I stood there for a moment, gazing out the window, hoping for some relief from the heavy humid air in the shrine room on the third floor of the nunnery. Nothing seemed to be moving except for the sound of the nuns’ voices singing their special refuge prayer. My mind suspended itself between hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and surrendering to go back to throwing my body back on the ground to complete another prostration. I was stuck between a dying wish to quit and carrying on with knowing that everyone else in the room somehow felt the same way. Just one more prostration. Just one more prostration. Just one more.
In this paper, I will share my personal narrative of participating in a Buddhist ascetic meditation retreat called Nyungne (bsnyung/smyung gnas) to demonstrate how the body is a locus of knowledge production for compassion that can be spontaneously stimulated when recognizing other bodies experiencing similar pain. My auto-ethnography contributes to the conversation of embodied theology by showing how an embodied ascetic contemplative practice may rely upon the physical body and circumvent rational, conceptual ideas gained from cultural, philosophical, or doctrine. In this way, we can see how other practitioners may also rely upon their own embodied knowledge over other more conceptual knowledge acquisition.
Nyungne is a kriya-yoga or “action” fasting ritual of the 1000-armed, 10-faced Avalokiteśvara, (lord of compassion, Tib. spyan ras gzigs) that is intended as a purification of karma (intentional action) of the body, speech, and mind for Buddhist Tantric practitioners. The Himalayan and Tibetan Buddhist traditions identify Gelongma Pelmo (dge slong ma dpal mo, 10th – 11th cent.), a Buddhist nun who contracted leprosy, as the founder of this practice. Gelongma Pelmo was able to cure herself of disease through practicing nyungne. This practice focuses on physical ascetic performances like fasting, prostrations, refraining from speech, and meditating on Avalokiteśvara. The strict discipline and behavior are what is said to cause the progress (towards enlightenment) to occur.
Four-thirty in the morning on the third day, I wandered into the shrine room. All of us were silent, and I floated to my place in a daze. The lights were low, and the room cool from the night. We began our prayers together as if we never were apart. Suddenly, I was offered a small pool of blessed saffron water in the palm of my left hand. I brought it to my lips, relishing that it was the best thing I ever tasted. The coolness of the sip stays with me today. I started to get up to take my vows, but a nun came over and told me that my session was up. Time to go home. On my way home from the nunnery, I was struck by those asking for money. My body responded and pulled out Nepali rupees, automatically handing the small bills over. My stomach knew their pain. Their hunger was my hunger.
This paper is an auto-ethnographic account of cultivating compassion through embodied ascetic Tibetan Buddhist practices performed during a fasting retreat called nyungne. It is an account from experiences during fieldwork at Tekcholing Nunnery in Boudhanath, Nepal 2023, where I gathered interviews and experiences of care, compassion, love, and confidence to understand how these moments are felt and experienced. This auto-ethnography contributes to the comparative conversation on embodied theology by showing how an ascetic contemplative practice may rely upon the physical body and circumvent rational, conceptual ideas gained from cultural, philosophical, or doctrine. In this way, we can see how other practitioners may also rely upon their own embodied knowledge in lieu of more conceptual knowledge acquisition.