Kung Fu Nuns Smash Tradition
NAGARJUN, Nepal — As the first rays of sun pierced through the clouds covering snowcapped Himalayan peaks, Jigme Rabsal Lhamo, a Buddhist nun, drew a sword from behind her back and thrust it toward her opponent, toppling her to the ground.
“Eyes on the target! Concentrate!” Ms. Lhamo yelled at the knocked-down nun outside a whitewashed temple in the Druk Amitabha nunnery on a hill overlooking Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal.
Ms. Lhamo and the other members of her religious order are known as the Kung Fu nuns, part of an 800-year-old Buddhist sect called Drukpa, the Tibetan word for dragon. Across the Himalayan region, and the wider world, its followers now mix meditation with martial arts.
Every day, the nuns practice Kung Fu, the ancient Chinese martial art. It is part of their spiritual mission to achieve gender equality and physical fitness.
“Kung Fu helps us to break gender barriers and develop inner confidence,” said Ms. Lhamo, 34, who arrived at the nunnery a dozen years ago from Ladakh, in northern India. “It also helps to take care of others during crises.”
For as long as scholars of Buddhism remember, women in the Himalayas who sought to practice as spiritual equals with male monks were stigmatized by religious leaders and broader social customs.
Barred from engaging in the philosophic debates among monks, women were confined to cooking and cleaning. They were forbidden from physical exertion or from leading prayers or even from singing.
In recent decades, those restrictions have become the heart of a battle waged by thousands of nuns across many sects of Himalayan Buddhism.
Leading the charge for change are the Kung Fu nuns, whose Drukpa sect began a reformist movement 30 years ago under the leadership of Jigme Pema Wangchen, who is also known as the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa. He wanted nuns to carry the sect’s religious message outside monastery walls.
Today, Drukpa nuns lead prayers and walk for months on pilgrimages to pick up plastic litter and make people aware of climate change.
Every year for the past 20, except during the pandemic, the nuns have cycled about 2,000 kilometers from Kathmandu to Ladakh, high in the Himalayas, to promote green transportation. Along the way, they stop to educate people about gender equality.
The 12th Gyalwang Drukpa has also been training the nuns to become chant masters. He has also given them the highest level of teaching, called Mahamudra, a Sanskrit word for “great seal,” an advanced system of meditation.
But the changes have faced a backlash, and conservative Buddhists have threatened to burn Drukpa temples.
The nuns have been verbally abused by monks from other sects. But that does not deter them, they say. The sect’s vast campus is home to 350 nuns. The women work as painters, artists, plumbers, gardeners, electricians and masons, and also manage a library and medical clinic for laypeople.
“When people come to the monastery and see us working, they start thinking being a nun is not being ‘useless,’ ” said Zekit Lhamo, 28, referring to an insult sometimes hurled at the nuns. “We are not only taking care of our religion but the society, too.”
Their work has inspired other women in Nepal’s capital.
“When I look at them, I want to become a nun,” said Ajali Shahi, a graduate student at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu. “They look so cool, and you want to leave everything behind.”
Every day, the nunnery receives at least a dozen inquiries about joining from places as far as Mexico, Ireland, Germany and the United States.
“But everyone can’t do this,” said Jigme Yangchen Ghamo, a nun. “It is a hard life.”
“Our lives,” she added, “are bound by so many rules that even having a pocket in your robes comes with restrictions.”
On a recent day, the nuns woke up at 3 a.m. and began meditating in their dormitories. Before dawn, they walked to the main temple, where a nun chant master led prayers. Sitting cross-legged on benches, the nuns scrolled through the prayer text on their iPads, introduced to minimize use of paper.
Then in unison they began to chant, and the bright-colored temple filled with the sound of drums, horns and bells.
After the prayers, the nuns gathered outside.
Jigmet Namdak Dolker was about 12 when she noticed Drukpa nuns walking past her uncle’s house in Ladakh. An adopted child, she started walking with them.
She begged her uncle to let her join Drukpa nunnery, but he refused. Four years later, she made her way to the nunnery and never returned.
And how does she feel after seven years, six of which she has spent practicing Kung Fu?
“Proud. Freedom to do whatever I like,” she said, “and so strong from inside that I can do anything.”