns lives and a study in the Tibetan Buddhist nunnery of Kacho Gyakyo Ling in Kathmandu. This book offers a rare perspective on life in this community because she herself was a member in this monastery for nearly a decade. The book explores nuns lives, their studies, their aspirations. In the convent. We see how young girls and women become nuns. What a Day in the Life is Like and how their scholastic study is structured, as well as the obstacles that the nuns must navigate. It also explores how recent changes in technology, demographics and secular education are continuing to transform monastic life. I found the book a rich and extremely readable blend of ethnographic detail, historical and textual background, and incisive analysis. And I'm particularly interested, even though I focus mostly on pilgrimage. I got my start living with nuns in Zanskar at Kato Drublangompa in Karsha. So I'm really excited to share Dr. AM's work with students and will definitely be adding sections of this book to my syllabus. So really excited to talk with Chandra today. Thank you so much for coming. And I'll start with our typical opening question. How did you get into this field and to this research?
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Chandra Kiara Aim
That's a. Yeah, nice question to start with, of course. And there's a romantic story that I can offer. I was at a UNESCO conference in Mustang, in the Valley of Mustang in Nepal.
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Podcast Host
And.
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Chandra Kiara Aim
And I was an interpreter from Tibetan to English and from English to Tibetan. And I was supposed to be interpreting for Charles Ramboll, who was also assisting this conference and still a nun at the time. And he encouraged me to pursue next to my monastic studies in the Kishima curriculum, also an academic curriculum, Etole Pratique des Hautetudes in France in a wonderful degree program I wasn't aware of. And I initially thought that was not a good idea at all and let it rest for some time. And then I thought about it again, reading research on nuns, on Tibetan Buddhist nuns that looked extremely far from what I was living myself in the convent. And I thought there is a gap there between the actual research that was already published and the experiences I was able to collect in the nunnery itself. And hence I reached out back to Professor Ramble to see if it was possible to integrate such research in this degree program. He offered me to join and that's how it started.
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Podcast Host
Wow, that's so exciting. And yeah, there's so much interest in women and men's lives and yet so a relative lack of it in the published record. So I really appreciate the perspective that you're able to offer with this book. So just to get some listeners situated, let's get some basic information out and then we can dive into the more interesting theoretical questions. So the research centers around your experiences in Khachogyakiling, which we'll get into more. So what is this place? Where is it located and how is it, you know, situated in terms of the broader Buddhist world.
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Chandra Kiara Aim
So Kajukagiling, or also called Kopan Nanui, it's the sister nanui of Kopan monastery located close to Bodanada in the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal. Koban Monastery is fairly famous in the Western world because it has a traditional monastery, but also a part of the monastery that is dedicated to teaching Westerners in Buddhist philosophy, but also in Buddhist practice. And this monastery has a sister nunnery since 1994, Kaju Kaguling, where the nuns of that communities were accommodated. It started fairly small and it grew very quickly into a big nunnery. When I joined, we were about 450 in 2008. And it's one of the five monasteries in the Gilu tradition in exile that offers the full Gishima curriculum. And we're also the first gishamers then graduated in 2012. But it's really center of higher learning for women, which is still an exceptional. Yeah. Circumstance even today.
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Podcast Host
And you talk in the book about how part of what motivated you to be. To join the community and be interested is that you saw a group of nuns debating in 2007, so a year before you joined, and that they struck you as queens. So what does that term mean for you and how does that, you know, why did you give the book this title of Queensland?
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Chandra Kiara Aim
There's, of course, romantic notions to Buddhist monastics, especially for us who aren't, you know, indigenously Tibetan Buddhists. But there's also a reverence, a strength, a certain sense of dedication, and, yeah, a humble and yet very altruistic outlook these women have. And this is a blend which, yeah, I found deeply inspiring meeting them first during the exam sessions, but also meeting them again. And those are qualities, I think, that are often reflected in people who lead bigger groups of people such as queens. And I would not want to call them anything else. I think that's a very befitting term for those women who have such strength in that system to practice.
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Podcast Host
Yeah.
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Chandra Kiara Aim
This.
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Podcast Host
Referring to these women that you, you know, served and learned and lived alongside as queens. But you also, you know, the fundamental tension that you express in the title of the book, Queens Without a Kingdom Worth Ruling, is that you note that these queens lack what you would imagine a queen to have by rights, you know, a kingdom to rule over. And you frame the book by talking about how instead of I kingdom that these nuns possess, they face various obstacles related to their position lower down in the social hierarchy. And so for our audiences that might imagine that Buddhism is free of the sexism that people might feel in their own situation. So this might come as a surprise. Can you explain more about why, as you say on page three, the nuns are at the bottom of the social ladder?
