Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo, the First Female Tulku Reborn in the West: What's the Relationship Between Emptiness and Beautiful Nails?

introduction

I first heard about Jetsunma Ahkön Norbu Lhamo, the first Western woman to be recognized and enthroned by Tibetan lamas as a tulku (an enlightened teacher who reincarnates in whatever form can most benefit all beings), when I read about her in Vicki Mackenzie's book Reborn in the West four years ago. Touched and inspired by what I had read, I knew that one day I wanted to meet the remarkable woman miraculously discovered by Penor Rinpoche, the current head of the Nyingma sect, the oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism.

Jetsunma was born to a Jewish mother who was a grocery store cashier. Her stepfather was an Italian truck driver who drank too much. Both parents beat the kids. She was baptized a Catholic and went to a Catholic school. Even though she experienced an inexplicable attraction to Buddha statues, she claims to have known absolutely nothing about Buddhism until her destined meeting with Penor Rinpoche when she was thirty-six. "There was no one who put me in touch with Buddhism," she told Mackenzie. "The only thing that could have connected me, but didn't, was that my mother took me to Coney Island, and a palm reader there told me I was an old Tibetan. That was all. I had no idea about Tibet. Not a clue. When I thought about Tibetans, I thought of smelly old men on rugs!" At seventeen, she ran away from home and went to Florida, where she got married and had a child. She and her family then moved to an isolated farm in North Carolina.

It was there that her spiritual depth began to reveal itself. First she had a series of prophetic dreams in which she was "told" what to do. Eventually she was instructed to begin her meditation practice. "I knew that if I prayed for guidance, I would get to learn how to meditate, as the dream instructed. That was the start of my real spiritual training." Constantly praying for and receiving guidance, she systematically practiced different kinds of contemplation that she would ultimately discover were Tibetan Buddhist in form. Finally, after a relentless questioning of the meaning and significance of human life, she lost all fascination with mundane existence and turned her back on worldly pursuits. Her contemplations continued to deepen and she began to meditate on the absolute nature of reality. "I didn't have the words for it, but I knew it wasn't like God, the old-man-on-the-throne idea. What I was meditating on was a nondual, all-pervasive essence—that is, form and formless, united, indistinguishable from one another. I saw that it was the only validity—that and the compassionate activity that was an expression of it." She continued to meditate intensively for several years, during which time she lived a householder's life. When she was thirty, she had a spiritual experience that made clear to her that her personal life was over, and that she had been born solely to be of benefit to others. "After that," she said, "people started coming to me."

Jetsunma moved with her family to Washington, D.C., in 1981, where a group of new age seekers soon discovered her. In order to support her teaching work, they formed an organization called the "Center for Discovery and New Life." One day, her group was introduced to a Tibetan lama who was selling carpets to raise money for his monastery in southern India. The money was mainly for young monks who needed clothing, books and food. Even though Jetsunma and her students knew nothing about Tibet and little about Buddhism, they decided to raise money for the monastery. They managed to sponsor seventy-five Tibetan children in southern India, and a correspondence followed. A year later they received a letter from the monk who had sold them the carpets, informing them that His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, the abbot of the monastery that they had been helping to support, was making his first-ever teaching trip to the United States, and he wanted to visit Washington to meet and thank the people who had sponsored so many of his young monks. Also apparently, ever since he was a young man, Penor Rinpoche had prayed to meet the reincarnation of Ahkön Lhamo, the Tibetan yogini who with her brother had founded his own lineage, the Palyul sect, back in 1652. He had already met the reincarnation of Ahkön Lhamo's brother, a Tibetan who was teaching in Oregon.

When Jetsunma first saw the five-foot-three-inch Tibetan master, she burst into tears. "Now I'm not the sort of person who usually does this sort of thing, you understand. I'm a hard-headed lady. I'm from Brooklyn, for heaven's sake! But I just could not pull myself together. I cried and cried. I just looked at him and thought, 'That's my heart . . . That's my mind . . . That's everything.'" Penor Rinpoche then went with Jetsunma back to her house where he interviewed all of her students in great depth, probing to find out exactly what she had been teaching them. When Jetsunma herself asked the lama where her teaching was coming from, he said, "In the past you were a great bodhisattva, a person who works throughout all time to liberate sentient beings. You have attained your practice to the degree that in every future lifetime you will not forget it. You will always know it; it will always come back to you. It is in your mind and will not be forgotten." He then proceeded to tell her that she had to buy a center. "You're going to think you can't afford it," he said to her, "but you will find a way. Have faith. It will be all right eventually. . . . Buy the one with the white pillars in the front." After he left, they looked for property and, remarkably, the center they found had six white pillars all along the front. A year later, Jetsunma went to visit Penor Rinpoche at his monastery in southern India, where he officially gave her her new name, Ahkön Lhamo, saying, "I now recognize you as the sister of Kunzang Sherab. Her name was Ahkön Lhamo. In that life she and Kunzang Sherab cofounded the Palyul tradition. I recognize you as her incarnation." He also handed her another certificate, authorizing her to teach. "This is important," he said. "People will say you haven't been studying the dharma, that they have never heard of you. They will not understand. With this paper no one will doubt that you are capable of teaching the dharma."

