In Historic First, 20 Nuns Pass Doctorate Exams Seattle Nonprofit Plays Key Support RoleA moment of joy during the rigorous geshema exams.Nuns about to enter the geshema exams. A total of 44 nuns from nunneries in India and Nepal took various levels of their exams in May. All passed.

In Historic First, 20 Nuns Pass Doctorate Exams 
Seattle Nonprofit Plays Key Support Role

Nuns debating in front of the geshema examiners. The geshema examination process is an extremely rigorous one that takes four years, with one round per year each May.
Photos: Courtesy of Tibetan Nuns Project

Twenty Tibetan Buddhist nuns recently succeeded in earning  the equivalent of doctorate degrees, the first Himalayan-born women in their tradition to do so.

Their achievement, a momentous advance for women within Tibetan Buddhism, might not have happened without support from Tibetan Nuns Project, a non-profit with offices in Seattle and in India.

The debate or oral examination is an important part of the geshema exams. The nuns are examined on the entirety of their 17-year course of study of the Five Great Canonical Texts.

Seven of the 20 nuns have been directly supported by Tibetan Nuns Project, during their 17-year scholastic journey. The organization, also known as TNP, has been broadly supportive of nuns receiving better educations than has traditionally been the case.

What’s called a “geshema” degree will be formally conferred to the 20 nuns in December, by the Dalai Lama at a special ceremony at Drepung Monastery in India.

As geshemas  the 20 nuns will then be equal to male geshes, the doctorate-level monks who have traditionally maintained the scholastic standards and traditions of the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism. Monastics have to study for up to 20 years, to be prepared to pass the arduous four years of examinations.

While the individual accomplishments are admirable, the social implications for the Tibetan community is massive. In addition to the usual reverence the monks and nuns typically receive from the community, a Geshema degree will give the nuns public recognition for their achievement and knowledge of Buddhist teachings. This will in turn inspire people’s faith in the nuns as equally qualified as males, to be teachers and masters of the Buddhist texts.

One of the 20 senior nuns taking her fourth and final set of geshema exams in May. During the 12-day exam period, the nuns must take both oral (debate) and written exams. The examiners watch as the seated nun takes part in a debate with a standing nun.

This status potentially will accord them a level of influence much like the high male lamas, where they will be able to attract their own followings and thus patron donors for their nunneries.

Their success fulfills a long-standing wish of the Dalai Lama, and marks a new chapter in the education for ordained Buddhist women.

The nuns’ accomplishment, a major accomplishment for Tibetan women, also is a proud moment for Tibetan Nuns Project, as supporting education was one of the primary goals of the founders.

In addition to the seven Tibetan Nuns Project graduates in 2016, another 17 TNP nuns are expected to win geshema degrees over the next two years.

“Their perseverance is phenomenal,” said Lisa Farmer, executive director of Tibetan Nuns Project, about the nuns’ efforts to win geshema degrees. “The nuns have really led that…They came to us and led the charge, and we’ve just been fortunate as supporters and advocates of their energy and movement.”

Four nuns watch as other candidates debate as part of their oral examinations.

In the spring of 2012, the Tibetan Government in Exile’s Department of Religion and Culture decided to allow Tibetan nuns for the first time to take the examinations to obtain the geshema degree.

The roots of the geshe and geshema degrees can be traced back to the ancient learning center of Nalanda University in India.

Created in 1987,  Tibetan Nuns Project is a nonprofit organization that raises and coordinates funding to support more than 700 nuns in eight nunneries in India.  The largest of the nunneries are Dolma Ling and the Shugsep Ling.

A moment of joy during the rigorous geshema exams.

The organization supports nuns via a combination of individual sponsorships and funding for the nunneries’ buildings and programs. Despite the small size of the Seattle office, it does most of the heavy lifting in terms of outreach and fund-raising for the nunneries. Sponsorship support comes from around the world, most of it from the U.S. It is fitting that the organization’s Seattle office’s executive director has a strong sense of feminism, and  a master’s degree in education.

“The focus on education, and a program looking to empower women and self-sufficiency,” were among the primary reasons why Farmer took the job as executive director four years ago, she said.

Farmer said she’s proud to work in a place “Where the people themselves and their work are more powerful than the organization.”

The completion of the exams this year was only the latest in a series of tests. Each spring for four consecutive years, starting in the spring of 2013, the nuns were required to take two weeks of written and verbal examinations.

