Project Proposals

Cultural Preservation for Tawa Gongma Nunnery Project Manager: Samtsogye (Whitney) This project will preserve the cultural traditions of the Tawa Gongma nunnery by providing the nuns with a Dharma wheel with two deer thus completing the rebuilding of the Nunnery's prayer hall Funds needed: $ 5,145   (40,000 rmb)

Samtsogye is from Xiahe County, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province, China. She graduated in 2006 with an Associated degree in English from Qinghai Normal University Nationalities Department's English Training Program. She is now working as a program director and core staff member of Shem Women's Group.
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Read Samtsogye's life story

Some of the Nuns of Tawa Gongma Nunnery

Project location:
Tawa Gongma Nunnery is located in Tawa Gongma village , in the south of Xiahe County (historically known as Lhabrang), Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province. Xiahe is 278 kilometers from Lanzhou, the provincial capital, and 290 kilometers from Xining, the capital of Qinghai Povince.

Lhabrang Background:
Lhabrang is located in the southwest of Gansu province. It is a great religious center that attracts thousands of worshippers and tourists every year. In and around Lhabrang are six major religious centers: the Tantra monastery, the Lhabrang monastery, one Nyingma nunnery and two Sarma nunneries. Large-scale religious rituals are held in Lhabrang six times per year. Due to its religious significance, it is known as the "cultural art palace" of Buddhism, or "small Lhasa". In addition to attracting locals from the 13 townships of Xiahe County, Lhabrang draws both Chinese and western tourists to its wide array of religious activities and the unique atmosphere of its monasteries--especially the Lhabrang monastery, which is the biggest yellow hat sect monastery in Amdo.

Tawa Gongma Nunnery (mtha' ba gong ma'i jomo'i sgar) Background
Contributed by Professor Charlene Makley of Reed College
The Tawa Gongma nunnery, a small but thriving community of 51 young nuns living on a hill just east of the famous Geluk sect monastery of Lhabrang (founded 1709), protect a long historical legacy of their community there. However, since Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms in the 1980s allowed some Tibetan Buddhist communities to re-establish themselves after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), these nuns are among the most marginalized of Buddhist practitioners in the Lhabrang valley (Xiahe County seat). Thus at present, in contrast to the two other nunneries in the valley, the Tawa Gongma nuns live cramped in tiny handmade homes on the hillside, with no plumbing or running water, and very few ways to earn money. Yet, under the guidance of their two head nuns, they persevere in training new young nuns in basic Tibetan literacy, and in carrying out their annual calendar of Buddhist rites in a tiny makeshift assembly hall erected on the spot where the original hall once stood. Charlene Makley, associate professor of anthropology at Reed College, who conducted ethnographic research among the Tawa Gongma nuns between 1992-2002, found that there were several reasons for this situation that were far beyond the nuns' control.

For one, the Tawa Gongma nuns struggle, along with all nuns in Lhabrang, to find lay support against the deep-seated preference of Tibetan Buddhist laity for the ritual services of monks. This gender bias in Tibetan Buddhism has a long legacy, especially in places of Geluk sect monastic dominance like Lhabrang, yet Makley found that lay preferences for monks were even more marked under the 1980s reforms. In Tibetan regions, a lineage of fully ordained nuns was never established; all nuns in Tibet are thus technically novices. Nuns' communities were never politically powerful as institutions the way monks' communities could be, and their facilities were usually smaller and poorer appendages of those of monks. Tibetan nuns historically played social roles that reflected the ambiguous status of their renunciation. Nuns living in nun communities were often expected to maintain closer ties to their natal families than monks (i.e., in remaining subject to household labor obligations), and some women found ways to take vows and remain in the household. In addition, nuns had very different ritual relationships to the lay community than monks. They did not perform the crucial services for specific goals such as divination and chanting at various life events, especially funerals, provided by monks to lay households. Instead, lay investment in nuns' activities required an exceptional generosity because nuns' rites for laity represented more "unfocused merit-making" to benefit sentient beings in general. In such a context, the prestige and power of celibate monkhood in this region, and the crucial importance of women to the household economy explain why, despite a definite shortage of marriageable men locally, only a tiny minority of young, never-married women entered the monastic life.