When she returned to America, she formally assumed her new identity and began to teach Buddhism. Some of her followers found the change disconcerting and left, but most survived the transition. In 1988, Penor Rinpoche returned to Washington and conducted an official enthronement of Jetsunma. It received wide media attention, covered by newspaper reporters and television crews, and was featured in the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post and People magazine.

In 1994 Jetsunma was further recognized by Lama Orgyen Kusum Lingpa as an incarnation of Lhacham Mandarawa, the Indian spiritual consort of Padmasambhava, the tantric master who established the Buddha's teaching in Tibet. While still maintaining her main temple in Poolesville, Maryland, Jetsunma now lives in Sedona, Arizona, where she spent the last year on "semi-retreat." I interviewed her there last April.

I had wanted an excuse to interview Jetsunma for a long time now, and finally I had one: What could be more compelling than to ask an "American dakini" about the relationship between gender and enlightenment? After asking her organization innumerable times to send us a video of Jetsunma teaching, we began to wonder why it was that her always friendly students never seemed to get around to actually putting it in the mail! In the meantime, a little research revealed that Jetsunma seems to be quite a controversial figure in Western Buddhist circles. First, a highly respected Buddhist journalist told us that the American Buddhist establishment, which is largely comprised of well-educated, upper-middle-class white people, considers Jetsunma to be "white trash" because of her blue-collar roots! This rather bizarre comment really piqued our curiosity. Then we found a Buddhist scholar who called her "a new age bimbo cashing in on a lucrative trend." Amidst the swirl of our ever growing confusion, her video finally arrived. Upon watching it, it soon became clear that Jetsunma was an unusually passionate and inspired teacher who seemed to be appealing to the listeners' very soul. I watched her video several times, trying to make sense out of why it was that she had attracted so much criticism. And yet, no matter how much I tried to see her as the opportunistic prima donna she was accused of being, time and again all I could see was bodhicitta, a deep and powerful compassion that was literally heart-wrenching. Still, as I traveled to Sedona, I couldn't help but be troubled by the echo of her critics' protestations.

The woman I met there was disarmingly free from pretense. Not only that, she was radiant, clear, simple and unwavering in her strong vulnerability. Ironically, for a woman who has been condemned for her vanity because of her unapologetic adherence to maintaining her feminine appearance—she is known for the great care she gives to her hair and nails—what she emanates powerfully transcends any notion of gender. At the end of the interview, when I asked her point-blank about her critics' accusations, she never lost her composure and seemed genuinely surprised that there was so much controversy, while at the same time making it clear that the only thing she cared about was her students' liberation. Indeed, she said, "I feel that knowing that I would die for them, knowing that I care for them to the nth degree, empowers me to do whatever is necessary, and that's the basis of the agreement I have with my students."

I don't know all the facts of Jetsunma's story, but it is intriguing that even though world-famous, highly revered, master lamas of the modern era have been accused of far greater detours from the straight-and-narrow than this Jewish-Italian bodhisattva, many in the Buddhist community seem much less forgiving of her. Is it because she is a woman? This is one of the questions I wanted to ask her. And in the following interview, I did my best to give this American dakini a hard time, for I really did want to know the answers to some very tough questions. She didn't disappoint me.

interview

Andrew Cohen: In general, women don't speak with the kind of confidence and authority about enlightenment and the spiritual path that you do. In our last issue, on self-mastery, we spoke with developmental psychologist Beverly Slade about how, in our culture, women often shy away from publicly demonstrating their own competence and authority. She said, "They find that people are threatened by their ability and may want to avoid them. Given women's position in the culture at large, they probably regularly face people who are trying to undermine them, because people are threatened by competent women." What has your experience been? Do you find that because you're a woman who has been recognized as a great teacher and who also speaks with unusual confidence and authority, people are threatened because of that?

Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo: My experience with the gender question has been pretty interesting. When I was first recognized, upon performing the actual crowning ceremony, His Holiness Penor Rinpoche said, "Many Westerners have been wondering: 'Where are the women in Tibetan Buddhism?' Now I've answered their questions." And at that time he said something that was very interesting and that helped to explain why we don't see women conventionally being recognized as heads of monasteries. In Tibet, he said, normally the dakinis [female enlightened beings] would often stay in retreat or they would have a small, select group of students and would tend to be isolated off by themselves, whereas the men would stay and run the monasteries. So the women's lineages were not followed as well as the men's. And many of these women didn't even write or read; they had oral traditions. So they weren't literate in that sense, but they were considered very high tantric masters.

Now when I was recognized and enthroned, my experience was that the traditional monks had a kind of squeamishness or almost discomfort around me. When I went to the monastery in India, His Holiness did an amazing, wonderful offering ceremony. He introduced me to all of the monks and said, "This is the cofounder of our lineage. She's come back." And all the monks then came up and offered prayer scarves. And it was interesting; some of the monks had this amazing surrender because here was this dakini and that was that. But the other monks actually felt a little embarrassed, not accustomed to being around women, not sure how to act. Many of them stumbled over their words and almost walked up backwards so that you wouldn't know whether they were coming or going. And having asked other teachers about it, I found out it's just fairly rare for a woman to be held up in that way.

