I met a Goddess in Nepal

Excerpt from a tour participant's blog about her tour to Kathmandu. If you are interested in coming on my next pilgrimage, please visit my tour website.

Spending some time so close to the Mother Goddess's greatest natural monument was a constant reminder of the divine feminine.  In fact, that's what I was seeking on my pilgrimage there.  My personal guide was a lovely, smart, western woman named Yana, who has visited Nepal numerous times.  Yana converted to Tibetan Buddhism when she was fourteen years old, and is faithful still.  Clearly it was no adolescent fad.  Nor is her reverence for female deities.  She knows her stuff and led me on a magical journey to Hindu and Buddhist temples and power spots richly endowed with goddess-worship and lore.

My first ten days in Kathmandu were during the festival of Dasain, which pays homage to the various manifestations of the fierce and heroic Goddess Durga. 

"Daughters of Dolma"

A new film on the lives of Tibetan Buddhist Nuns at several nunneries in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal. It premieres in London on June 30th, 2013. "Daughters of Dolma" signifies daughters of Tara (Dolma in Tibetan), modern day offspring of the bodhisattva who vowed: "Until samsara is empty, I shall work for the benefit of sentient beings in a woman's body!"

From their synopsis:
'In the summer of 2011, we travelled 4000 miles from London to India and to Nepal where our film crew spent a month filming the authentic ways of life of Tibetan Buddhist practitioners in two nunneries in the Kathmandu Valley. Our team consists of six international students from the University of St Andrews who are bound by the common passion to raise the profile of Buddhist nuns around the world. Our documentary is about how the Buddhist philosophy is lived out by contemporary Buddhist nuns of various age groups, personalities, and familial backgrounds and their remarkable ability to help their communities. We want to depict them as they are, beneath their shaved heads and maroon robes, beyond their monastic vows, prayers, and studies. There is another interesting side to becoming a nun and this is what our film strives to bring to the audience.'

What is extraordinary, beyond the difficulties of producing an independent film, especially on women in Buddhism (as you can see from the handful on our 'Buddhist Women in Film' page), is that this film was produced by a handful of university students still presently attending the University of St. Andrews in Scotland! Praise.

Just goes to show that whoever you are, wherever you are, if you want to share Tara's love, to share her manifestations in the world at this time, you just do it.

Emaho!

Daughter of Dolma website
Movie trailer