Tibetan Buddhist Altar

The following is respectfully quoted from “Reborn in the West” by Vickie Mackenzie:

The journey to Poolesville, Maryland from New York had taken almost four hours. First one of those silver cigar-shaped trains from Penn Station in downtown Manhattan to Washington, D.C. Then a modern automatic train to Poolesville, green and lush, in the wealthy outskirts of the nation’s capital. I had had much time to ponder.

I recalled how, several years previously, I had read in a newspaper about a woman who had been recognized as a Tibetan tulku and who had run prayer vigils for world peace. That was the sum total of all I knew. Somehow, this small snippet of information had lodged in the outskirts of my brain, to be called up when the notion of this book appeared. Now, on the train rattling down the eastern seaboard of the United States, the idea of meeting a woman Western tulku beckoned alluringly. This, after all, was a rare commodity indeed: a female who had been granted the highest spiritual accolade and authority within the overly masculine world of Tibetan Buddhism. And a Westerner at that. Tracking her down, however, had not been easy. I had not been able to remember her name, and since her official enthronement in 1988 she had kept a very low profile. Through various Tibetan contacts in the USA I finally found her. Her name was Jetsunma Ahkön Norbu Lhamo, and she had a centre just outside Washington.

Over the seventeen years I had been visiting Tibetan Buddhist centres I can honestly say I had seen nothing like the one that was about to greet my eyes. It glistened in the sunlight, a grand, two-story white house fronted by six vast white pillars, looking for all the world like an exclusive country club. I reached this imposing edifice by means of a winding drive flanked with rows of tall flagpoles, immaculately manicured lawns and flower beds. Glancing up to the roof, I saw the first sign of the place’s true identity–two golden deer supporting a golden Dharma wheel, the national emblem of Tibet. And there, written large on a sign near the entrance, was the equally foreign name: Kunzang Odsal Palyul Changchub Chöling. Since its English translation was even more of a mouthful–the Fully Awakened Glorious Dharma Continent of Absolute Clear Light–it was called by its inmates simply ‘KPC’.

If the exterior was impressive, the inside was breathtaking. A large central staircase swept up from the central hall to the upstairs rooms, and the whole place was carpeted wall-to-wall in beige. But this paled into ordinariness when I entered the two gompas, without doubt the most beautiful shrine rooms I had ever seen. They were crystal palaces–around the walls was an extraordinary array of huge crystals, strategically placed on plinths and individually lit, like museum pieces. It was, I was told later, the biggest crystal collection outside the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

The first gompa, where the teachings and ceremonies take place, was hung with royal blue and gold curtains and furnished with fine chairs for those who could not sit cross-legged on the floor. The throne for the teacher stood under a canopy of red, gold and royal blue. In the middle of the room was a huge mandala, surrounded by golden stupas at the base. Against one wall was a statue of Padma Sambhava, the founder of Buddhism in Tibet, and in front of it was the biggest solid round crystal of all. The effect was extraordinary–a cross between sumptuously exotic Western drawing room and a magic Eastern temple. It occurred to me that no man in Tibetan Buddhism would ever have had the courage to produce such a place of worship, let alone envisage the concept. It managed to break all bounds of convention, and yet remain unmistakably a gompa of Tibetan Buddhism.

The second gompa was even more fabulous. This was the prayer room, lit by candles, where the twenty-four-hour vigil for world peace still goes on. In the semi-light I picked out yet more gigantic crystals, individually glowing, and the impressive sight of a wall lined with 1,002 small Buddha statues standing neatly row upon row, like sentinels watching over the holy activity taking place before them. I had seen such sights in Tibet, where entire walls are painted with thousands of Buddhas turning black with accumulated grease of millions of burning butter lamps–but nothing could match the pristine splendor that Jetsunma had created in here in the Poolesville countryside. Turning round to view another wall, I saw an equally amazing spectacle–a display of of twenty-one golden statues of Tara, the female aspect of the enlightened mind which represents fast, effective action; they stood in tiers, like some beautiful female spiritual court. It seemed an accolade particularly appropriate here. With a solitary monk sitting on his cushion sending out prayers for universal harmony and compassion, and the taped voice of Jetsunma herself crying out her haunting invocation for the Buddha to be present, the room vibrated with spiritual power.

Who was the woman who had created all this? Jetsunma Ahkön Norbu Lhamo walked into the upstairs sitting room emanating warmth, a discernible kindliness, a bubbling vivacity and, it has to be said, in appearance at least, a middle-of-the-road American ordinariness. She was dressed in a straight-cut beige skirt and top and was wearing make-up and fashionable dangly earrings. Her fingernails were long and painted, her dark brown curly hair was shoulder-length and wild. She was tall, rounded and in her early forties. Nothing gave away her unique status except for the mall–a string of prayer beads–which she played with constantly in her hands; that and the fact that, with her dark, slightly almond-shaped eyes, her slightly down-turned mouth and the general shape of her face, she had a distinctly Tibetan look about her.

I learned that she was, in fact, a walking example of curious contradictions. In the modern Western way she had been married and divorced, more than once. She was the mother of three children–two sons, now in their twenties, and an adopted girl aged five. She lived in a house behind the centre where she cooked, scoured mail order catalogues for clothes (one of her passions), and looked after her husband and family just like millions of American women all over the country.

And yet in the ancient Eastern way, she carried the name ‘Jetsunma’–a title more honorific even than ‘Rinpoche’, the recognition bestowed on male reincarnates. Here before me, in her make-up and high heels, was a woman who had been hailed as a ‘Sublime Incarnation’, no less. Here was a woman who, it was said, had achieved the spiritual mastery from which she could be reborn in any form she chose and teach directly from her own memory, without any formal training. It was a rare accomplishment indeed. Unlike the other tulkus I had met, Tibetan and Western alike, Jetsunma Ahkön Norbu Lhamo had not been discovered at an early age, nor taken into any Tibetan monastery to bring forth her potential. She had developed it entirely by herself, secretly and alone in the middle of America without help from anyone. The testimony of what she had achieved was there for all to see: the magnificent centre with its beautiful grounds, its exquisite meditation rooms, and the thriving community of followers she had gathered around her. This was clearly one very special lady indeed.