But in terms of how Americans and other Westerners acted—actually, His Holiness once said to me: "Because I have recognized you and I have the right and the responsibility to do so, there will never be any conflict with any Tibetan teacher or practitioner who knows who I am. But," he said, "actually, your own kind, the Westerners, will probably crucify you."

AC: Has that been your experience?

JAL: I've had both.

AC: Is it because you're a woman?

JAL: I think so. When I was first discovered, I was a very Western woman, as I still am now. I used to paint my nails, I had makeup on—which I don't do anymore—I had all these unusual characteristics that one doesn't associate with a teacher. And so there was a lot of criticism questioning whether I was spiritual or worldly. And at first I tried to please everyone. I tried to ascertain what the expectations were for me. I was kind of naïve in that way, just wondering what it was that people wanted in a spiritual teacher. And I discovered that people had problems with women who were "womanly," who were very feminine in their presentation. They also had problems with the fact that I wasn't a nun, that I was married.

AC: But Nyingma [the oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism] lamas have often been married. It's not against the rules.

JAL: Male Nyingma lamas. It's easier to think of married male lamas than it is to think of married female lamas, for some reason.

AC: And haven't many great dakinis been described as being ravishingly beautiful and also sexually attractive?

JAL: Tara [a revered Tibetan deity] herself is seen with beautiful adornment. And she has taken a vow that said, "When I appear in the world, I will appear in this way so that beings can understand that all can approach the dharma. And I will always appear as a woman." So there's definitely precedent for that, but when it comes down to the nuts and bolts, it's another matter.

AC: It seems, from what I've read, that from the very beginning of your teaching career you have never pretended to be other than who you are. You said, "This is who I am," and you were always unapologetic about it. And when Penor Rinpoche recognized you, that was part of the package; everything was really on the table.

JAL: Yes, exactly. It was really on the table, and it was very unusual. During the enthronement ceremony, His Holiness even allowed news stations to come in and film it. He said, "This has never happened before. And the reason why I've done this is that you were born as a Westerner, as a woman. Obviously that's where your mission lies." In the beginning I asked my teachers what they thought I should do—how I should change or what should happen. And they suggested that I wear dharma clothing such as chubas [Tibetan dresses] and things like that, which I usually do when I'm teaching. But what I found was that there's no point in not being natural. There's no point in faking yourself and becoming something else because then you're just allowing discursive thought or conceptualization to basically run your life. What I came to eventually is that this is my job. My job is not to be a traditional Tibetan teacher. If that was my job, I would have come as a traditional Tibetan. I feel that my job is to be a bridge between Easterners and Westerners. I'm very good at translating abstract ideas, and I feel that the reason why I appear in the way I do is that other women and men who are Westerners and have no plans to change their culture or their cultural affiliation need to know that it's possible for them also.

And personally I have no attraction to the Tibetan culture. All of the other Western Tibetan teachers I know are crazy about it. They all dress up in dharma duds and they walk the company walk and talk the company talk. But I really don't. And I don't feel sorry about that. I think that's for Easterners.

AC: How does Penor Rinpoche feel about that? Does he respect your independence and your interest in bringing the Buddha-dharma to the West in a way that is as free from cultural overlays as possible?

JAL: Well, at first he sort of suggested that I become more traditional. He said, "Not many dharma teachers paint their nails red; maybe you should go for pink or something like that." He tried to modify a little bit. Then after a while I said, "Well, Rinpoche, you know, I'm an Italian American. This is how my people dress. I would feel stupid not being like this. This is my way." And he absolutely understood it.

AC: To me, that brings up an interesting question and the question is: What is the relationship between enlightened mind and expressions of gender? What's the relationship between emptiness, or freedom from all notions of self, and culturally prescribed norms for the expression of masculinity and femininity? Some teachers of enlightenment have stressed the need to abandon any identification with self-image. For example, there are men and women monastics who shave their heads and abandon all worldly possessions in order to leave behind attachment to culturally prescribed images of masculinity and femininity. And then there are others like yourself or the great J. Krishnamurti, who was known for giving a great deal of attention to maintaining his always elegant appearance. I honestly think this is a very intriguing question. What is the relationship between inner freedom and the desire to express one's masculinity or femininity in a conventional yet unselfconscious way? What's the relationship between emptiness and beautiful nails? Does the path to enlightenment, which is freedom from all notions of self, ultimately demand that we all unconditionally abandon any attachment to gender and care for our appearance, or is there room in enlightenment for a demonstration of masculinity and femininity that expresses beauty and dignity?

JAL: I like your use of the word "room." I like to think that the path to enlightenment is a bit more spacious than it is confined by a lot of absolutely this's and absolutely that's. Fundamentally, I feel that when bodhisattvas [those dedicated to the attainment of enlightenment for the benefit of all beings] come into the world to do a job, they do it in the best way that they can. I think they appear in a way that is not foreign, a way that speaks to us. If the bodhisattva comes to teach Westerners, then it would be appropriate to appear as a Westerner. If the bodhisattva comes to teach Easterners, then it would be appropriate to appear as an Easterner. I could never say that there's a direct relationship between lipstick and emptiness, but I could never say that there is no relationship between lipstick and emptiness.

AC: What do you think the relationship is, though?

JAL: I'd have to say that the relationship is. There is just no other way to look at it.