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Chandra Kiara Aim
For sure, as to the title, I mean, one would expect that a queen has a queendom or there is a kingdom that she is in charge of. And that's the interesting part, and that's the question you just highlighted. Tibetan Buddhist nuns, and I'm speaking in the context of Tibetan exile here, are living in very male institutions. Even the convents, which are female institutions, full of women, obviously are male institutions. They are led by men. Abbots are, in most cases, men. The people who take the decision makers, the monastic officials, are not women, but men. And henceforth, one can't say these are feminine communities, and it's very difficult to coin them queendoms henceforth. And that brings us to this, what you just mentioned. In terms of hierarchies, of course, when we think of Buddhist communities, we think that we have on top monks and nuns, ordained men and women, and then we have the lay communities, lay women, laymen with their appropriate vows, and it's a harmonious community. But in the Tibetan Buddhist context, that is definitely so interior. But in practice, you have on top of society, you have the monks, the learned monks that are revered very much so then you have men that come straight after. Then you have lay women. And it's at the very bottom that, traditionally speaking, nuns were allocated. They were servants of the families, servants of society, servants of the monks. And despite their rise in status due to their studies, I mean, I wouldn't be sure. One could say that this social order, next to the doctrinal order, is recalibrated yet.
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Podcast Host
Yeah. And so part of what informs the writing in the book is the fact that you were a nun in this community for nearly a decade. And, you know, sometimes we might imagine that a scholar is supposed to study from this neutral, lofty, uninvolved position. But you argue eloquently in the book that this is not always desirable and that, in fact, you know, different perspectives enrich our anthropological study. So how do you think about your role as a researcher and then also a participant in monastic life?
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Chandra Kiara Aim
That's a very good question. And I think the answer has to be very specific to monastic communities. I mean, that's very different if you do research on lay communities. I mean, monastic communities are sometimes compared to military communities that are extremely tightly closed off to outsiders. There's a very clear distinction between inside the monastic community and outside the monastic communities. And the narratives that are discussed within are not to be aired out, and vice versa, you know, and vice versa to a certain extent. So when I read the research on nuns, I felt that there were wonderful pieces of work and wonderful research outputs, but oftentimes they wouldn't really echo the voices of the nuns themselves, but they would echo the voices the nuns represented for the public outside, which is really true. Pair of shoes. And henceforth, what I tried to do, having been inside the walls of a convent at that time, is to gather the research data that really echoes the voices of the nuns. And then with the necessary distance, I tried to make room for the insights that this research data provided and then respectfully framed my conclusions around it, as every researcher does. But the framing of conclusions and the framing of my analysis wasn't clouded. I felt by the collecting of research data within the convent, which was exceptionally fortunate circumstances for me, that I was within the convent with the trust of my fellow nuns.
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Podcast Host
Yeah. And there's these richly observed details where you, in the book, talk about moments where either nuns or sometimes monks in the community say things to outsiders and then say quite different things to insiders at sometimes that, you know, were you to have this exclusively outsider perspective, you'd be missing the interesting fact that presentation and reality can sometimes be different, and then also, as you say, the voices of the nuns in that community. So we've touched on this a little bit, but you mentioned being maybe dissatisfied with the existing literature on nuns. How would you say that your book either differs from, adds to, you know, expands on previous approaches to the topic of women and nuns in Tibetan Buddhism.
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Chandra Kiara Aim
That really neatly reconnects to the question you just posed before. There is a wonderful corpus of research on nuns. I mean, there's no critique from my side to that. I mean, if you think of the works of Nicola Schneider, of Mitra Harkonnen, of Kim Gutschoff, Elizabeth Dougal, or also Charlene Markley, they have added important pieces of the mosaic to research on Tibetan Buddhist nuns. What I felt was missing and what I really wanted to contribute to this wonderful corpus of research was this research that centered the voices of the nuns. And for me, it was a very clear realization. It took about two and a half years until the nuns began to speak to me. I was living within the convent. People were speaking to me all the time. But at one point, after two and a half years, there was a clear shift where talking wasn't outside talking, but inside talking. And it changed everything. My whole perception of the place of the structures of the place. And I felt that this inside knowledge that I had due to being a member of the place, but also due to my long stay within the place, was something that beautifully contributed to the corpus of research on Tibetan Buddhist land is already out there by these researchers. I mentioned, yeah, that it takes two.
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Podcast Host
And a half years for people to feel like, okay, she's not just sort of dropping in for a summer or something of that nature. So about this nunnery, you notice that or you explain in the book how there's various kinds of monasteries and nunneries in Tibetan Buddhist life. What are these different kinds and where does you know the nunnery at Koppan, Koch Yakiling, where does it fit into this picture?
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Chandra Kiara Aim
That's an interesting question as well. And it's something that you know, as you well know, as so often in Tibetan cultures, one can't really press it neatly into a category or into categories. But I was very appreciative to pair queerness, categorization and characterization of monastic life. He provides us with three categories. The national monasteries, as he calls it, the village monasteries and the hermitages. And this categorization went parallel to the characterization provided by Jonathan Samuels, who doesn't provide three categories, but two, the institution based and the personality based. And these categories really help to. To understand how monastic institutions are structured in Tibetan Buddhism. If you think of the convents, they're mostly of the same category. They are not national monasteries because it's not the Tibetan government that decides on the leading figures in convents. And so they mostly fall into the categories of either village monastery, the category of per kuerna or personality based monasteries. Monasteries, as Jonathan Samuels calls it. They're mostly in a place that is either locally structured or structured around a lama or religious dignitary that is in charge of a place. And this is the case with Kajakaguling, where Kupan Monastery and Kupan Nunnery are both part of the network founded and at the time led by lamasopolucci. So it was very much a personality based institution.
