Ep. 9: Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo — The Sky-Like Mind (Practising the Dharma in a distracted world)

Some conversations we approach with a particular sense of reverence, and this is surely one of them. In this episode of Living Dharma, co-hosts Tsunma Kunsang Palmo and Justin Kelley are joined by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo. Her story needs little introduction. The cave, the long years of solitary retreat, the founding of Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery, and the revival of the Togdenma lineage are by now the stuff of legend.What this conversation reaches for is something more intimate: the lived texture behind all of it. Jetsunma speaks with candour and warmth about how there need be no division between practice and ordinary life, using the image of a little yeast that lightens and transforms the heavy dough of the everyday. She reflects on the quiet work of befriending oneself, on the difference between the spacious, sky-like mind of old Tibet and the restless, over-stimulated mind of our own moment, and on raising children with integrity in a noisy age.She also turns to the situation of women who come to monastic life from the West and beyond, the non-Himalayan nuns who often arrive later in life, already formed, and who face particular challenges in finding training, community, and belonging. Here she shares the work of the Alliance of Non-Himalayan Nuns and her hope of making real use of all that these women bring.What strikes you, listening to her, is that here is someone who embodies the tradition and shares it openly, without pretense, with great humility and kindness.