AC: It's an intriguing question because if someone was established in the enlightened mind or a liberated view, they would be, at least theoretically or ideally, free from any and all attachment to notions of self. So then the question is: What does that look like? Obviously there are some very rigid ideas that have come to us from the East.

JAL: I can say that a person who dresses up as a renunciate, who doesn't wear makeup and wears robes, can sometimes actually be in a position of increasing the strength of their ego because they are so virtuous and are so convinced of it. And the same thing can happen when a person dresses up in clothes "to die for." So I hold the whole appearance issue kind of lightly. I feel like I'm not grabbing on to it in one way or the other. For me, there would be a level of discomfort if I were to radically change the way I dressed. The women I grew up with wore hoop earrings. They all wore lipstick. They had a 'do. For me to not do that seems more effortful and more concerned with sticking to a rigid code. It seems like putting on some sort of elaborate disguise. To me it seems to be easier, better, more natural to dress the way I came and to just be the way I am.

AC: What if a man or a woman came to you and asked to be your student and, after observing them over a period of time, it became apparent to you—let's say, for example, it was a woman—that they seemed to be too invested in their appearance, in the way that they dressed, in the way that they moved, in the way that they walked and talked, and they seemed to express an overidentification with their own feminine nature. Would you tell them to question it?

JAL: If I saw that there was too much ego clinging and too much self-absorption, sure, I would always address that. I wouldn't indicate to them how they should dress. Except in one case. Actually, one of my nuns, before she became a nun, was a really sharp dresser. She was one of those "outfit" persons. She always looked really sharp and wore all the cool things. And even after she became a nun, her shirt over her shantab [robe] would always match her socks. And I did talk about identity issues with her. She was the only person I've ever told how to dress. She's very beautiful, very exotic-looking, and she realized that most of the suffering in her life was because of her identification with her looks and her sexuality and so forth. And so eventually it came to the point where she decided to become a nun.

AC: She came to that decision on her own? You didn't encourage her?

JAL: Well, I encourage by my high esteem for the ordained. I have tremendous esteem for them. And even my teachers have said, "How is it that you're a laywoman and yet so many of your students go for ordination?" I really think it's because I hold monks and nuns in such high esteem. I feel that, however I appear, in my heart I'm a nun.

AC: A renunciate.

JAL: A renunciate. A nun. Yes, in my heart.

AC: And a definition of that would be?

JAL: A definition of that would be someone who is so completely bound to the spiritual expression that there really isn't much else going on. So, in "pure view," you could say that was an ordained person.

AC: Do you think that it's possible for a human being to come to a point in their spiritual evolution where they're finally freed from any fixation on or attachment to their gender identity while at the same time not in any way avoiding or denying the fact of their maleness or their femaleness?

JAL: Absolutely. I feel that as we move farther in our practice and we come to the point where we awaken to the natural state, in that natural state, by definition, there is no gender. There is no bias whatsoever. For instance, supposing that I had come to that state—now I'm still a woman and I still dress like one, but the whole question of gender identity doesn't seem like an issue that should be taken up. It simply is what it is. It has no particular emphasis. But you wouldn't fight against it either.

AC: How does gender identity express itself in someone who's no longer particularly identified with the fact of their gender?

JAL: I think it expresses itself naturally for the world we live in. I feel that bodhisattvas who are in the state where they're no longer identified take on the demeanor and the ideas and concepts of the society that they come to. And since in this society it is natural to identify with either one gender or the other, I believe that's why it happens. In a sense, a bodhisattva, an awakening being, would be like somebody who doesn't smoke going into a room full of smokers. They come out smelling like it, and they even breathe a little bit of it, but they don't themselves have that habit.

AC: This is something that personally intrigues me a lot. What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman? Most of the ideas that we have about who we are in relationship to gender are culturally imposed, so it's a big question. What does it mean to be a liberated human being, and what does liberation have to do with the expression of gender? So much of our identification with gender, whether we're male or female, has to do with the fact that we're always living up to culturally imposed shoulds—"Because I'm a woman, I should be a particular way," "Because I'm a man, I should be a particular way"—and most of the time, this so inhibits the individual that they really have no idea what the natural expression of their own gender would be. So, to me, it would seem that an expression of gender that is liberated would have to be entirely free from this kind of self-consciousness.

JAL: I agree with you completely. And peculiar questions like, "Should I be more male? Should I be more female? Should I dress up? Should I dress down?" I think, to be perfectly frank, are questions that have to do with the tightness of our minds and our conceptual proliferation—that habitual tendency to constantly compare everything and make notes and put things in boxes. That quality of mind, that tightness of mind, is not synonymous with liberation. It is preliberation, so all of those ideas are also preliberation. I think with liberation comes a certain spaciousness, a certain acceptance, a certain floatingness—without meaning spaced out—a certain ease of expression. Everything is looser and more spacious. Our habitual tendencies are not so automatic, so tight and so kicked in that we have to identify with something!