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Podcast Host
And so you describe how the monastery is founded first within the broader, you know, diaspora Tibetan community, and then somewhat later, but then quite successfully, the nunnery gets founded. Can you tell us more about how this nunnery gets established?
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Chandra Kiara Aim
Yeah, I think the story of the founding of Kaju Kaguling is characteristic and yet not a totally outsider case. It was first the monastery that was established, Kupan Monastery, where Lamaishe and Lamazopramiche gathered around them a group of nuns, and things were going well, and so as things were going well, there were also nuns that wanted to join their community. And for a couple of years there was a group of nuns that lived together with the monks at Kopanames Cuban Monastery. And Lamazo Bermude at one point invited Annie Zinla, a nun that was staying at the monastery, to raise the funds and to raise the possibility, in fact, to buy land and create a community for the nuns to stay, to practice and to study. And that's what she did with quite a lot of hardship. It wasn't quite in fashion at the time to establish a nunnery, and the support was rather limited. She really went out of her way, locally and globally, to raise the funds. Then in 1994, the first two buildings of the monastery were established and officially inaugurated. And hence there was a parallel structure to this community, a women's convent and a man's monastery.
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Podcast Host
And so once the nunnery gets established, people start to join, and I really appreciate it. In the book, you talk about the various reasons why women and girls would be interested in joining the nunnery, as well as the process of recruitment, which I'll admit, before reading the book, I hadn't really thought too much about. So I appreciated that aspect. So the book provides this explanation of how people become nuns, why, how they choose a tutor, how they even pick a roommate. And I wish we had time to get into all of it. But just very briefly, what is involved in someone joining the nunnery? How do they become Anan?
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Chandra Kiara Aim
One has to, you know, as a. Before we go into the answer to this question, one has to know that the recruitment process changed, stacked in the last decade. When I joined Ananu in 2008, there were waiting lists. We were more people than beds per room. To join a nunnery was a privilege. One had to be on waiting list, one had to be on a waiting year. In certain nunneries, one had to wait one year between signing up and joining the actual place. It was a. It wasn't for everybody. It was really a privilege. And today nunneries and monasteries for that matter, rather aggressively have recruitment strategies that are quite out of the box to find anybody that still wants to join their monastic communities. They don't hand pick, they don't have entrance exams anymore. This has really shifted. But at a time where, where I joined in 2008 and where things were still going by the old order, if one wants to call it that way, one entered the nunnery with a guarant, with a person that guaranteed for you as a suitable candidate. And this person would vouch for you in terms of character, but oftentimes for you being a secure candidate, and provide him or herself or by way of the family of the candidate, also the funds to offer a puja or village ceremony with an offering to the whole community as a sign of auspiciousness for the candidate to enter. And then the abbot of the nunnery would make a divination, a dice divination, to individuate the person that was in charge within the convent for the new recruit. And this person within the nunnery or in the convent would then be the tutor, the very personal tutor for this candidate for the years to come. And this was a very intimate process to a certain extent. There was a very close bond between the postulant joining the nunnery and the studio that would really lead her to administrative processes, to financial processes, but also to spiritual and emotional processes within the nunnery. And it was a very elaborate set of rituals and of steps the postulant would go through. And very much there was a lot of reverence to it, a lot of pride, a lot of cultural respect for somebody that took this choice to join a nunnery. And this was something very beautiful to witness and to document as well.
- [22:24]
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Chandra Kiara Aim
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Chandra Kiara Aim
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Chandra Kiara Aim
Yeah.
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Podcast Host
You spend a good amount of time in the book describing the changes that happened both, you know, pre 2008, when, you know, there's more nuns wanting to join than the community can really hold, and when recruitment steps up because there's fewer and fewer people wanting to join. What are some of the factors that lead to that decline in aspiring postulants?
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Chandra Kiara Aim
But maybe the most important factor was the closing of the borders from China and Tibet to India. And the Tibetan exile people wouldn't just come out of Tibet anymore. And those who did were more and more interested in the secular education with a perspective to make a life and make a successful life out of Tibet itself. But generally speaking, the monastic sphere is something that has been shaken and troubled in terms of its purpose. And this is something we well know in the West. This happened way to us. But it's to a certain extent happening now also in the Tibetan Buddhist world. And the nunneries and monasteries are trying to respond to these critiques and to this question of the identity. But as oftentimes in religious institutions, the changes are slower than the changes of societies around them. And so this is happening there as well, that they can't respond as quickly as they might wish to the requests. And then, of course, another factor is that the distance between the religious lives and the lives within the world are getting less and less. When I joined the nunnery in 2008, the walls around the convent were actual walls. We were in the walls for the whole week, sometimes weeks, without stepping out or getting in touch to anybody, you know, with the phone. It wasn't always possible. And, you know, since 2012 or 13, when 3G or mobile Internet came about, so to speak, these walls remained there, physically speaking. But you could connect to the outside world much easier and much more. And that really changed the core of monastic living to a certain extent.