Another reason for the relative marginality of the Tawa Gongma nuns in contemporary Lhabrang hinges on local history. This is because crucial state permissions and start-up funds for rebuilding in the 1980s depended on monastic communities' claims to relative antiquity in the valley. Accounts of the number of nuns in Lhabrang prior to 1958 vary due to conflicting understandings of the histories of the nun communities there. Most young nuns in post-Mao Lhabrang came to join two Geluk nunneries that were affiliated with Lhabrang monastery by the reign of the fifth Jamyang Shepa (1916-1947), the ruling lama of Lhabrang. These were the Tawa Gongma Nunnery and the Hwontshang Hill Nunnery, situated on the hills just to the east and west of the monastery respectively. The Lhabrang nunneries, like most historically, had their own small groups of senior nuns who acted as teachers, mentors and administrators for younger nuns, and they were largely autonomous in the day-to-day running of the community. Indeed, they operated as separate assemblies modeled on the monk assemblies, with nun officials corresponding to the major monk officials in the assemblies, and their own calendars of ritual observances. Estimates of the combined population of those original communities on the eve of the Chinese Communist victory range from 80-100 nuns. Far overshadowed by the great prestige of Lhabrang monastery (with up to 4000 monks in its heyday), the history of those nun communities barely surfaces in histories of the monastery. What little has been written about them (a paragraph here and there) has been collected from oral histories and legends.

Makley found that in the 1990s many of the elder nuns had passed away, and the remaining nuns had to compete for precious state support as they tried to re-establish all-important links to prestigious patron lamas. The Hwontshang Hill Nunnery was able to monopolize the funds for rebuilding allocated to Lhabrang nuns by the state in the early 80s (about 18,000 yuan). Negotiations for state support for nuns in Lhabrang also allowed for the establishment of an entirely new community of Nyingma nuns there. When in the 1980s the Religious Affairs Bureau decided to recognize the Hwontshang Hill nunnery as the only nunnery for state support, a group of Nyingma nuns who had recently come to Lhabrang as devotees of a charismatic Nyingma lama there managed to gain state recognition as another "school" of the Hwontshang nunnery. In the 1990s, both the Hwontshang Hill Nunnery and the Nyingma Nunnery had elder nun representatives on the monastery's "Democratic Management Committee", the committee which after reforms was the most important liaison between monastic communities and the institutions of the state. Thus with concerted advocacy and fundraising efforts, the two communities were able to secure state and private funds to separately build beautiful assembly halls by the late 1990s.

In effect, the young nuns who came to join the Tawa Gongma Nunnery in the 80s and 90s, lacking the prestige of elder nuns and the support of local lamas, were cut out of state-supported rebuilding efforts. However, according to local Tibetan historians, the Tawa Gongma Nunnery was actually the most ancient nunnery in the valley . Those accounts state that the Tawa Gongma nunnery was established in 1781 by a nun from the Chedzong Lango region in Tshe (ch. Hezuo) with the support of the 2nd Jamyang Shepa, during the period in which he was engaged in greatly expanding the monastery's facilities and influence. By contrast, the Hwontshang Hill Nunnery was very recent, having been established during the reign of the 5th Jamyang Shepa in 1925. In an interview with Makley in 1995, the two head nuns of Tawa Gongma Nunnery proudly spoke of this historical legacy, a link to the past they had heard about from elder nuns, since passed away, who had quietly lived there through the Maoist years. The head nuns insisted that they had stayed at their site even after post-Mao state officials only recognized the Hwontshang Hill Nunnery because the nunnery's main lama, based at a Geluk monastery just north of Lhabrang, had admonished them to stay and protect the historical legacy of the 2nd Jamyang Shepa.

A final reason for the relative marginality of the Tawa Gongma nunnery in contemporary Lhabrang has to do with the intensifying tensions under reforms between young rural Tibetan women's aspirations and the needs of their households. Makley found that in the 1990s and early 2000s, unprecedented numbers of young women were leaving rural regions to seek opportunities for work and education in urbanizing places like Lhabrang valley (the Xiahe County seat). They did this even as Tibetan households often chose to keep daughters home to hold up the household subsistence economy while sons were sent to become monks, or to seek secular education or wage labor in the increasingly competitive market economy. In this context, Tibetan Buddhist nunneries in Lhabrang, especially because as Geluk nunneries they were often perceived by nuns to offer more equal opportunities for Buddhist education than Nyingma nunneries, held out one of the only viable options for rural women to find community and education outside of rural households and arranged marriages. Thus, even as numbers of young monks dwindled into the late 1990s, numbers of nuns have increased dramatically relative to nun populations before.

According to Makley's estimates, there were about 200 nuns affiliated with the Lhabrang nun communities in 1995, at least 80% of whom were under the age of 40. This was over twice the number of nuns reportedly living in Lhabrang just prior to the Communist victory in 1949. Most young nuns in Lhabrang are from relatively impoverished Amdo farming regions outside the Lhabrang valley in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, or in Tibetan regions in northern Sichuan and southern Qinghai provinces. In 1995, there was a housing shortage for such new nuns, and many lived with nun roommates, or rented spaces in lay households.

