Dolma Ling Nunnery near Dharamsala is home to about 200 nuns from six nunneries in India, Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan. Primarily sponsored by the Tibetan Nuns Project, Dolma Ling offers a top-notch Buddhist education in all traditions. The nuns who study here are lucky. Buddhist nunneries are generally not as well funded as monasteries and some nuns in remote areas receive no formal education at all. The nuns at Dolma Ling are in some form of study for most of the day and have both monks and nuns as professors. Once they finish their six-year course of study, they begin it again.
Debates are an integral part of a Tibetan Buddhist education and each fall Dolma Ling sponsors a month-long debating session with over 120 nuns from six different nunneries. The debates are held twice daily in a large open-air courtyard. The first hour is for one-on-one debates and the second hour for group debates. The debates are both verbal and physical. The clapping of the hands, stamping of the feet and swinging of the prayer beads are symbolic, intended to wake the person from their sleep of ignorance. In the group debates, some of the responses are done in synch, almost like a song and dance. Other times it's more shove and shout. Buddhist nuns tend to be shy and reserved, but in debate they strut their stuff like the monks. There was lots of good energy all around and these were wonderful women to photograph. |