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Podcast Host
Yeah, it's fascinating teaching in the university context how, you know, we're not that old, but how much has changed so rapidly about digital technologies and the capacity for separation from the outside world, or, you know, my college students ability to sit in a 50 minute lecture without pulling out their phones and you can see them, you know, so it's interesting the way, you know, these shifts in technology are affecting all of these things across the world. So I appreciated that perspective on shifts in monastic life. So let's say someone has, you know, a nun has successfully joined the nunnery. What does her day look like? You know, from getting up. What does she do all day? What does a nun do all day?
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Chandra Kiara Aim
Well, again, before the Internet happened, day and night wasn't strictly separated in a nunnery. And that was really to a certain extent the beauty of monastic life. Because this is clearly not something that happens to the ordinary lay person, that this blend of night and day. I remember when I would get. I get up really fairly early, I would say sometimes at 4 or 4:30, but I was never the first. I would get up and I would step outside to wash my face. And there was always a humming of nuns reciting and memorizing prayers. And that was something that really plunged everybody into a certain context, into a certain environment. It was the odd. You know, you would hear it, you would hear it, you would see it, you would smell it, there would be the smell of incense. When you wake up, you hear people wearing monastic robes. You would hear this humming of prayers and texts. And it was very immersive to a certain extent. So waking up, you know, people would wake up at all times of the night, not at all times, I guess, but starting from 3 o', clock, I guess. And then officially the nuns life would start at around 5. There was the gong that was going, that was the official wake up for the prayers. And they would spend several hours in prayers until about 8 o'.
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Podcast Host
Clock.
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Chandra Kiara Aim
Breakfast would be served within the prayers, again, quite a big chunk of time. Again, an immersive experience. Of course, if one spends three hours in prayers, it's quite something. And then there would be a short break. And then nuns would give their memorization exams. They would be examined on what they memorized in terms of scriptures the day before. And then there would be classes, secular and religious classes, until lunch. There would be a lunch break and then there would be a very holy siesta. People would just hibernate after lunch. And then the nunnery took traction again around tea time, when the tea bell rang. Then people would gather with their teacups around tea and snacks. And then the big first debate session would start at 5 in the afternoon after afternoon classes, and that would be held as well. And from 5 to 6:30, then you would have dinner, soup to warm you, but also to give you strength for the quite long afternoon program or an evening program. And then you would have another set of prayers from 6:30 to 7:30, and then from 7:30 to 8:30 you would debate. And then you would have another set of memorization sessions until late night. And this is also something that shifted with the Internet. I mean, there was an open end at that time, people would memorize until the last person that would go to sleep was very close to the first person getting up. And you could hear. You would fall asleep with this humming again in the background. But this changed starkly. I remember the last years that I was there, the bell would go at 10. This is the official end of the day bell. And people were just gone. Yeah.
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Podcast Host
And so two of the key elements in that schedule that you talk about are ritual. The nuns maintain an extensive ritual calendar, prayers, ceremonies, but then also this scholastic, this study, memorization debate, part of the curriculum. So I'll focus first on that ritual side, like, what are some of these ritual duties for the nuns and what are the things that they're doing to keep the ritual life of the nunnery going?
- [31:04]
Chandra Kiara Aim
A ritual is really, really central to Tibetan Buddhist monasticism, but particularly also to female Buddhist monasticism. That's what nuns are supposed to do. And henceforward, this is not something you cut down on. There's still this perception that nuns are not really supposed to study. That's the man's job. If somebody has to uphold the tradition, it's the man and not the woman. So it's more the nun's job to be of service and to perform prayers and rituals that are of service. And that's also the choice of ritual and prayers that is done for the nuns. Liturgies is often the prayers that are more of general nature. And, yeah, prayer and ritual, and I would like to put them in one package, are really central to nunnui life. There would be oftentimes privileged overstudies. So when something had to be cut down because of special ritual that had to be held or special prayers, it was oftentimes the prayer and ritual that got the prime position over studies. And that's also why studies took much longer for nuns in that particular institution, because there was just a lot of prayer and ritual. And there was also the part of prayer and ritual that was commissioned by the lay community. So for businesses, for personal incidents that happened, for families that commissioned prayers, that was also a big part of. Yeah, the nun real life for the nuns at Kajukagu Lingu.
- [32:38]
Podcast Host
Yeah. And so, you know, over the last however many years, nuns opportunities in the scholastic field have expanded, but they've never been really relieved of these ritual expectations and duties. And so you talk about how sometimes those can conflict. So talking about that scholastic side, which, as we've seen, can sometimes conflict. What are, first of all, just the opportunities for nuns to engage in scholastic study you talk about the Geshe Ma degree and the Geshe Ma curriculum. What are nuns doing when they're engaging in scholastic activities?