AC: You're a teacher of the Buddha-dharma. There is much to suggest that the Buddha felt that women were spiritually inferior to men. In the Pali Canon [a scriptural record of the Buddha's early teachings], the Buddha is reported to have said, "Ananda, if women had not obtained the Going Forth from the house life into homelessness in the Law and Discipline declared by the Perfect One [acceptance into the Buddha's monastic order], the Holy Life would have lasted long, the Holy Life would have lasted a thousand years. But now, since women have obtained it, the Holy Life will last only five hundred years. Just as when the blight called gray mildew falls on a field of ripening rice, that field of ripening rice does not last long, so too, in the Law and Discipline in which women obtain the Going Forth, the Holy Life does not last long." It is also traditionally held that in the monastic community that formed around the Buddha, the most newly ordained male novice monk was to sit in a superior position to the most senior female nun. This seems to suggest that women definitely had a second-class role. Now Buddhism is becoming more and more popular in the time that we're living in, and more and more women are being attracted to the Buddhist path for many good reasons. But personally, what I've always found interesting is that often this particular question of the Buddha's bias or apparent bias—we can't really know for sure—is something that many women never really deal with. Because the Buddha has been called the "Perfect One," his enlightenment was supposed to be complete and perfected. And the point is, if one such as he had such strong notions of gender bias, then it seems that we would have to conclude that either his understanding or his realization wasn't perfect, or there was something true about what he was saying and we needed to come to terms with it. How do you feel about this statement?

JAL: Well, my understanding—and this is something that I have discussed with some of my teachers and with khenpos [Tibetan scholars]—is that the Buddha taught in stages. Lord Buddha taught perfectly and appropriately for the context that he was in. And to take a teaching out of its original context and isolate it may be inappropriate. At that time, there were cultural realities that were practically insurmountable. The Buddha was dealing with many caste structures, not only gender. He was accepting into his ranks untouchables—telling Indians that untouchables could be touched. There were many, many issues happening in his time that he was really right against. And the gender issue was one of them. Back then in India, women were still getting burned with their husbands when their husbands died. The prejudice was there; it was predisposed. The cultural difference between men and women was so extreme that if it were automatically the case that women were put in the same position as men, I don't think it would have been allowed. I don't think it would have been okay. I think that things had to happen in a progressive, stage-by-stage way. Later on, through the evolution of the path, Buddhism developed all the way up to the tantric and Vajrayana elements in which males and females were exactly equal.

AC: Okay, but the only thing is, if it's true that the Buddha actually said this, then apparently he felt that if he allowed women into the sangha [monastic community], what he was trying to do was going to be severely impacted for the worse. Because according to the canon he literally said, "My teaching won't last a thousand years. It will last only half as long." Now he did it anyway, so obviously he cared more about the liberation of women than about whatever detrimental effect he felt that women were going to have. But if the canon is correct, then I think we still have to come to terms with this dilemma: Either he was right that women are spiritually inferior or he had a wrong view.

JAL: No, I don't think either one is correct. I feel that he was speaking to the time. When the Buddha appears on the earth in whatever form, it's like the medicine that's given as an antidote to whatever suffering is there. And I feel that was absolutely pure, absolutely correct at that time. It was meant to grow and engage the way that it did. And I think the view has grown and developed and we've come to understand it better. I don't think he was mistaken and I don't think he held women as inferior. I think his enlightenment was perfect.

AC: The Tibetan Buddhist system has also been accused of being extremely patriarchal, with a structure that traditionally keeps women in second-class positions. One of the most outspoken critics of that system even went so far as to say that "the patriarchal structure of Tibetan Buddhism literally depends upon the subjugation of women." Even though historically there indeed have been renowned female tantric masters, for the last five hundred years, strong female tantric voices have largely disappeared from public view. As a female representative of that tradition, what has your observation been? Is Tibetan Buddhism a man's world?

JAL: I have to say that I really don't agree with the view that women are subjugated under the Tibetan system. Guru Rinpoche [Padmasambhava, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism] himself has said that, in fact, in the tantric tradition, it is women who have the highest potential for liberation. He has said that culturally, throughout time, women have been trained in such a way that spiritual surrender is easier for them. Letting go of certain fixed, rigid things to stand on is easier for them.

AC: Are you saying that the Tibetan monastic system isn't held together by a patriarchal structure at all?

JAL: The Tibetan monastic system is. But the left hand of that monastic system is another system of dakinis who are held very, very highly. In fact, in thangkas [Tibetan Buddhist paintings], when you see a representation of someone practicing tantra, while you'll never see a male practicing alone, you will see dakinis practicing alone. And the reason why is that the woman is considered to be a display or an emanation of primordial wisdom. She's held in very high regard. I think the people who are saying that the monastic system is so oriented toward males understand only one aspect of it.

You have to understand, each of us is viewing the situation with our own preconceived ideas and prejudices. I think if I were inclined to feel demoted as a woman or less than as a woman, perhaps I would see that male superiority, but I don't. I do see that traditionally the form has the man on the throne in the monastery, but I don't in my practice or in any other way see a male superiority. For instance, when most males are enthroned, they are enthroned with the crown of their lineage. When I was enthroned, I was enthroned with the crown of the five primordial wisdoms. From one perspective, you could say, well, maybe the five primordial wisdoms are much higher than the male lineage crown. But I just don't think there is any value in looking at it in that way. The male is the head of the lineage—that's how the Buddha appears in the world. The woman with the five primordial wisdoms as her crown—she's the dakini. These are all the appearance of the Buddha. How can they be unequal? To me, the Buddha appears. Period. That's the event. We're sitting here with our cultural bias and our gender bias and we're looking at that and we are interpreting it. "He gets to sit on the throne. She gets to sit in the cave." And we put our meanings on that. But I'm telling you, the only event that occurs is that the Buddha has appeared, and that's how I see it. I would be unfaithful to my practice if I tried to distinguish and make one higher than the other.

