Dongyu Gatsal Ling Initiatives, Inc

Dongyu Gatsal Ling Initiatives, Inc Inspired by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, in support of female spiritual advancement, now and for the future

Dongyu Gatsal Ling Initiatives is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the education standards and living conditions of Tibetan Buddhist female monastic communities by increasing public awareness about the challenges they face and raising funds to strengthen their present and future stability.

I think people learn more from example than from actual words. If people meet somebody in their daily life who inspires ...
06/04/2026

I think people learn more from example than from actual words. If people meet somebody in their daily life who inspires them by their mode of being or by the way they respond in a very challenging situation, and they think, “Wow, well done,” then you know that can influence people very deeply, even if it's unintentional.
So yes, this is of great benefit.

Many people nowadays, they feel their life is really very meaningless and empty in the wrong sense of the word. Not good empty, bad empty, hollow. And so if anything that we do or say or indicate can help them to put even a foot on a genuine path, then that is the best thing we could ever have done for anybody: to open the door to their own inner spirituality.

— Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Photo: Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo with one of her personal heroes Sr. Lucy Kurien, founder and director of Maher, a community and interfaith organization for abused and destitute women and children, headquartered in Pune, India.

We allow our various demons, our negative emotions, to arise in our consciousness, without trying to suppress or avoid t...
05/28/2026

We allow our various demons, our negative emotions, to arise in our consciousness, without trying to suppress or avoid them. Normally, if we feel fear, anger or jealousy, we think: Oh, I shouldn’t feel like that because I’m a good little Buddhist practitioner. We try to suppress these underlying negative feelings.

In this practice, we don’t do that; we allow our afflictive emotions, including fear and anger, to arise in our consciousness. We can sit there, attempting to not suppress, avoid or deny them. We can welcome a difficult feeling and listen to what it’s trying to tell us.

Especially with fear, anger or lust, we can feel what part of the body is reacting to the emotion because we are also very physically connected with our emotional states. Then, relax and send these feelings lots of love.

— Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Photo: Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo in Tara Mandala, 2014, photo by Caterina De Re

Mindfulness is about being silent. It is about having a mind that is completely quiet and present with what is happening...
05/21/2026

Mindfulness is about being silent. It is about having a mind that is completely quiet and present with what is happening.

— Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Image: Nuns spread the previous year’s torma to bless the Dongyu Gatsal Ling nunnery garden and its living beings, Fall 2020

Our ordinary lives are so busy, our days are so full, but we never have any space even to sit for a minute and just be. ...
05/14/2026

Our ordinary lives are so busy, our days are so full, but we never have any space even to sit for a minute and just be. That’s escape. An aunt of mine always kept the radio on, or the television. She didn’t like silence. Silence worried her. Background noise rang out at all times. And we’re all like that. We are afraid of silence—outer silence, inner silence. When there’s no noise going on outside we talk to ourselves—opinions and ideas and judgments and rehashes of what happened yesterday or during our childhood; what he said to me; what I said to him. Our fantasies, our day-dreams, our hopes, our worries, our fears. There is no silence. Our noisy outer world is but a reflection of the noise inside: our incessant need to be occupied, to be doing something.

— Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Images: Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo with the Tayul Gompa nuns, October 2013

A rainbow above the stupa, Tayul Gompa, 2021

Jetsunma spent six years at Tayul Gompa before entering into retreat in the cave.

Each child is very different right from the start. We look into the eyes of a small baby, and it’s a person! We bring wi...
05/07/2026

Each child is very different right from the start. We look into the eyes of a small baby, and it’s a person! We bring with us the patterning and conditioning of many, many lives.

Therefore in this lifetime there will be certain things which happen to us; certain events which are likely to occur.

But there are infinite crossroads; it’s not all laid out.

For instance, my own life has always seemed a bit predestined, presumably because of very strong imprints and aspirations from the past. When I try to make a detour, barriers come up, and I have to keep going the way I am supposed to go. But nonetheless, we do have choice. This is the point of a human birth—we have choice.

If we make skillful responses, the results will be good. If we make unskillful responses, we will have a hard time in the future. We are responsible for our lives now and in the future. It is up to us.

— Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Photo: Nuns who remained at the nunnery during the summer break (most of them go back to their villages) took to the nearby river to enjoy a picnic and games, 2025

Sometimes I tell this story of Milarepa — I think it was Milarepa, it might have been somebody else. He went back to his...
04/09/2026

Sometimes I tell this story of Milarepa — I think it was Milarepa, it might have been somebody else. He went back to his cave where he was living and practising one day, and there were five demons who growled, “Grrr!” He started using powerful protector mantras, but they just laughed. He thought: Oh, that doesn’t work, alright. Then he sat down and meditated on emptiness: Empty, empty, empty… all a projection of my mind. When he opened his eyes they were just looking at him, “Grrr!”

So then he said, “Okay! You are my guests. You are very welcome. Let’s all just sit down and have a nice cup of tea.” He turned around to start his fire, put his pot on with some water, and started boiling it up for tea. When he turned round, there were the demons, transformed into beautiful local spirits. They said, “We will help you to protect the Dharma. We take refuge in you.”

The point is that if we’re afraid of our fear or if we philosophically try to dissolve the fear, it doesn’t usually work. But by befriending the fear, listening to it, looking into its nature and investigating who is feeling the fear, we can transform the fear, anger and so forth into very powerful enlightened energy, which is the basis behind it all. We have to be skilful.

— Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
Image: Two nuns at Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery, smiling and radiant, outside their classroom, photograph by Olivier Adam in April 2022

Sometimes, our so-called “intuition” is true, and sometimes it’s off. But genuine intuition is something beyond words. I...
04/02/2026

Sometimes, our so-called “intuition” is true, and sometimes it’s off. But genuine intuition is something beyond words. It doesn’t come very often, but when it comes, there is no doubt. There’s total certainty that this is how it is. It’s the inner certainty of what to do. It rises from a deep level of our consciousness. It’s often a wordless knowing; we just know. The usual gut feelings are just the conceptual mind putting two and two together based on our past experience.

— Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Image: Lama Tsultrim Allione and Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo at Tara Mandala watching the moon as it rises above the trees, June, 2014. Photo by Caterina De Re

Everything we do, provided it is done with total awareness, is spiritual activity. On the other hand, if we perform an a...
03/26/2026

Everything we do, provided it is done with total awareness, is spiritual activity. On the other hand, if we perform an action distractedly, with only half our attention, it becomes just another worldly activity. It doesn’t matter what it is.

Therein lies the key for those of us who have busy lives. We can convert actions we normally regard as routine, dull, and spiritually meaningless into Dharma practice, and transform our entire lives in the process.

— Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Our family, our children, our partners, our parents — they are our practice. They are not an obstacle to our practice. T...
03/19/2026

Our family, our children, our partners, our parents — they are our practice. They are not an obstacle to our practice. They are the ones who need our loving-kindness, our compassion, our patience, our joyous effort. Our wisdom.

It’s not so difficult to sit and meditate on loving-kindness and compassion for all those sentient beings out there somewhere on the horizon. But the sentient beings for whom we really have to generate loving-kindness and compassion are the ones who are right in front of us, especially those for whom we are most karmically responsible.

They are our objects of practice.

— Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Image: Togdenmas Kunsang Chodron, Thubten Lhamo, Dechen Paldon and Tsewang Chodron at the Silver Jubilee celebrating the 25th anniversary of Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery, October 2024.

A deeply moving moment of the celebration was the presentation of togden robes by Togden Trinley Kunchab to these four nuns, each of whom has completed 16 years in retreat. This marks the fulfilment of a long-held aspiration of the 8th Khamtrul Rinpoche — to revive the precious Khampagar yogini lineage, lost during the time of upheaval in Tibet.

In the Chinese Mahayana tradition, they say Amituofo (Chinese for Amitabha Buddha) for everything. They are always invok...
03/12/2026

In the Chinese Mahayana tradition, they say Amituofo (Chinese for Amitabha Buddha) for everything. They are always invoking Amitabha Buddha so that if they die suddenly, their first thought will be of Amituofo. Then Amitabha Buddha will come. When Gandhi was shot and killed, as he died, he said, “Ram, Ram!” He called on the god Ram because he was a devotee of Ram. So it seems that was his last thought.

Therefore, the important thing during our life is to focus on our object of devotion so that at the moment of dying it will spontaneously come to our mind. We can’t suddenly think of something that we haven’t thought about much in our lifetime. We can’t hope for that. We have to train ourselves now, so that at the time of death we will be prepared.

— Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Photo: A young nun smiles and bows while offering a khata to Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo during her long life ceremony.

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