- [33:16]
Chandra Kiara Aim
Well, since, as I said, scholastic activities are really not nuns terrain, traditionally speaking, and it was henceforth quite revolutionary, one shall say. And that's also how it has been coined by Nicola Schneider in her research when in 2012 there was this official announcement that nuns done by the Dalai Lama, but also by the Tibetan government in exile, that nuns were able to get the same degree than the monks, the Gishema degree, which is the degree conferring a title that stands for 17 years at least, of very, very intense philosophical studies covering all the canonical areas in the Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Yeah, since 2016, we actually do have kishimas. We have about 73 kishimas today. And this has been something quite exceptional, especially the speed, how we went from no studies at all before 59 to being on the same level than man. This is something one really has to credit Tibetan Buddhist monasticism for.
- [34:28]
Podcast Host
And so as nuns are studying for this degree, you mentioned, you know, memorizing texts, debating, there's exams. Can you say a bit more about how a nun proceeds through or, you know, with that long goal of the Geisha Ma degree, What are the steps towards that?
- [34:48]
Chandra Kiara Aim
It's a long road. One has to consider, I mean, 17 years. And for the nuns it's longer. You know, especially Kagu Kaguling, it was more like 20, 22 years. It's a very long process. So one of the qualities one has to develop within this curriculum is patient, I think. But one has one class a day and then one prepares that class. And then the preparation is reflected in these instructions the instructor or the gishe is giving on the text that is studied. And then one debates the instructions and reflections on those instructions within this formal dialectic context of Tibetan Buddhist debate. And this goes on every day for years. I mean, one has to consider that it's 22 years of full time study of the Tibetan Buddhist canon. I mean, that's quite exceptional. And then what I find interesting, though, is that I had once, not a dispute, but kind of discussion with Jitsuma Tense in Palmo because she was saying, wonderful, now everything is equal. We should have everything equal between monks and nuns. And I was like, I'm not sure. I mean, the study program also is very much conceived around a male corpus of students. For example, the debate. I mean, the loudest person wins, the strongest person wins. If one isn't really of that caliber, debate is not always an enjoyable process. For me personally, I didn't enjoy it that much. I don't like to shout and I don't like to push myself in front. And I found that I could see how my male colleagues really enjoyed it. The physical strength, the strength of the voice, the strength of asserting yourself first. And within the nuns community, I didn't see that so strongly. Sometimes they looked like choirs. They would try to find harmonies between themselves and then bring forth an argument. So I think that this process of study is something that is very precious. It exists in centuries and it's exceptional. It's made available for women as well. And it's wonderful to see this erudite nuns. On the other hand, I wonder if it wouldn't be nice to have a closer look at it and see if one could adapt this form of studies, this format of studies, also to a more feminine couple of students.
- [37:10]
Podcast Host
Yeah, and this fundamental question, right, we see this in the book, but then also on the world, what does equality mean? And does equality mean that the same exact thing goes to different people or, you know, various ways of conceptualizing this? And also, is equality possible in a context where social. Different social expectations of different people still exist? So you talk in the book about how, you know, figures like the Dalai Lama are a champion of women's education. But then sometimes the. In the nunnery, the leaders of the nunnery are still male teachers or administrators. Sometimes they hold more conservative opinions about the capacities or proper activities of the nuns. And then also the nuns themselves might think of their social role in different ways than, you know, people coming from the west might expect or sort of insist for the nuns. So you talk about, you know, the various perspectives, intentions in this constantly evolving field. So. So I'm not sure I properly framed the question in there, but can you say a bit more about some of these tensions and different perspectives on nuns educations?
- [38:29]
Chandra Kiara Aim
It's an interesting point because we have nuns education to the level that we have it today, also thanks to lobby work by Western researchers and Western nuns and Western luminaries and, you know, without their perspective that believes in inequality, that believes in the chances of women as well, we wouldn't be where we are today. And it wasn't just Western women and lobbyists that we can mention, but also Tibetans. Of course, there was a group of women that really believed in that. But one has to consider that these women and men that lobbied for the equality of education in Tibetan monasticism were people that were often highly educated or educated in a secular cont. And in A context like ours where we went with boys to school, of course, and we had more or less the same chances. So it's an easy one to lobby for equality in an educational context. But then if you look at nuns within their context, they grew up in a very patriarchal society, in a very patriarchal social structure. They joined a religious institution that is very patriarchally structured as well, with members in this institution that don't know anything else than that and henceforth appreciate and sustain that, because this is what they know, this is what frames their value systems. And henceforth I do see sometimes this kind of double glass ceiling. On the one hand, we broke a glass ceiling by making available education to Tibetan Buddhist nuns, which is wonderful. But then behind the scenes, behind the facade that we see as outsiders, it's not really implemented. I mean, it's great to have the degree and it's great to have the possibility. But is this possibility really trickling down to the quality of instruction that is provided, to the chances the nuns have once they pass those degrees, to the respect that is accorded to them by their own institutions, but also by Tibetan Buddhist communities at large? And those are questions that are fairly unresolved. I mean, it's nice to achieve these degrees for nuns, but is the work really, is this achievement really trickling down in the communities? And who is checking upon that? And sometimes when I speak to the nuns on the inside, I see that people lost interest in their wellbeing and their well being in their studies because things look fairly equal from the outside. And this doesn't always reflect how it feels from the inside, how it is from the inside.