AC: In a previous issue of WIE, we spoke with Buddhist scholar Miranda Shaw about gender roles in the practice of Tibetan tantra, which is considered by many to be a powerful and even essential vehicle for reaching enlightenment. She made the intriguing statement that in tantric practice, conventional male/female gender relationships are reversed and, specifically as part of the practice of sexual yoga, the primary role of men is to serve women, acting as their devotees, servants and even slaves. In tantric practice, Shaw writes, men are to "take refuge in the vulva of an esteemed woman" and are to literally worship her as a goddess. By worshipping her in this way, she told us, "He's also realizing his innate divinity and his Buddhahood; only he believes that the proper expression of his Buddhahood is to honor her divinity. In this worldview, it is the role of the female to channel enlightened energies, the energy of transformation, into the world in a powerful way. It is the role of the male to be the recipient of those energies and to honor them and their source." According to Shaw, that is the tantric view. In your own experience as a dakini and an incarnation of Mandarawa, perhaps the most renowned Tibetan yogic consort of all time, are women the source of enlightened energy for themselves and for men?

JAL: Wow! Well, I can't say that I agree with her interpretation. I don't feel that men actually worship and become enslaved to women. I think that what really happens is that there is a mutual recognition of the view. The female and the male become inseparable; they become unable to practice fully without one another. They are a unit in union. They are primordial emptiness and its display, inseparable. And that being the case, there is a mutual viewing of one another as that. The dakini recognizes the daka [male counterpart of a dakini] as the source of her energy; the daka recognizes the dakini as the source of his energy. It is a symbolic picture of primordial emptiness and the display or emanation of that emptiness, like the sun and the sun's rays: completely inseparable. Any words or any thoughts that separate them or put one higher than the other are simply conceptual proliferation and really have no place in that kind of practice.

AC: In general, what do you see as the fundamental differences between men and women on the spiritual path? Do men have any particular advantages over women on the path to enlightenment? Do women have any particular advantages over men?

JAL: Yes and yes. I really feel that I understand and vibe with what Guru Rinpoche said about women having, through our cultural experience, been trained in surrender a little bit better. This is simply my own observation. But in looking at the great weight of the male population as practitioners and as people in our world today, I do think that men are having a little problem with their footing. I think that certain things have been expected of them and that they haven't known how to get beyond that. There are certain kinds of strengths that men are supposed to have and certain ideas that men have as to how to have those strengths. And sometimes they can be counterproductive to getting past our exterior ego identity.

AC: Do you mean that certain culturally imposed ideas about manhood become obstacles to liberation?

JAL: Yes, I think they do. Men are expected to be strong, they're expected to be controlled, they're expected to be producers. And judging from a lot of the students I have taught, I think that psychologically a lot of men have to go through a period where they have to accept this intuitive, spiritual, feminine part of their natures in order to go even one step farther. But that's not really something women have to do. We're taught that's okay for us, so we don't so much feel that we have to get to that point before we let go. I think if there is a difference, it isn't because there's any fundamental potency or strength that either gender has over the other. I think the two are equal and meant to function in union. But I do feel that culturally, men have been biased toward a more materialistic life than women have.

AC: So do you feel that because it's more culturally accepted for women to be intuitive and vulnerable, they therefore have less to let go of on the spiritual path?

JAL: I definitely think that's a factor, but again, you have to take everybody case by case.

AC: In the Buddhist teaching, enlightenment is said to be directly related to the recognition of the inherent emptiness or insubstantiality of a separate personal self. In a previous issue of WIE, the renowned Indian woman sage, Vimala Thakar—the only person who the great J. Krishnamurti ever asked to teach—spoke in detail with us about her observation that women tend to have greater difficulty letting go of attachment to a personal sense of self than men do. She said, "Nothingness, nobodyness, emptiness—even the intellectual understanding of this—frightens women. Because of our physical vulnerability, because of our secondary role in human civilization, on a subconscious level, there is fear. If I mature into nonduality, into nothingness, into nobodyness, what will happen to my physical existence? Will it be more vulnerable? Will I be able to defend myself in case of difficulty, in case of some attack against me? Consciously, intellectually, women understand everything because regarding the brilliance of the brain, there is no distinction such as male and female. But psychologically, at the core of their being, is this fear." In my own experience as a teacher I have also noticed that women do seem to have greater difficulty than men in letting go of the habit of what I call the personalization of their experience. Now I certainly don't mean to imply that this means men, as a gender, tend to be fearless heroes who are willing to jump into emptiness and abandon any and all notions of self at the drop of a hat. Men and women struggle with the same fear of nonexistence. But it's been my experience or my impression that women seem to have greater difficulty being able to see directly into the impersonal nature of all human experience than men do. As a woman and as a teacher of enlightenment, is this also your experience?