In the contemporary context then, Makley found that all nuns in Lhabrang had to face intensifying scrutiny and gossip from local laity and monks because they were uniquely visible as young women who were opting out of crucial household labor. The Tawa Gongma nuns were particularly susceptible to this because they lacked the mitigating prestige of state support and a local lama. Thus, even though, like the other nun communities, the Tawa Gongma nuns enforced strict rules concerning public behavior, they had to endure frequent local gossip about their motivations and capacities for serious learning. These factors, along with intensifying competition among Tibetan ritual specialists for dwindling lay support under market reforms, meant that the Tawa Gongma nuns were at the bottom of locals' priorities, forcing most to rely for subsistence on meager contributions from family members, begging, or physically taxing fasting services. Yet their perseverance and integrity in maintaining their nunnery and seeking out new educational opportunities from lamas is a testament to the power of rural Tibetan women's aspirations in the face of social and economic obstacles.

Population
  There are approximately 50,000 people in Lhabrang city.  In Tawa Gongma nunnery there are 51 nuns. The youngest nun is 13 years old, and the oldest is 56. The majority of the nuns are 30-50 years old.

Education
  Almost all of the nuns in the Tawa Gongma nunnery have had some formal education. Of the 51 nuns, 41 hav e graduated from primary school and 20 have attended some middle school. There are five nuns who have no f ormal schooling, but who learned how to read and write in the nunnery. In addition, all of the nuns have furthered their education in the nunnery. All of the nuns are literate and can fluently chant all kinds of Tibetan scripture. This is a big accomplishment. However, the nun's talent for reading scriptures goes unrecognized because the local people never ask the nuns to chant in their homes. In this area, people believe that asking the nuns to read the scripture is a shameful thing, and instead they always ask monks to chant. By chanting scriptures, the monks can earn 20 rmb per day, receive three free meals and free transportation.

Cash income
Most of the nuns in Tawa Gongma nunnery make barely enough money to survive. The cost of fuel, food, medicine, water, and electricity per person per year is about 350 RMB. This figure includes only enough money for two meals per day. The average nun is able to make about 420 RMB per year through fasting rites, begging, and family support. At the end of the year, the nuns use whatever money they have leftover to purchase clothing for themselves and food for the Losar (new year) celebration.

The hardworking nuns earn this small amount of money in two very harsh ways: The first is by begging. Every month, the nuns go to surrounding villages to beg for small amounts of money, food, or anything else that generous families may be willing to give. Unfortunately, the townspeople people often scold them and say that they beg out of laziness. People also say that they have become nuns because they don't want to do housework, or cannot find husbands or have some physical problems such as blindness, or deafness. When they g o out begging, they are mistreated by village children, who throw rocks at them and poke them with sticks. The children get bad ideas about the nuns from their families. W idespread prejudice against the nuns leads to fewer and fewer families who are willing to give donations to them.

The second way that the nuns earn money is by performing a religious ritual called ‘Nongnay' (fasting) to earn money. Compared to the monks of Lhabrang, the nuns have very few opportunities to earn money for performing religious rituals. N ongnay is a ritual that monks do not perform, and thus it has become the nuns' chief source of income . When performing Nongnay, the nuns do not eat, drink, or speak for two entire days. After practicing this ritual, the nuns can earn some money. Usually, rich families give them 10--13rmb per ritual and poor families give them 5rmb. Practicing this religious ritual on a regular basis causes many health problems for the nuns. They are very susceptible to diseases and are often sick. In addition, they usually have very low energy, look much older than their age, and almost all of the n uns are unhealthily under weight. Over the past 10 years, more than half of the nuns, including Ani Rakzen Droma, the leader of the nunnery, have contracted serious illnesses that required them to stay in bed. Ma ny of the villagers believe that these sicknesses are a direct result of practicing Nongnay, but the nuns have no choice but to do the ritual. When a family asks the nuns to practice Nognay, they must concede, because this is one of the only ways that they have to earn money for survival. In addition, they are afraid that if they were to refuse, it would increase the prejudice and rumors against them, and people would say that the nuns don't want to help others.

Because they barely make enough money to survive, their natal families support them by donating small amounts of food, butter, cheese, or oil. They also receive an average of 150 rmb per nun per year from their families.

