Tara

“I worship the goddess Tara, who promised to attain enlightenment in the female form. She never wanted to be a monk, and forever retained the form of a woman.”–Yeshey Choden, 48, head of the Karma Drubdey Gompa Nunnery and Retreat Center, Trongsa

Yeshey Choden believes that only confused minds discriminate between sexes. In the ultimate sense, she says, there is no difference between men and women; and physical forms are just external structures, just circumstances. Enlightenment, she presumes, is thus open to all; it is a quality of the mind, not the body.

As the the head of one of the largest nunneries in Bhutan, Yeshey Choden runs a center with the support of her teacher, Khenpo Rinpoche, who founded the nunnery in 1968. The Rinpoche often travels abroad to teach, and keeps in touch with the nuns via the Internet and telephone calls. The nunnery’s external beauty–its carefully tended grounds and clean environment–arguably reflect the internal beauty found in the women here in pursuit of their spiritual growth.