As a child, Venerable Dorjey Dolma was mesmerized by how her aunt, a Tibetan Buddhist nun, wore the maroon monastic robe. It was her admiration for her aunt, and appreciation for the robes, that made her decide when she was six years old that she would become a Buddhist nun, too.
“I got inspired by my aunt,” Dorjey says. “Not in the way she practiced, but in the way she dressed.” As an adult, her robes serve as a reminder of her monastic commitment. “It makes me aware of the boundaries between nun life and lay life,” she says.
Although Dorjey started her journey by following in her aunt’s footsteps, she has been forging her own path ever since in order to understand more deeply what her monastic commitment means in terms of service to her community.
This journey eventually led her to Harvard Divinity School, where she is currently a fellow in the Buddhist Ministry Initiative.
Education against the grain
Dorjey is from Changthang, located in the Leh district of the Ladakh region in northern India and home to the Himalayas, the Changthang Cold Desert Wildlife Sanctuary, great lakes, the Changpa nomadic people, and many centuries-old Buddhist monasteries.
Her own village, Rongo, is near the Tibetan border. The first thing she mentions about her home, however, is that it is really cold. Sitting on the Tibetan Plateau at 11,500 feet (3,500 meters) above sea level, Changthang’s climate is considered a high-altitude cold desert, with temperatures sometimes dropping below freezing at night even in the summer.
“It’s like the top of the world,” Dorjey says.
It was against the backdrop of these dramatic landscapes that she started her monastic education. She first attended a nunnery school in Rongo for her early education until she was 10 years old. After that, she attended the Central Institute of Buddhist Studies in Leh for her high school education and undergraduate degree in Buddhist philosophy, which focused on Tibetan Buddhism. After she graduated, however, she realized she wanted to study other Buddhist traditions as well.
“Buddhism is not finite,” Dorjey explains. “It is infinite. I cannot just study Tibetan Buddhism and say that it is the only Buddhism, and at the same time, I cannot just study only Theravada. There are things we can learn from other traditions.”
With this resolve, she decided she wanted to broaden her comparative Buddhist knowledge at the International Buddhist College in Songkhla, Thailand. But first, her father needed a little convincing.
“He was skeptical,” Dorjey says. “He did not directly oppose my decision, but at the same time, he was like, ‘Is it okay for you to study these other traditions?’” She reassured her father that it was “completely normal.” “But of course, it’s not,” she says.
It’s actually very uncommon for people from Dorjey’s community to study traditions other than Tibetan Buddhism, which is an important source of identity for many practitioners. “There is a sense of belonging [to a tradition],” she explains.
While her decision to pursue a more comparative study may not seem “normal” to people in her community, she says it was normal for her, even though it has been difficult.
“I have been very stubborn and kind of rebellious,” Dorjey says. “I am more about what I am interested in rather than what others want to impose on me.”
Opportunity for exploration
Dorjey’s monastic commitment is one she makes every day. This decision was easier at some points in her life than others.
“There have been certain times where I felt like, ‘Do I really want to be a nun?’ I feel like the nun life is a really nice life to learn more about the teachings,” she says.
Being a nun gives her more time to devote to education and exploring her academic interests, which includes Buddhism, translation and languages, and other religious traditions.
While Dorjey was working toward her master’s in Buddhist studies from International Buddhist College, a friend told her about Harvard Divinity School’s Buddhist Ministry Initiative. Naturally, she was curious.
“I was really interested in ministry because I wanted to learn about how ministry is seen in Buddhism,” Dorjey said. “I also wanted to learn more about diverse communities. That’s the main reason that pushed me here.”
Through the Buddhist Ministry Initiative, Dorjey has been able to expand her understanding of what ministry is and how it connects to her passions for volunteering, social work, and helping youth.
“After coming here, I’ve come to understand that ministry is not confined to working as a volunteer, but can be chaplaincy, like ministry in the hospital or at a college,” she says.
Dorjey is currently exploring the ways in which ministry can be applied in Buddhist contexts, especially as a way to expand the roles nuns play in her village.
“Nuns don’t have the capability to help people financially, but we can emotionally support them if we intently study the teachings that Buddha has given us.”
For Dorjey, ministry can be a way of helping others navigate grief and change, such as those in hospitals and elderly homes, as well as youth.
‘You can have more’
When Dorjey imagines the future for her community, she sees more nuns pursuing education and perhaps becoming professors, lecturers, and geshema, which is the highest Tibetan Buddhist academic degree for monks and nuns—the equivalent of a PhD. While this may already be the case in some communities of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it is not the case for her region.
In Changthang, opportunities for nuns are generally limited to becoming temple caretakers and reciting Kangyur and Tengyur texts (collections of Budda’s teaching in the Tibetan language) when invited to people’s homes.
“In monastic education in my villages, they mostly do rituals, memorize chants, and recite texts,” Dorjey says. “But only that won’t give you enough understanding of Buddha’s teachings.”
Through education that encourages more in-depth, critical, and comparative examinations of Buddhist philosophies, Dorjey believes this can change.
“You don’t need to only be a temple caretaker or go and recite a text. You can have more than that.”
Dorjey is still exploring her interests and seeking different paths that will lead her to new knowledge. One day, she plans to bring this knowledge back to share with her community and help nuns find their own path.
“I would like to be a teacher,” Dorjey says with a smile.
Until that day comes, she hopes that her actions inspire other Buddhist nuns to pursue their education as an example that it can be done.
—by Toby Cox, HDS correspondent
Editor's note: Harvard Divinity School will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative on October 27, 2022. Learn more.