As they faced the exams the nuns had to rely on their 17-year study of Buddhists texts, and their own realization, to pass the examinations. The testing included a series of dramatic debates during which they were challenged by some of the most learned monastic teachers.

The nuns’ achievement is particularly remarkable given that many of the nuns were illiterate, and could not even write their names, when they escaped Tibet in the late 1980s.

Nuns about to enter the geshema exams. A total of 44 nuns from nunneries in India and Nepal took various levels of their exams in May. All passed.

Many of the women arrived in India without any money or possessions, after long, arduous and dangerous journeys over the Himalayan Mountains. Some of them had been imprisoned and tortured in Tibet by the Chinese.

Ven. Tenzin, one of the nuns sponsored through TNP, came from central Tibet and now lives and studies in Dolma Ling Nunnery.

In Tibet Tenzin and her six siblings helped care for their family’s animals and fields, which required that she leave school at age 12. Determined to become a nun and pursue Buddhist studies, like many before her she escaped from Tibet across the Himalayas, hiding during the day to evade capture, and walking at night for 26 days. Little did she know what she would end up accomplishing in exile.

Receiving their geshema degrees will place the nuns in leadership roles, in monastic and lay communities typically dominated by their male counterparts.

In Tibetan Buddhist debate, the challenger uses her right hand to raise up her prayer beads around her left arm. This represents the fulfillment of the efforts of compassion, in lifting up all suffering beings out of the round of rebirth.

This will be a significant change because in the hierarchy of the typical Tibetan gathering, religious or not, male lamas and monks typically assume a leadership role. They either are the main guests, they are seated in the main area, or they are accorded the most reverence and thus command the audience’s attention.

Tibetans are used to seeing a male monk or lama at the head of the table, and accustomed for those males to speak or preach to them.

The Geshema degrees will give nuns similar leadership roles of in the community. In turn this means the nuns will bring a fresh perspective, a woman’s perspective, to their discourses.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has often been quoted saying that scientific research indicates women are more warm-hearted than men, with more sensitivity and concern for others. He adds that kindness and warm-heartedness are going to be the key factors molding the future of the world.

He has even shocked the world by suggesting a possible female Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama has long advocated for the inclusion and importance of a role for women in all seats of Buddhism.

Medication over Medication: An Alternative Approach to Military Healing

Meditation over Medication: 
An Alternative Approach to Military Healing

Written by: Jamyang Dorjee

Vernon Vernon Kellnhofer, an 18-year veteran, found meditation a creative way to work with the traumas of his service in war zones.
Photos: Courtesy Joint Base Lewis-Mchord.

Soldiers Vernon Kellnhofer and Maria Guzman both deployed to Iraq, and both came back missing something inside.

And both found resolution, and a way forward, by turning within through meditation.

Born in El Salvador, Guzman found her way into Joint Base Lewis-McChord Buddhist services “looking for peace,” she says.

The altar at the Thursday evening Buddhist practice session at JBLM.

Guzman had deployed to Iraq in 2009, where she set up mobile hospitals, and where reality was often raw and painful.

“I saw things, as a human being it’s not normal to see such things except maybe in movies,” she said. “But this is real and though it’s not my fault, I can’t help but feel helpless. It’s difficult to get over all that.”

With an emptiness in her heart she had no answer for, Guzman said that when returned she found that people often were pretending to listen to her, but not really hearing.

She turned to meditation as a way to cope with anger that kept arising, and that wasn’t fixed, but just tamped down, by medication.

“With meditation I don’t feel the anger,” she said. “I realize I need to work with myself first.”

While she was brought up in the Catholic Church, she said that the Buddhist meditation group became her sanctuary.

“In the church I didn’t feel comfortable because of what I wore and how I looked. I wear sweatpants and stuff and pretty much kept to myself. It’s who I am,” she said. “So I went looking for something else.”

Kellnhofer’s story is in a way similar, of a person who saw too much during combat, and who now is using the same bravery that sustained him, to find an inner and sustainable way to cope with the trauma.

A fleet of Chinook helicopters, here in a rescue exercise, is based at JBLM.

Kellnhofer in his military uniform

Kellnhofer, 5’ 9” and 190 pounds of muscle, is clean-shaven, tough and imposing, looking every bit the soldier he is.

As an 18-year veteran of the U.S, Army, Kellnhofer is a non-commissioned officer at Joint Base Lewis-McChord who is an expert in some of the deadliest tools of war. Technically he’s a CBRN, which stands for “Chemical Biological Radiological and Nuclear.”

