Kung Fu Nuns of the Drupka Order

[GeneChing]

...but the best story of the day. It even beat out Kingdom of the Little People doing Shaolin kung fu. (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56645)


Page last updated at 14:58 GMT, Wednesday, 14 April 2010 15:58 UK
Kung fu empowers Nepal nuns (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8618325.stm)
By Jo Jolly
BBC News, Kathmandu

Interest in becoming a nun has grown dramatically since Kung Fu classes began at the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery

It is early in the morning at the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery on a hillside just outside Kathmandu and hundreds of devotees are walking clockwise around a golden statue of Buddha.

But rather than being immersed in prayer, up on the roof something different is happening - they are practising the same kung fu fighting made famous by the Bruce Lee films of the 1970s.

Young Buddhist nuns from the 800-year-old Drukpa Buddhist sect are being taught by their Vietnamese master.

The martial art was introduced to the nunnery two years ago and the nuns practise up to two hours a day.

'More powerful'

Rupa Lama, a 16-year-old nun from India, says kung fu helps her concentrate.

"It's good for our health. Meditation is very difficult and if we do kung fu, then afterwards meditation becomes much easier," she says.

Another nun, Konchok, also from India, says she likes kung fu because it gives her strength.

"It's very helpful for our safety. If somebody teases us or something, then we can hit them and be more powerful," she says.

The confidence shown by these young nuns is unusual. Buddhist nuns in the Himalayas are normally seen as inferior to monks.

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, an Englishwoman who became a Drukpa Buddhist nun more than 30 years ago, says traditionally nuns have been neglected and overlooked.

"The main problem for nuns has always been that they have not normally had a good situation in which to live, they have not received the support from lay people that monks receive and they have not been educated.

"So often nuns became basically just household servants for their families or working in the kitchens and the gardens in the monasteries," she says.

Kung fu was introduced into the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery by the leader of the Drukpa spiritual sect, His Holiness The Gyalwang Drukpa.

'Well-equipped'

The Gyalwang Drukpa is the 12th incarnation of the leader of the Drukpa - or dragon - sect of Buddhism, which is the main religion of Bhutan and is widely practised in countries across the Himalayas.

He says that he felt that previous spiritual leaders had not done enough to advance the rights of women.

"When I was very small, I was already thinking that it was not right to suppress women in our society," he says.

"But then when I grew up, I started to think what can I do for them? Then I thought what I can do is to build a nunnery and then give them an opportunity to study and practise spiritually," he says.

The nunnery built by The Gyalwang Drukpa, the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery, is a modern, well-funded and a well-equipped place of worship and study.

"Not only [is it] just beautiful to look at, but it is a nunnery with the guidelines and the full support from their master, me," he says.

He says he encouraged the nuns to take up kung fu when he saw nuns from Vietnam practising it.

Emphasis on meditation

For the past week, the nuns have been giving demonstrations of their new skill to thousands of pilgrims who are attending the Second Annual Drukpa Conference.

The Drukpa sect, which places an emphasis on meditation, is popular throughout the Himalayas and also with Westerners.

Jan Duin, who is attending the conference from the Netherlands, says he has been impressed by the kung fu practice.

"I think it is very helpful physically and also psychologically because they do a lot of sitting practice," he says.

"In meditation you practise concentration and you also practise concentration with kung fu."

Buddhist nun Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo says that she'll be introducing kung fu into her own nunnery which is based in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.

"It's excellent exercise, secondly it's very good for discipline and concentration, thirdly it arouses a sense of self-confidence which is very important for nuns, and fourthly when any young men in the area know nuns are kung fu experts, they keep away," she says.

Jetsunma says since nunneries have begun to offer better education and physical programmes like kung fu, the number of young women who want to become nuns has grown dramatically.

"Many of them say, wow, if I become a nun I can study, I can practise, I can do these rituals, I can live together with all these other lovely nuns and lamas will visit us and give us teaching," she says.

"It's a beautiful life option to getting married, having a baby every year, working in the fields, doing the cooking, doing the cleaning.

"You know for them this is a huge opening up in a whole world that had previously been closed to them."

[GeneChing]

If I ever get out of here,
I'm going to Katmandu. ;)


The kung-fu nun of Kathmandu (http://www.kuenselonline.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=15401)

Druk Amitabha Nunnery 9 May, 2010 - She appears sheepish and timid as she makes her way up to the concrete roof of the giant four-storied assembly hall from the courtyard.

Once on the roof, 12-year old Jigme Wangchuk Lhamo is anything but gentle and compassionate.

Changing into loose maroon cotton pants and a long sleeved shirt, belted around the waist, Jigme throws quick jabs and punches and kicks higher than an average person. She is among 400 other nuns of the Druk Amitabha nunnery in Kathmandu, Nepal, who reminds visitors of a scene from a Shaolin kung-fu flick.

Everyday, the nuns wake up at 4 am and begin reciting and memorising Buddhist texts for about an hour, following which they engage in an hour-long practice of the martial art. The devote another hour towards the evening.