Agriculture:
The nuns themselves do not have any fields. Their families do, however, and these fields create the income that partially supports them. A rich family has about 7mu of land, with which they can earn 2,000 rmb per year, and a poor family has about 4 to 5 mu, with which they can earn about 1000rmb per year.

Herding :
Some of the nuns' families also raise livestock. The average nun's family owns one donkey, two pigs, two cows and 50 sheep. By selling the mature livestock and offspring, and the dairy products that these animals produce, they can earn between 800 to 2500rmb rmb per year, depending on how many family members are working to raise the livestock. This amount of money is used to support the entire family, and to support the daughter in the nunnery. Usually, each family gives 150 rmb per year to the nunnery, in addition to small amounts of butter cheese, and oil. Most families are large, with more than ten people, and some families also have to pay tuition for children in school.  Hence, the families' living conditions are very poor.

Weather :
The weather in Xiahe county is usually cold. In our hometown there is no clear distinction between spring, winter, summer and autumn. Most months are winter. In July the weather is little bit hot, but after that people cannot say goodbye to their sheep skin robes. Because of the cold weather, the nuns spend abou t 170rmb per person per year on fuel (firewood and yak dung). The cold winter also makes the nun's lives difficult because it makes it difficult for them to go outside to beg and earn money.

Project Goals and Benefits:  
The overall goal of this project is to preserve the cultural traditions of the Tawa Gongma nunnery
The immediate goal of this project is to complete the rebuilding of the Tawa Gongma Nunnery's prayer hall by purchasing a Dharma wheel with two deer

Problems:
Difficulties rebuilding Prayer hall
   As mentioned in the Background, the Tawa Gongma Nunnery is the oldest nunnery in the Lhabrang area, built by the first reincarnation of Jamyang Shepa. Unfortunately, for reasons explained earlier, as time has passed, there have been no governmental or private funds allocated to the development of this nunnery.

Despite all of the difficulties that they currently face, the Tawa Gongma nuns have nearly finished rebuilding their prayer hall. They have taken on this project out of necessity, for they could not continue to practice in their old building, which was nothing more than a dirt yard covered by a flimsy roof. For years, they used this hut as an assembly and prayer hall despite the fact that it was exposed to all of the elements during the cold, snowy winter months and the rainy season. Because they did not have a proper meeting hall, the nuns did not have a place where they could convene and practice. This caused a great strain on their small community and also led to a loss of respect and recognition in the larger community. In 2003, in the face of so many difficulties and so little progress, they nearly gave up and disbanded their nunnery. However, at the urging of their Lama, they decided not only to continue, but to rebuild their main prayer hall.

Although they did not have the funds needed to cover the cost of building this prayer hall, the nuns asked for 1,000 rmb from each of their families, and took out a loan from the bank.

Progress on the building was very slow, first, due to a lack of funds, and second, because the nuns had to carry the building materials (water, stone, sand, and earth) from the main street to the building site using the icy, muddy, footpath that leads to their nunnery. Locals refused to help the nuns carry building materials because it was too dangerous due to the terrible conditions of this footpath. So the nuns themselves carried the materials, but several of them were injured after slipping and falling on the footpath. 

Now they have nearly finished building the simple prayer hall, and need to decorate the structure with the appropriate adornments. Unlike the surrounding Lhabrang religious centers, which are decorated with elaborate Thangka paintings, and valuable Buddha images, the prayer hall built by the Tawa Gongma nuns is very simple, designed only to meet their most basic needs.

Unfortunately, the nuns' funding has now been completely exhausted and they cannot afford to purchase the one adornment necessary to complete any Tibetan Buddhist temple, the Dharma wheel and two deer. This adornment is necessary for any Tibetan Buddhist temple, and the nuns prayer hall will not be complete, or appropriate for ceremonies, worship, or religious practice, until it has this decoration.

In order to understand the importance of this decoration, we have included here an explanation from the Dharma Chakra Center (http://www.rumtek.org/mn/mn01.php):

Legend holds that after the Buddha attained enlightenment, he retired to an isolated place. While sitting there in meditation, he was approached by the great gods Brahma, holding a golden wheel with a thousand spokes, and Indra, bearing a white, right-turning conch shell. They offered these objects, requesting teachings on the holy dharma. Buddha said he would turn the wheel of the dharma in three stages. Just then two deer emerged from the nearby forest and gazed directly at the wheel. To commemorate this first turning of the wheel, a dharma wheel and a pair of deer, male and female, sit atop every Buddhist temple and monastery. The wheel symbolizes the Buddha's teachings, and the deer, representing Brahma and Indra, students. The stance of the deer is also significant: their up-turned faces symbolize listening, their attentive gaze reflection, and their reclining posture, meditation.