- [41:20]
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- [42:48]
Podcast Host
Yeah, that the. You know, sometimes we're tempted to tell this like simple story of progress and triumph and, you know, the human spirit overcoming all obstacles. But there's a difference between having an opportunity to have this degree, which as you say, is really wonderful. But if nuns are facing, you know, lots of obstacles and all these ritual obligations and they're less financially supported, you even talk about maybe the difference quality of food offered in the nunnery versus monasteries that the same degree. But if you have to overcome all of these extra obstacles to get it right, it gets just much more complicated than the simple story of, well, now nuns have this degree and there we go, equality. So I'm thinking of. I referenced this a bit before, but on page 125 in the book you describe an instance where you were working as a translator for a senior philosophy teacher and you note the differences when he's talking to a German academic who's coming to ask about nuns education versus when he's talking to the nuns that he's teaching. So could you tell maybe a bit more about this incident and what you.
- [44:00]
Chandra Kiara Aim
Think it demonstrates that really illustrates quite beautifully these tensions that you just eloquently pointed out. I mean, I was interpreting for a scholar who was trying to set up a project on Tibetan Buddhist nuns. And the scholar had submitted her questions ahead of time to the philosophy teacher. So he knew what she wanted and on his side kindly prepared his replies. The fact was though, as well that I went to classes with this philosophy teacher on a daily basis and I was quite aware of his positions on women's rights, on women equality or inequality between men and women. And he had a rather traditional stance. Usually he said that we as nuns could be happy if we could study at all. The quality wouldn't matter. It would really set the seeds, karmic seeds, so that we could be reborn as men in a future life and have the opportunity to actually study in a male context. And this is something that he repeated fairly often. And this is the mild version of what we heard sometimes. But then when this Western scholar came and she had these wonderful questions about women's empowerment and the vision of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and this philosophy completely changed gears, he was extremely Empowering and very, very positive about nuns and their perspectives. And I must say I was rather petrified when I translated for him. I did convey what he said. But it was interesting how this ideal of what His Holiness is Dalai Lama has in mind is an ideal that is not really embodied neither by the teachers and the nunneries so far, nor by the communities themselves. And it did make me sad because it would have been nice if there would have been a bit more honest conversation between these ideals they apparently honor so much, and then what they do on the. On the ground with the nuns themselves.
- [46:16]
Podcast Host
Yeah, maybe this, you know, what is presented particularly to, you know, the teachers. He knows what the Western scholar wanted. And right. Tibetans are in this very vulnerable position in terms of geopolitics, socioeconomics. Right. He's presenting what he thinks someone wants to hear that may lead to donor activity. Right. These are complicated situations, but then also, what perhaps is the message presented to the outside versus the experience of folks on the inside can be meaningfully different. And the book really helpfully, you know, lays this out for readers. So the first half of the book talks about, you know, the situations of nuns and the educational program and study and ritual and social status. And then the second half of the book transitions to talking more about some of these changes that we've alluded to that have affected nunneries. So you spoke about how one such change is the closing of the border between China and Nepal in 2008, which leads to this recruitment crisis that you go from having more aspiring postulants than can be reasonably accommodated to now a deficit. So can you tell us more about some of the changes that have resulted as the. This post 2008 shift has occurred?
- [47:51]
Chandra Kiara Aim
For sure, it's, as we pointed out before in this conversation, changes has been very swift, very quick. And this also holds true for this change in demographics in the Tibetan Buddhist communities and especially in the nunnois, which are smaller communities. The nuns that joined The Nunnoi before 2008 were adult women that crossed the Himalayas in most of the cases. I mean, you need a body that can sustain such a crossing. You need a will that makes you cross the Himalayas to join a convent. And this was something that really characterized the postulants before 2008. These were women that were adults. These were women with very adult aspirations and motivations to join an anonymy. And there were in most cases, Tibetan. It was a very Tibetan community before 2008. And they had this intrinsic, very strong faith and trust and responsibility to uphold and preserve Tibetan Buddhist cultures and religious cultures. And that took this very, very much to heart. And then when this closure of the borders came in 2008, we transitioned from this population of adult Tibetan women to much, much, much younger girls and children from the Nepalese foothills, but then also from the capital, Kathmandu, that joined the nunnery for. For all a different set of reasons. Mostly they were very happy that board and lodging and education was provided for free. Sometimes they were coming because there was a Buddhist education, but in most cases, this wasn't the case anymore. So we really transitioned from a Tibetan population to a Nepalese population. And then we also, in Nepal, we have, of course, populations that are Tibetan Buddhists, such as Sherpas or Tsumpas. But also this population became less and less gradually because those regions became more wealthy and the parents could afford secular schools, secular private schools to send their children to. And so the background, the Tibetan Buddhist background became less and less strong. And so we have younger postulants with less Tibetan Buddhist background that might be very interested in Buddhism, but not in a Tibetan Buddhist way that don't speak Tibetan necessarily or don't have parents that speak Tibetan or have relationship to Tibetan Buddhism. And that changes, of course, the outlook on education. I'm not sure that these young girls that join the Nanui today, the Nanui today want to do 22 years of study in Tibetan to preserve Tibetan Buddhist cultural heritage. I think the motivations might be quite different. And that's what the nunnery has to respond to. And it's not an easy quest to be solved, especially not quickly. Yeah.