Jigme from Nganglam Dechenling in Pemagatshel is the most energetic and enthusiastic of the group.

She enrolled in the nunnery last year, after completing class five from Lungtenphu primary school in Thimphu.

Although she was among the top ten position holders in her class at Thimphu, Jigme said her faith in dharma and interest to become a nun caused her to discontinue studies.

“It’s my sixth month running here at the nunnery,” she said. Within that short span of time, Jigme can fluently speak Nepali, Hindi, Tibetan and Ladhaki languages, which are widely spoken at the nunnery.

Her Vietnamese master said that, although kung-fu was new to her, Jigme was able to attained the sixth of the 16 basic levels of the art.

“When I practise, I visualise I’m in a real combat,” Jigme said.

Besides learning to defend themselves from a handful of troublemakers in the vicinity of the monastery, kung-fu, Jigme said, made one capable of sitting straight-backed for many hours during meditations, ceremonies and teachings.

“It keeps me physically fit, mentally sound and helps me focus better,” she said.

The idea and the story resonates with those of the Shaolin monks in China, who learnt the martial art to defend themselves from passing bandits, besides the real concept of introducing it for health reasons by an Indian Buddhist priest named Bodhidharma (Tamo in Chinese), who visited a Shaolin temple.

Tamo, who joined the Chinese monks, observed that they were not in good physical condition. They spent hours each day hunched over tables where they transcribed handwritten texts.

The Shaolin monks lacked physical and mental stamina needed to perform even the most basic of Buddhist meditation practices. Tamo countered this weakness by teaching them moving exercises, modified from Indian yoga, which were based on the movements of the 18 main animals in Indo-Chinese iconography like tiger, leopard, snake and dragon, to name but a few.

He did not, however, introduce kung-fu, which existed in China much before his arrival. The ancient martial art is popular even in big Mahayana Buddhist monasteries. They believe that sound mind comes from sound body.

“Even Buddha Shakyamuni had said that, if you are sick, take medicine, even if a medicine is fish. Otherwise without body, practice is impossible,” His Eminence Khamtrul rinpoche said.

Jigme said the art taught the nuns to channel their energy and be positive about everything they attempted to do in their daily lives.

The founder of the nunnery, H.H the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa rinpoche, the spiritual head of the drukpa lineage introduced kung-fu class two years ago after watching nuns practising kung-fu in Vietnam.

He was told that it helped the nuns concentrate better and made them self-reliant.

Rinpoche said that was true because, ever since kung-fu was introduced in the nunnery, nuns rarely fell ill, which was a frequent occurrence otherwise.

On the contradiction of Buddhist principles of non-violence against learning martial arts, rinpoche explained that it all depended on motivation.

“If you are aggressive out of good motivation, you are an angry bodhisattva,” he said. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, an English lady, who became a nun more than 30 years ago, said if one knows how to defend oneself, one can stop an opponent without necessarily doing tremendous amount of damage.

“You’ll know which part of a body to disarm without hurting,” she said.

Apart from training the mind, keeping fit and improving concentration, kung-fu, she added, gave them a sense of confidence to protect themselves.

“When young men in our locality know the nuns practise kung-fu, they keep away,” Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo said.

Meanwhile, Jigme Wangchuk Lhamo hopes to, one day, introduce the ancient martial art in Bhutan. “My dream is to become the first Bhutanese kung-fu master, even if I can’t master Buddhist scripts,” she said.

By Tenzin Namgyel

[GeneChing]

http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2010/1005/kung_fu_nuns_0507.jpg
Only under 25?

Bad Karma Beware: Meet the Kung Fu Nuns of Nepal (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2003009,00.html)
By Hillary Brenhouse Monday, Jul. 12, 2010

The word out of central Nepal is so startling that it sounds almost mythical. Every day at 4 a.m. in the Kathmandu Valley, far from the birthplace of kung fu, 200 nuns of the Tibetan Buddhist Drukpa sect — a school not associated with the Chinese martial art — are said to assemble to throw punches. Weather permitting, the young women have been seen practicing on the roof of the Naro Assembly Hall of the Druk Gawa Khilwa Nunnery, set against forested mountain and the open sky. The nuns describe their hour-long routines: spreading apart their feet and planting them down decidedly in the so-called horse stance, bringing thumb together with forefinger to form a crane's beak with their hands, striking down and then back again, lunging forward and taking off with soaring kicks. "We all like it very much," 17-year-old Jigme Konchok Lhamo says in a phone interview. "Everyone does it, except those nuns who are very old." In other words, morning kung fu sessions are only open to nuns under 25.

Kung fu came to the nunnery in 2008, after His Holiness the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa, head of the Drukpa school, saw nuns in combat training while he was on a visit to his followers based in northern Vietnam. "I was inspired because these Vietnamese nuns exhibited tremendous self-confidence and strength, not only in their movements but also in their attitude toward people outside their own enclosed community," he says. Kung fu has long been established in the country, having moved south from traditional martial-arts centers in China, including the famous Shaolin Temple, which was founded by a separate Buddhist sect, Chan (or Zen, as most Westerners know it).

