There is no one accepted answer as to whether Buddhism is a religion or a philosophy, but defining it is less important than the awakening its followers seek. Britt Coker talks to a Nelson woman who spent time living in the foothills of the Himalayas, not far from the home of the Dalai Lama.
At university, Lea Godfrey studied psychology and world religions and found the Buddhist philosophy of mind made more sense to her than clinical psychology. So, with her degree completed, she visited India, Tibet and Nepal to study the dharma (Buddhist teachings). After several visits, she decided to move to India to live in a nunnery and learn the Tibetan language.
Full immersion is not a necessary requirement for a Buddhist life and it’s not unusual for people who are on a spiritual path to want to get as close as possible to the source and as far away from the white noise of the everyday. But still. Living in a nunnery for two years to master a language that is difficult to learn. There is commitment… and then there is commitment.
“You can study the philosophical texts but actually while I was living out there I got to do practice-orientated teachings with fantastic teachers. I did a seven-year programme on meditation. The first year was preliminary practices before we can move to meditation. Then four years of calm abiding meditation and then two years of Vipassana after that, so it’s like a gradual system of training your mind in the sense that you are cultivating qualities of mind like compassion, loving kindness, wisdom. I always think of the meditation practices as letting go of all I hold on to and who I am. It’s like it’s not actually trying to get anywhere. It’s peeling the onion of all the selves that you think you are until you get closer and closer to your true nature.”
The Dalia Lama gifted land in Lower Dharamsala, India, to international nuns and the Thosamling Nunnery was the result. He gifted the name too, “place of listening and reflection.” It was set up as somewhere that foreign nuns can go to study Buddhist philosophy and learn Tibetan language. Part of the nunnery is also set aside for laypeople like Lea, to study and practice there.
Lea met the Dalai Lama a couple of times while she was at Thosamling. When he is not travelling the globe meeting with world leaders and teaching, he also lives nearby in Dharamsala. His Holiness is a dog owner, which in a roundabout way, is how Lea came to meet him. Her veterinarian friend is the go-to vet for the Dalai Lama’s dog. When he met with a group of visiting veterinarians, Lea joined the group, and she met him again with her teachers and students of Thosamling when he visited the nunnery. Can she define what it is about this man who is so highly respected by so many?
“His Holiness is someone who is incredibly realised. There's wisdom and there's compassion. He has the ability to see right through you. An incredible humility, a real selflessness. Just through being in his presence it touches your being, I guess.”
My observations from a distant and non-Buddhist lens is of a man who seems full of joy, serious in brief moments then laughing the next.
“So much joy, yeah. And that comes from an internal contentment, right, not from relying on happiness coming from outside things or people or events or situations. But through his mind training and through his formal practices and study of the dharma, through the philosophical texts. It’s really special that he has the wisdom to guide us on how to alleviate suffering and action the causes for happiness.”
After her studies in the nunnery she worked in bilingual publishing, translation and teaching beginner Tibetan language in Kathmandu, Nepal, for five years. Eventually Lea returned to New Zealand and she is now completing her training as a psychotherapist, assisting clients navigate life challenges using Hakomi, a mindful somatic form of psychotherapy. But Buddhism is never far away. She doesn’t meditate everyday but does attend three group sessions a week at the Richmond Tibetan Buddhist Centre, but admits that for her, that is not enough. Once a year she also goes on a retreat for 2-3 months which involves periods of time alone and in silence where she follows a set amount of hours of practice. The cluttered thoughts of daily life are replaced, she says, by an improved quality of mind. For a Tibetan Buddhist, ‘practice’ means to both meditate and to recite Buddhist teachings as a form of prayer, mantra and visualization. What happens to a person when all they have is themselves, silence and daily practice?
“It's like a letting go of any holding in body and mind. Literally, the body softens as well, slowly and slowly and slowly. All that we hold on to in our body and mind you’re just kind of shedding. It's a way of just letting go of ‘I'm a therapist, I’m this, I’m that’. A very subtle holding in the mind stream slowly falls away and all that we occupy our minds with during our busy life drops away. We're no longer thinking about daily life we're just resting in a quality of mind that’s much more clear and aware.” But it’s not easy.
“Perhaps after a few months of retreat you are a little kinder towards yourself and a little more tolerant towards others.”
For most of us, it would be hard to imagine what it would be like to not talk for several months, let alone not be around other people. We are social animals who have survived as a species by overcoming obstacles together, not as individuals. But being a Buddhist on retreat doesn’t mean you won’t miss people. It just means you miss them, but still do it anyway.
“I look forward to renewing relationships. The social part of life really nourishes me - but a part of me also wants to stay in. But what's really interesting to me is my attachment to doing things drops away as I'm in retreat. I no longer have the desire to jump on my bike and go for a long bike ride or walk beside the ocean. Those things drop away, but I do notice after a while I really look forward to being with people again.”
To be a practicing Tibetan Buddhist seems like a lot of commitment, though it probably doesn’t feel like a commitment if you love it.
“It’s a way to work with my own neurosis. It’s a way to work with difficult thinking, with stress and difficult emotions. It gives me a method, a way to work with my mind and heart.”
We don’t have to follow a spiritual or religious path to be better at being human. There is a widely held belief that we are all pure souls underneath layers of life experiences and human conditioning. That it is a case, as Lea says, of “…peeling the onion of all the selves that you think you are, until you get closer and closer to your true nature.”