JAL: At a certain point in our path, there's a kind of grieving that both men and women have to go through. When we leave the party and begin to really practice renunciation, begin to practice recognition of what samsara [cyclic existence] really is, there's a grieving that comes from that. And I think for men and women it's a different grief. I think that men have to let go of certain kinds of expectations that are made of them and that they have of the world. And I think that women have to grieve about the letting go of another kind of expectation, which is a more personal one. Women are culturally biased toward being in relationship to, and so their best way of understanding themselves is in relationship to. However, at a certain point in our practice, when that grieving is finished, we are every bit as capable of allowing that to pass, and approaching the ground view and letting go of identification with self-nature as being inherently real. I think at a certain level of practice, after that grieving is done, our abilities are equal.

AC: Would you consider that to be, relatively speaking, quite a high level of practice?

JAL: Yup. (Laughs)

AC: In this issue, in addition to exploring the relationship between gender and spirituality, we're also looking into the relationship between sexual orientation and the path to enlightenment. In our time, there are many gays and lesbians who view their experience of sexual orientation as the very basis of the spiritual path. Do you think that giving spiritual relevance to sexual orientation is a help or a hindrance on the path to enlightenment?

JAL: I think maybe I should speak personally about my experience with this whole issue. First of all, I'd like to say that I have been very disturbed by the way in which some of the conventional religions that are present in our time have kind of lopped off their gay population and considered them not fit and inappropriate and bound for someplace bad. I feel a tremendous amount of grief about that. When I developed the temple and even before His Holiness recognized me, I made it very, very clear that any sexual orientation did not preclude being a member of my temple. I made it very clear that whether you were gay or straight, tall or short, thin or fat, it didn't matter to me at all. When that word got out, a lot of people who were gay who were looking for a spiritual home took refuge in my temple. I now have some nuns who are gay. They're not practicing, of course. They're celibate.

Now my experience has been that, of the people who came to my temple at first, some of the ones who were suffering the most were a lot of the gay people. They were deeply ingrained in finding an identity and gathering it around themselves and making a box out of it. It was as if they were less free than those who didn't feel the need to find an identity. They were just encumbered by this need.

AC: They were encumbered by their gay identity?

JAL: Yes. Not by their homosexuality itself, but by the need to express it in one way or another, or to not express it—either coming out of the closet or not coming out of the closet—whatever their phenomena were about that. That was what oppressed them, not their sexual proclivity. And what I've tried to do is to let them know that they shouldn't put themselves under such pressure to express themselves in one way or another but rather they should identify with the original nature that we're trying to reveal. I feel that people have to be who they are. In the same way that I didn't want to lose my Jewish-Italian American identity and start wearing Tibetan chubas, I don't expect my gay practitioners to act like straight people or to lose their sense of gayness. But I feel that just as being a Jewish-Italian American is not going to get me enlightened, neither is being gay going to get them enlightened. My feeling is that we all have to drop that stuff and go for it!

AC: What you're saying has also been my observation—that often a gay identity tends to be just another expression of ego. That doesn't mean that one has to necessarily deny one's sexual preference. But one has to maybe question the ego's investment in any particular sexual preference.

JAL: Totally. That's totally it. What keeps us from functioning as awakened beings is the fundamental belief in self-nature being inherently real. Self-nature as defined by anything—gender bias, sexual bias, emotional, cultural, anything. Whatever form it takes. So in giving that any validity, any lip service—what's the point? We've already got that in the world. Let's move away from it.

AC: Father Basil Pennington, a highly respected Trappist monk, whom we also interviewed for this issue, made an intriguing statement about the relationship between spiritual freedom and sexual orientation. He feels that "all men and women are ultimately bisexual and that therefore, a person who is really free knows that he or she is bisexual and can relate with others in whatever way is appropriate, that they're not bound by any particular sexual orientation." In your experience, is Father Pennington on to something when he says that there's a direct relationship between spiritual freedom and liberation from a rigid adherence to any particular sexual orientation?

JAL: He is absolutely dead on. Absolutely correct. Because again, the bodhisattva, when it appears in the world, appears in the form of compassion, in whatever form is needed. So if you need a banana, the bodhisattva is going to appear as a banana. If you need a person with a certain kind of orientation, the bodhisattva is going to appear in that way. I really think that at a certain level, the bottom line, the only thing that matters is the bodhicitta [aspiration to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all beings]. The only thing that matters is the appearance of compassion in the world.

AC: So would you agree with his assertion that if someone is free, they know they're bisexual and that would be expressed in whatever ways are appropriate?

JAL: I would say that if a person is free, they know that the human condition is to be sexual and they don't have a determined bias as to how that sexuality should be expressed. However, I wouldn't say that a person knows himself to be bisexual. To recognize yourself as bisexual is, I would say, a preliberated state. If you are free, you can't even recognize the concept of bisexual. A person who's truly liberated isn't going to spend all that much attention on thinking about what box to put their sexuality in. If you are free, your sexuality, like anything else, is an adornment that you wear in order to be of benefit to others.

AC: So in this way of looking at it, the expression of one's sexuality would somehow have to be for the sake of someone else?

JAL: As a bodhisattva, everything is for the sake of all sentient beings. I think that for a person who is a liberated bodhisattva, if it were required for them to be homosexual at a certain point in time, that would not be a foreign concept. I think that would be a perfectly okay thing to do because that's the way the bodhicitta would appear. I feel for myself that if it were needed for me to function in a homosexual way, I'm sure I could. I'm sure I would. And that would be part of my sexuality. It would be real.