- [51:03]
Podcast Host
In the book, it talks about how when you move from a somewhat older, culturally Tibetan population that has certain expectations about how nunnery life goes and the certain kinds of things that go without saying and has strong faith in the process to, you know, even just a younger generation who, even within particular cultural context, younger people might have kind of less deference to authority or same expectations. But then also. Right, if the expectation is that you'll study Tibetan Buddhist philosophy in Tibetan but your native language isn't Tibetan. Right. That's already a huge, you know, barrier for these students, and it's shifted the view towards education. So you say that maybe some of these newer postulants don't see themselves doing the 22 year geisha degree, what do you think that they're hoping to get out of life at the monastery, like at the nunnery?
- [52:07]
Chandra Kiara Aim
I do describe this shift fairly extensively in the book, but one. One example really points it out quite beautifully. So in the past, when you wanted to join the NANOI and wanted to join its study program, which lies at its heart to a certain extent. You had to first memorize the nunnue liturgy, which is about 400 pages, 400 Western pages, and it's quite a book to memorize 400 pages of prayers. And most nuns didn't understand at all what they were memorizing. They didn't understand the meaning of the prayers. But these Tibetan nuns would cross the mountains and would sit down and memorize 400 pages, no questions asked, no break taken, until they went to the 400 pages. Some would need longer, some with photographic memories. We had also those kind of candidates were quicker, but they really had this drive to finish this memorization, to contribute to the liturgy, with the knowledge of the liturgy, to the rituals and prayers, but also to join the. The study program. And today nobody wants to memorize 400 pages anymore, especially under Tibetan. Why? So you have. This barrier was taken down fairly quickly because nobody would have studied anymore in a nunnery. And they struggle also with instruction language, as we discussed. But what they really wish to is a more general understanding of Buddhism. What are the tenets of Buddhism? What are the teachings? How do they connect to other traditions in Buddhism? They like to read Buddhism in English, for example. It's nicely edited, easier to read than a Tibetan picture. And most of the time, this is something that they really like. They really like to learn English, they like to learn Nepali and Hindi and to have the means to study Buddhism with different techniques, with different approaches, and to communicate to other students and.
- [54:02]
Podcast Host
People.
- [54:02]
Chandra Kiara Aim
That have an interest in Buddhism. And this is something that is really different to the generation they had before them. And this is also not really something the structures in the convent can answer to and are prepared to answer to.
- [54:16]
Podcast Host
Yeah, it's such a. You know, throughout, you know, I'm struck by these ongoing questions. You know, universities, like monasteries, are in some ways inherently conservative institutions in that they pass down the traditions of the past. And when you're serving a population, whether that's university students or these new nuns who have maybe quite different expectations. Right. How do you balance between maybe trying to get them onto the program, as it has been more traditionally understood, versus changing to meet people where they are or what they need, is this really fundamental question that I don't certainly have the answers for. You talk about how one of those points of debate is the role of secular education in the nunnery. So, you know, way back in the past, nunneries were places for religious education, but now there is increasing demand for an increasing place for what we could call a secular education. So what kinds of secular education are available to the Nones currently? And how are debates about that framed?
- [55:34]
Chandra Kiara Aim
That's a very, very interesting question and something that really becomes more and more central to the debates within Tibetan Buddhist communities and also in nunneries especially. The younger generation is now in touch with other people, with other students, with people out of the world, which wasn't the case 20, 30 years ago. In the past, nuns and monks would naturally reconnect to what has been before and would see what were the methods from before, how can we reconnect to them and how can we preserve them. That was kind of the core activity, if one wants to put it like this. Today these things shifted. Especially the younger generation doesn't look so much, you know, especially if they're not Tibetans, in how things have been done before and how they have been done in Tibet. But they really look for. They look outside and they try to connect with peers much more, as this has been the case in the past. So many of the nuns, as Kaju Kaikuling, they have an interest to have a school education or education which is at the level of a secular school, which is not the case. And they would also like to have accredited studies and they would like to do university studies, how other monasteries are often offering it today. And as we said, Kajukai Guling is not really a female institution. It's a male institution led by male monastic officials. And many of those male monastic officials did not enjoy a secular education or university education and have a very hard time granting the nuns their wishes. They feel that this is pure speculation. But my feeling has been in several instances that these monks are afraid the nuns would surpass them. And henceforth the nuns were denied quite categorically opportunities of education out of the beaten track and out of the path that has been taught nan so long until now. And there has been several initiatives by nuns, by individuals, but also by groups to get access to secular education on a school level, but also on a university level. And the obstacles that have been put in those initiatives are quite considerable. But there is a little group of nuns now today, Kajukai Guling, that is aiming for school, for accredited school education and also for university education. And this somehow and interestingly enough, and this has to be observed in the future, but competes with this Gishama degree. There's a certain parallelism and competition going on between now several ways of education and of awarding and accrediting education.
