tibetan nuns find time for education in an indian exile

Namgyal, India -- If anything good can come out of oppression and loss, I may have just witnessed it in Dharamsala. This steep, sprawling town in the Himalayan foothills of northern India is home to thousands of exiled Tibetans -- including the Dalai Lama, who lives at Namgyal, a yellow and red monastery perched on the crest of a hill and surrounded by prayer flags. I stayed in a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery at the lower edge of town, and witnessed a transformation of lives that was not just visible but palpable.

<< Tibetan nuns in Dharamsala pray Sept. 12, 2001, for the victims of terrorist attacks in the United States one day earlier. Associated Press file photo by Angus Mcdonald

Some 220 nuns -- called ani in Tibetan -- live at Dolma Ling, which was inaugurated a little more than a year ago by the Dalai Lama. It took 14 years to be completed, after long years of fundraising, planning and building -- which the nuns themselves helped to do, hauling stones and sand to save money on construction. Now the gracious white and maroon buildings, with simple cloisters, courtyards, and a temple (gompa), provide a home for nuns from age 14 to 80, many of whom have escaped oppression and destruction of their nunneries in Tibet.

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