Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (b.1943,) born Diane Perry, is an English-born Tibetan Buddhist teacher and nun—one of the very few Western yoginis taught in the East.
Born in Woolmers Park, Hertfordshire, during a World War II Blitz, Palmo traveled to India at age 18 in search of a spiritual guide. On her 21st birthday, Palmo met her religious teacher, the eighth Khamtrul Rinpoche, and became only the second Western woman (Freda Bedi was the first in 1966) to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist nun. She spent twelve years living in an isolated cave in the Himalayas, three of those years in a strict meditation retreat. In 2000, she founded the Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery in Himachal Pradesh, India.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
Our mind is a treasure. But it’s very absorbent, so we must also be very discriminating in what we hear, read, and see. And in the spiritual life, our fence is our ethics. If we know we are living ethically to the best of our ability, the mind will become peaceful.
—Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
The thoughts are not the problem. Thoughts are the nature of the mind. The problem is that we identify with them.
—Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
It is really very impressive how many excuses we can invent for why we aren’t sitting. This idea we have that when things are perfect, then we’ll start practicing … things will never be perfect. This is samsara!
—Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
Our fundamental problems are our ignorance and ego-grasping. We grasp at our identity as being our personality, memories, opinions, judgments, hopes, fears, chattering away—all revolving around this me me me me.
—Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
The difference between love and attachment … Attachment is the very opposite of love. Love says, “I want you to be happy.” Attachment says, “I want you to make me happy.”
—Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
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