- [58:26]
Podcast Host
Yeah. And this question of what do you join a nunnery for? Right. Is it for this somewhat more traditional view of religious education? Is it for, you know, to support the ritual life of the nunnery? You know, is it for a more general education that maybe nuns could join and then have some of secular education and then leave? Is a concern that various people in the book express, is that if the nunnery becomes a place for secular education, then it becomes a place that you come and just like a normal school, you come and then you leave. Right. Is this really fascinating question because you understand the arguments from nuns saying they want this secular education, they want to be able to have an education that can prepare them for our ever changing world. But then also, you know, if it's competing with the Geshe Madigri, how do we think about those questions?
- [59:25]
Chandra Kiara Aim
It has been very interesting to observe how these reforms of education in Tibetan Buddhist monastic in the diaspora, in a larger sense, has been influencing and putting into question sociological aims, overall sociological aims, but also lifestyle that support those sociological aims and avenues to pursue those. So as you say, the Gishe degree, the Gishe MA degree has been the degree that prepares you for a long time retreat to then pursue spiritual realizations. A university degree, as excellent as it might be, doesn't have that aim as far as I'm concerned. It's interesting how this development of educational opportunities shapes also a larger discussion of the function of monasteries anonymous and their relationships to larger sociological aims in Buddhist communities.
- [60:27]
Podcast Host
So in the book, you end within this epilogue that discusses your journey of leaving the nunnery and reflecting back on the experiences as you write the book and you write that you're not offering specific, concrete solutions of my perspective. You should do xyz, but instead you frame these questions for the monastery, for the Gaelic tradition more broadly. Can you say more about, you know, how you ended the book with these questions and maybe what you hope the book accomplishes, you know, right. It makes this big scholarly contribution to the literature, but also raises questions that go, I think, in a great way beyond just the scholarly realm. So, yeah, what do you. What do you. What were you thinking posing these questions? What do you hope the book accomplishes?
- [61:19]
Chandra Kiara Aim
The main aim of the book was really to give the nun some spotlight and to value their existence and their contribution to a monastic tradition. But it struck me from the very beginning, from the very first time I moved to Nepal, how we have a Tibetan society and a Tibetan culture and Tibetan traditions, but so much of that is only concerned with men. And I think it was Lopez in Prisoners of Shangri La that says that. Who draws a parallel or that says that there is a parallel between Tibetan institutions and their power structures and Tibetan studies as we have them here in academic context. And I thought it was very interesting because in Tibetan studies today and in Buddhist studies today, women and gender are still treated as something marginal and bit uncomfortable perhaps. And still Tibetan women, Buddhist women are a big part of Buddhist societies, of Buddhist cultures, and are something also that contribute. They're not competing with male existences and male cultures, but they really contribute. They're very unique and valuable piece of the puzzle to the larger picture. And it's something that is worth exploring, it's worth looking into. And yeah, I thought it would be nice to offer a perspective that adds to a picture which happily includes also female perspectives and female experiences and female unique views on how Tibetan culture, and especially Tibetan Buddhists monastic culture can be understood.
- [63:08]
Podcast Host
Yes, and I appreciate that, you know, it's not just, you know, the singular, you know, female perspective, but the book is really multivocal. Right. That there's lots of these different perspectives that, you know, some nuns are articulating this vision for a secular education. Some nuns are articulating vision for a geisha medicare. Others are, you know, quite committed to the ritual life of the nunnery. Right. Like we get a spotlight on the nuns, which you set out to provide, but also that various voices within that broad community. So I really appreciated all of that. So, you know, traditionally we end these interviews by saying, you know, what's next? What else are you working on? What can we as readers look forward to?
- [64:02]
Chandra Kiara Aim
I'm working on my second book and it's not unannounced this time, but it's really on the relationship between textual scholarship and how we embody and practice that. And I'm looking at the corpus of the ABHI Samayankara, the ornament of clear realization, which is perhaps the biggest chunk of literature in the geshe degree. And look how the monks and nuns practice, put this textual scholarship into practice. What helps them? What practice literature helps them. What practice literature does not help them. And how this transfer from intellectual pursuit to embodied practice and how this transfer happens or doesn't happen.
- [64:50]
Podcast Host
I'm looking forward to that because as I said in my bio, you know, introduction of you, the combination of these ethnographic methods with the, you know, philology, you know, sometimes in Buddhist studies, you know, the philosophy people go over there and they discuss the ideas and then the anthropologists discuss, you know, life over here. And so that's exciting to hear that you're going to be talking about how these things work together and how scholars can approach them. So I'm really looking forward to that. So, again, thank you so much for speaking with me for writing this wonderful book. I hope that our listeners go out and check it out for themselves. I think you'll find it a really particularly in a university context, this strikes me as very teachable. Like, I think my undergrads will really be grateful and will latch onto it and will not find it. You know, it contains these wonderful, important academic ideas, but it expresses them in such a eloquent and accessible way. So thank you so much for writing this and for speaking with me today.
- [65:53]
Chandra Kiara Aim
Thank you for having me.
- [65:55]
Podcast Host
Great. So this has been another episode of the new books in Buddhist studies. Thank you all for listening and hope that you tune in again next time.