The golden, eight-spoked Dharma Wheel, flanked by two deer, above the Johkhang temple in Lhasa . The spokes of the wheel represent the Eight-fold Path (to enlightenment) and the deer serve as a reminder that Buddha gave his first sermon in a deer park . http://www.imperialtours.net/jokhang.htm

Solution:
The goal of this project is to purchase a dharma wheel and two deer, thus completing the Tawa Gonmga nunnery's new prayer hall, elevating the nuns' status within the Lhabrang community, and validating and preserving the cultural practices of the oldest nunnery in the Lhabrang valley

Gender equality: 
This project has been designed by, and will be implemented and managed by and for local Tibetan women. In addition, it will benefit the most marginalized members of the Lhabrang community--the Tawa Gongma nuns. In my hometown people generally don't respect women, especially nuns. Nuns are considered lower than laywomen. Most people think that the nuns have become nuns to avoid housework or because they could not find a husband. This project will reconnect the nuns to the rest of the community and create a bridge between the nuns and local people, worshippers, and visitors. Completing the prayer hall of the Tawa Gongma nunnery will validate the work that these women are doing and their way of life.

Government support
  On January 18 th, 2006, Samtsogye and Ani Gonqok (the head of the Tawa Gongma Nunnery) met with Tserang Tashi, the county leader, to discuss this project. He gave full permission to go forward with this project and encouraged it because it would improve the terrible conditions of the Tawa Gongma Nuns.

Steps of the project:  
•  Hold a meeting to discuss urgent needs and gather information for project proposal (already completed).
•  Discuss project costs with Zhai xi Gamtso , the monk who is in charge of buying deer and Dharma wheel for the Lhabrang monastery (Already completed).
•  Secure donor funding.
•  Hold a meeting with the nuns and discuss project implementation.
•  Samstogye, the project manager and (GongChok Droma) Travel to Lhasa to buy the deer. ( Lhasa is the nearest and only city where these decorations can be purchased)

Donor contribution:

  Local contribution
All of the local contribution will be given by the nuns 1 . There are 50 nuns with families who can contribute money, and each family will give 48 rmb towards the project. In total, the nuns will contribute 2,400rmb in cash to this project to cover the cost of transportation to and from Lhasa to purchase the Dharma wheel and two deer.

Local Contribution:

Sustainability:
 This project is very sustainable, because the Tawa Gongma nuns will take care of the Dharma wheel with two deer after the project is completed. Based on previous experience, we know that if maintained well, the Darma wheel and deer purchased in Lhasa will last more than 50 years. Also wheels and deer purchased in Lhasa are of the best quality, so they will remain in excellent condition for a minimum of 50 years

Additional information:
Previous projects completed by Samtsogye:
   Samtsogye has successfully completed 5 small-scale development projects in Lhabrang County . In 2002, 2003, and 2004, she completed three second-hand clothing projects organized by Sue Bishop at the British Consulate in Shanghai . In total, she distributed second-hand clothing to over 200 people. In 2005, she implemented a solar cooker project supported by the Canada fund, bringing 45 solar cookers to the monks of Lhabrang Monastery who did not have any family support or source of food and fuel. Most recently, in March of 2006, a private donor provided support for Samtsogye to distribute 14 solar cookers to the Nuns of Tawa Gongma Nunnery. 
 

Photos:  

This is the location of the nunnery; the workers are building with simple tools like ropes and wood. This photo was taken in August of 2005. There is not enough money to hire modern machines for building, and the nuns could only afford to hire three inexperienced workers to help them. Hence, the work was slow and difficult.  

This picture was taken in August of 2005, after one month of work rebuilding the nunnery. These are the building materials that the nuns have carried up the footpath on their backs.

Ani-Gonqodroma (right) and Ani-Rinzenroma (left) are the two leaders of Tawa Gongma Nunnery. This picture was taken after they had just finished carrying stones up to the building site and were discussing where to put the rest of the building materials. Right now, Ani-Rinzendroma is sick because of practicing Nongnay (fasting) and working to rebuild the nunnery at the same time.  

The Tawa Gongma nuns work together to thresh Sere, a Tibetan plant, for the roof of their new prayer hall.

Ani Tsoma separates the threshed Sere plant.  
 

They are working energetically.  
 

Ani –Tsoma and Ani-Dejie are working.  
 

The nun wearing a yellow hat is the youngest. She is only thirteen. She participates in every activity that the nuns do, and also helped with construction.  

The youngest nun and her mentor