Tibetan Buddhist Nuns in Exile: Creating A Sacred Space to be at Home

Abstract

This article looks at the activities of the Tibetan Nuns Project in North India and the experience of Tibetan Buddhist nuns at Dolma Ling Nunnery and Institute for Higher Learning and Shugsep Nunnery in the district of Dharamsala. It is argued that although these women are now in exile from Tibet, their home, they were in “spiritual exile” all along,
even when at “home” in Tibet, mainly because of their gender. Examining how the nuns are making innovative and creative progress towards redressing this “double exile”, by developing agency in their spiritual lives and acquiring knowledge, is crucial to the analytical perspective of this article. On the basis of observations from a brief time spent with the nuns at Dolma Ling and Shugsep, study of literature about them and insights drawn from theory of sacred space in the study of religion and from feminist theorists (particularly Luce Irigaray), it is suggested that the nuns may well be in exile from home, but they are nevertheless finding a way home to themselves as women and to the spirit of lives
dedicated to religious practice.

Journal for the Study of Religion Vol. 19 (1) 2006: pp. 41-62