Introduction:

The North American tour of the nuns of Khachoe Ghakyil Nunnery (KGN) makers the first time that a troupe of Tibetan nuns have traveled in the West to stage performances of sacred music, dance, and theater, and to introduce audiences to the central role women have played in the spiritual life of Tibet.

The spirit of Tibet, the "land of snows," comes vividly to life as the eleven nuns perform colorful masked dances and vibrant harmonic chants. In counterpoint to these ancient rituals, the nuns illustrate the innovative nature of their tour with a demonstration of formalized philosophical debate and religious practice that was previously unavailable to women; and with the world premier of an original sacred dance dramatizing the Life of Milarapa, the most famous spiritual biography in Tibet.

Nuns traveling the world on a fund-raising tour, nuns practicing debate, nuns performing ritual masked dance, and nuns drawing sand mandalas have never been seen before in the West, because they represent the breakthrough of Tibetan women to an unprecedented status in the spiritual life of Tibetan culture, a new, egalitarian culture that is emerging in the Tibetan refugee communities of India and Nepal.

But two of the performances by the KGN nuns highlight the fact that even in the days of medieval, patriarchal Tibet, the feminine powers of the natural world, and the individual powers of great women practitioners, have always been recognized and revered. The Practice of Chod is a ritual that was traditionally performed in spooky cemeteries in the dead of night, and it was made popular by the famous female saint Machig Lapdron in the eleventh century. While the KGN Nuns intone haunting melodies to the accompaniment of drums and horns made of bone, this ritual symbolizes the death of the ego, as it imagines the offering of one's own dead body to fearful demons. As one Tibetan master put it, "the Practice of Chod ruthlessly severs self-centered arrogance through an understanding of the sameness of oneself and others."

Later generations considered the female saint Machig Lapdron to be a Dakini, a "Sky-Dancer," a dynamic, dancing, female emanation of enlightened mind. In The Dance of the Dakinis the KGN Nuns perform a twirling ritual of homage and praise to the divine feminine principle symbolized in the Sky-Dancers of Tibetan Buddhism. This is a perfectly appropriate dance for these nuns, since the name of their convent, Khachoe Ghakyil, literally means "The Bliss-Whirl of the Sky-Dancers."

The Program will be narrated by one of the founders of Khachoe Ghakyil Nunnery, Thubten Dekyong, a Tibetan Buddhist nun who has translated all over the world for many great Lamas, and she is highly regarded as a teacher in her own right. But nothing is closer to her heart than KGN, a place she helped to build from the ground up, and which provides both refuge and opportunity for Tibetan women to pursue their spiritual path without limitation. Joining her will be ten nuns who were specially selected for their talents in the ritual arts, and all of whom are undertaking their first travels away from the Himalayan mountains.