Ani Karma, Tenchen Choeling Gatshel Buddhist Nuns College, Paro, Bhutan 2023

Ani Karma, Tenchen Choeling Gatshel Buddhist Nuns College, Paro, Bhutan 2023

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Drukpa Kunley, the bawdy 15th-century patron saint of Bhutan known as the “Divine Madman,”  taught the Dharma with wine, women and song. One early morning, he shot an arrow from Tibet then followed it to Bhutan, where it landed – stuck in the staircase of Palzang Buti, who Kunley described as a “blessed, heaven favored girl.” Palzang had been revealed to Kunley in a dream before he had left Tibet. I never forgot Kunley’s phrase “blessed, heaven favored girl,” and when I first saw Ani Karma with her friends at the Tenchen Choeling Gatshel Buddhist Nuns College, the phrase came immediately to mind. I asked Karma if I could photograph her in the temple’s main shrine room and she kindly agreed. The sheltered life of study, ritual, yoga and meditation seems to agree with Karma. She was relaxed, joyful, and beamed with the spirit of a dakini – truly a “blessed, heaven favored girl.”