AC: Marpa, the guru of Milarepa, one of the most revered Tibetan yogis of all time, is widely known to have been a fierce and demanding teacher. Tales of his ferocity in the service of his disciples' liberation are legendary. Not only did he repeatedly humiliate Milarepa but he even was known to beat him physically in order to awaken him to his own true nature. You too have a reputation for being a fierce and demanding teacher and have even been criticized for the lengths to which you have been willing to go to keep your students on the straight and narrow. The whole notion of crazy wisdom, meaning that the teacher will go to any lengths necessary to awaken his or her students—including that which often appears to be incomprehensible to the unawakened mind—is revered by Tibetans as a powerful method of spiritual instruction. Some of the most widely respected male Tibetan teachers of our time have been accused of far greater abuses of their disciples than you have, and yet the Buddhist world at large seems to be much less forgiving in your case than in theirs. Is there a double standard in place? Does the fact that you're a woman make it unacceptable for you to be a fierce and uncompromising teacher? Or are your critics correct in saying that sometimes you go too far?

JAL: I have to say that I don't have a particular view on the subject except that in looking at each student individually I see that each one of them has a particular capacity and a particular set of obstacles. And sometimes, something really unusual or outrageous might be the very thing that provides the hook on to the path, or the very thing that provides some amazing ripening. When it happens that this kind of student comes together with a teacher who is capable of seeing it and maybe delivering what is needed there, I think that is the most fortunate of circumstances. I think that is an outrageously rare thing and an outrageously fortunate set of circumstances. So when that has happened, I have dived on it. But my teachers have also done that with me.

AC: They've been very fierce with you?

JAL: One time when I was newly recognized, my teacher was extremely wrathful with me and it was about something that never even happened. It was so outrageous and it tore me up so badly but it also, I think, added years on to my life because health obstacles that were happening to me disappeared like magic after that. So I believe that sometimes those two circumstances come together and when they do, it is the teacher's responsibility to take advantage of them. There have been circumstances where I have gone to amazing lengths to befriend and stay with and hook on to the path some student of mine, to the point where the other students will say, "Gee, you didn't do that for me!" But that's just because of the way the karma has ripened. That's because at that moment in time, there was a window and there was a way to go through it. When one of my nuns was first ordained, a series of things happened where I really took her to task and yelled at her. It upset her very badly and yet the very next day she was totally able to see it, and there was an amazing change after that. I don't think a person should make an issue about such things. I think that once a student entrusts themselves to a teacher and trusts that teacher to the degree that they have confidence in their qualities, then at that point, you kind of have to make a deal that it's not always going to be roses; sometimes you're going to hear things you don't want to hear and it's going to be painful. And it's a student's responsibility to somehow let that input come into their lives.

AC: Someone engages in a committed relationship with a teacher of enlightenment because they're saying that they want their ego killed. So that's not necessarily going to be a painless process. I mean, most of the time, it's actually horrendous. And it's very hard, it seems, for most people to make that kind of commitment where they say, "This is it."

JAL: Right. And it's difficult to teach in that way, with that kind of passion, in a world where it has become very fashionable for people to file lawsuits about everything. Anytime anyone goes to a counselor, I guarantee that counselor will find out that they have been abused. That's kind of the popular thing. The idea that people are being victimized or being abused is very much in style. To write a really hip pop psychology article, you've got to talk about abuse, and sexual abuse if you can! You know, at a different time, in a different place, it would be different. Even in my family—Italian Americans are very tough on their kids—but they're also very loving and very friendly. It's the way a mother shows how much she loves that child that she is willing to not be a good guy in a particular situation.

AC: Right.

JAL: And I'll tell you, I have been willing not to be a good guy in a situation that I thought would protect a student. I think of myself as being like a Jewish-Italian mother in that way. If I do come to a point where I show wrath toward a person, at the same time I'm feeling so much love for them. I feel like you don't have the right to show wrath to a person if you don't know how much you love them. And I feel that knowing that I would die for them, knowing that I care for them to the nth degree, empowers me to do whatever is necessary, and that's the basis of the agreement that I have with my students. They know that if the time comes that they need it, they're going to hear from me. I have a number of students who are recovering alcoholics. Now they're monks and nuns. One woman, whom I love dearly and think very highly of, not too long before she met me was living as a homeless person under a bridge, an alcoholic. And now when I see her wearing the robes of the Buddha, and I think about what it took—how much wrath and how much love and how much of everything it took to get her to that point where she's not only not under the bridge but she's benefiting others—when I see something like that, you know, I think this is an amazing opportunity. This is fantastic. And I don't think I could live with myself if I hadn't taken advantage of that. I don't think I could live with myself if I hadn't been strong, if I hadn't been wrathful, if I hadn't said, "Sit down. Listen. Now I'm going to tell you the truth." I don't think I could watch someone pass through their neuroses if I have a karmic connection with them and not do something about it. I feel that every karmic connection I have with a student is an opportunity. I feel that I have a passion about that opportunity and I'm going to take it. And I'm not going to apologize.

I want to thank Vickie Mackenzie for allowing me to quote liberally from her chapter on Jetsunma in her fascinating book Reborn in the West.