What this means is that Kellnhofer trains National Guard Reserve soldiers how to detect when they are under a biological or chemical attack, and to protect themselves and treat any victims. This is heavy stuff, which wears on a person.

Deployed three times to Iraq, like most soldiers Kellnhofer suffered from the physical and emotional trauma of his work and environment. Mental stress and post traumatic stress disorder followed, and led him predictably into the world of medication for treatment.

But as a practical and creative man, Kellnhofer thought there had to be a better way than just depending on medication, and so he set himself a goal to find it.

Kellnhofer recalled reading about meditation and the concepts and practices of Buddhism on the internet. He began meditating on his own a little and noticed how it helped him.

That latent interest in meditation…fueled by a recent stint of active duty in Korea this past March..brought Kellnhofer back from his wanderings wondering.

His curiosity led him to explore the chaplaincy page of the JBLM website, to his surprise saw a Buddhist service.

He showed up…a bit nervous, not knowing what to expect. Born and raised Catholic, it was a wandering of a different kind.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord, commonly referred to as JBLM, is home to one of the largest “Religious Support Organizations” in the United States Army, with almost 95 Unit Ministry Teams stationed at Lewis Main, Lewis North and McChord Field.

The JBLM Chaplain oversees and operates nine chapels, and performs and provides a variety of religious services for the soldiers and airmen stationed at the base. Sermons range from liturgical, traditional, gospel and contemporary, and the teams offer Jewish, Islam, Buddhist and Wiccan services.

In a stark room bare of anything but a little statue of the Buddha, the small JBLM Buddhist sangha gathers every Thursday evening at 5:45PM.

Ann Tjhung, an ordained Zen Buddhist priest, leads the Buddhist practice at JBLM.

Led by Ann Tjhung, an ordained Zen Buddhist priest, the group usually begins with 30 minutes of meditation, followed by a brief dharma talk sometimes given by Tjhung or by another member. Then a conversation follows.

Last week she asked Kellnhofer to give the talk.

“I was a bit surprised and a little afraid but I enjoyed it,” he said. “She (Tjhung) is a bit like that, easy-going but knows when to push you.”

Like Kellnhofer, Tjhung’s introduction to Buddhism also began via the internet, and after trauma.

She “began practicing seriously,” she said, after she lost her then-19-year-old son, a U.S. Marine, to a car accident in California about five years ago.

Via JBLM’s counseling for the grieving, she started attending the Buddhist services then offered by Ajahn Malasarie, a Thai Buddhist Monk.

Tjhung began increasingly began taking an active role in the sangha under Ajahn Malasarie’s tutelage.

And then he asked her, much to her surprise and despite her not being an ordained chaplain, if she would take over the service.

Chaplin Captain Somya Malasri  had received a scholarship and was moving to Virginia, but he trusted that Tjhung had deepened in her practice enough to take over.

“It was quite an honor,” Tjhung said.

JBLM personnel risk their lives in missions on aircraft like this C-130 Hercules, on a training mission simulating rescue of earthquake visions.

The weekly service is open to all, and is free for people on the base.

“Attendance is pretty small most of the time,” she said. “A lot of Americans don’t really understand it, and because the practice requires some work and effort, people tend to shy away from it. It requires some self-control, to be able to sit down…sometimes might seem like it has no value, but it is huge.”

Because army personnel are always on the move, people are always passing through the JBLM sangha.

Through the year Tjhung has seen both young and old, military personnel as well as civilians and their families. Some attend meditations for six months but then they get relocated, reassigned and move on.

“Everybody seems to take something positive from it,” she said, adding that she tries to keep in touch with many of them through their Facebook page, and to share articles and reading material through that.

Like Guzman, Kellnhofer said part of the power of the Buddhist practice comes from how it enables him to work on himself, how it gives him inner tools he can use.

“I don’t like to downplay any religion but I don’t see them practicing anything,” Kellnhofer said. “They dress up nice for one day a week to be a better person.”

He added that it was a practice he could do, and that it started with him being exactly himself.

“There is a reason why it’s called ‘Buddhist practice,’” he said. “It’s a practice. I’m not perfect at it but I keep trying to get there. It helps me a lot. I feel I’ve made a few improvements in my personal life and generally found that nothing comes out of it but good.”

It has been about five months now that Kellnhofer has been off medication and he is convinced that’s because of his meditation practice.

“I know it was the meditation. It’s gotta be,” he said. There’s a hint of humble triumph in his voice.