His Holiness took back to Kathmandu not just the idea of introducing martial arts, but also four experienced Vietnamese Drukpa nuns to serve as teachers. The Buddhist leader was keen on keeping the program all female, insisting that bringing in learned monks as instructors would only reinforce gender stereotypes. The physical and spiritual empowerment of women is high on his list. "Before coming here," he says, "girls who had become nuns in different parts of the Himalayas in search of independence mostly ended up doing household chores in the monasteries and sometimes in their own gurus' family homes."

That the young Vietnamese women, all of them in their early 20s and themselves trained by men, are passing their new expertise forward is a testament to how far Buddhist nuns have come. Martial-arts historians agree that there were almost certainly nuns in the Shaolin Temple but that it's unlikely they received martial-arts training due to their lesser status. In any case, they would not have gone on to coach. But after just two years of instruction, a handful of quick-learning Nepalese nuns are said to have begun trying their hand at teaching and now reportedly help lead morning lessons.

Martial-arts training is great exercise, supplementing the nuns' yoga classes. But it was also introduced to help with their Buddhist practice. "Our meditation gets easy with the kung fu," says the young nun Konchok Lhamo. "It helps us to sit up straight, to learn how to concentrate." The continual repetition of moves builds control and focus, thought to be an asset to any discipline requiring intense concentration — all things useful for young women who are expected to sit in the same position for hours and sometimes undertake retreats during which they cannot speak for months at a time.(Comment on this story.)

The Vietnamese Drukpa nuns only began their own martial-arts training in 1992, when their local religious head, the Most Venerable Thich Vien Thanh, initiated the practice at the Tay Thien nunnery. There were only three nuns then. Now all 80 of the nuns there are said to spend sunup sparring. Many of them are eager to join their four sisters in Nepal, so they can be closer to the Gyalwang Drukpa and also try teaching. Initially, the nuns were trained in combat techniques by soldiers from the Vietnamese military. But in the past few years the program has become more formal, and male students of kung fu grandmasters have gone from the cities to teach the women a mixture of Shaolin methods and specifically Vietnamese martial arts. Tay Thien's head nun Jigme Samten Wangmo, who is Vietnamese but goes by her Tibetan religious name, says that one of these indigenous styles, Kinh Thuat, "was created by the generals and warriors of the Tran Dynasty who defeated the invader Genghis Khan." Her nuns have never had to fight off intruders themselves. Says Samten Wangmo: "Perhaps that's because hearing that we have kung fu, strangers are afraid of getting close to our place."

In other times, it might have been odd for kung fu practitioners in Nepal to be learning Chinese or Vietnamese fighting forms. Thomas Green, editor of the just published Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia of History and Innovation, calls it "an adventure in globalism," noting that knocking down boundaries in this way is now commonplace. "In a very nationalistic period, for instance, Taekwondo was the Korean martial art," he says. "But with the Buddhist nuns, what you have is a community that crosses national lines." Regardless of the particular type of kung fu being disseminated there, "this effort at pride, strength, self-actualization is something that is certainly filling a need with these women."

And the nuns' effort is likely to go even more global in the coming year. Once they are prepared, several of the more skilled Kathmandu nuns may be asked to pass on their abilities at a third Drukpa nunnery, the Dongyu Gatsa Ling in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, a former librarian from London who established the nunnery in the late 1990s, caught the Nepal nuns demonstrating their newfound knowledge one evening during the annual Drukpa Council last year. The presentation stunned the crowd. "Frankly, it brought the house down," says Tenzin Palmo. "I think the monks and lamas were very envious."

Tenzin Palmo says taking kung fu to her own nunnery "would help the nuns build self-esteem, which is one of the things, on the whole, young nuns lack. They're not trained to have confidence. They're trained to be deferential, especially in the presence of males." Learning martial arts would also give them the means to defend themselves should local men ever get any ideas. "You just need one group of young guys at a wedding or something to get drunk and suddenly remember that there's a whole community of young women in the vicinity," says Tenzin Palmo.

She is currently in negotiations with the other nunneries to invite girls over, but is concerned that her own nuns — whose days already are heavy with yoga classes, Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan- and English-language lessons — will not be able to fit anything else in. But the nuns couldn't be more enthusiastic. Says Tenzin Palmo: "They just see themselves as kung fu heroines."

[GeneChing]

...nevertheless, Tibetan nuns doing dragon dancing sounds like fodder for a decent half hour doc.

BBC World News to air Kung Fu Nuns documentary (http://www.tvnext.in/news/162/ARTICLE/4486/2011-09-01.html)
Avantika Gaikwad
September 1st, 2011

New Delhi: “Kung Fu Nuns” is the intriguing title of a documentary film which will be telecast on BBC World News on Saturday, 3rd September at 10:00 am and 11:00 PM with repeat telecasts on Sunday 4th of September at 4 p.m and 11 p.m. Directed by Indian documentary film director Chandramouli Basu, this 22 minute film by 24 Frames is produced by Arjun Pandey and Ambica Kapoor. The documentary is a part of the TVE (Television for the Environment) Life series on the BBC World News.

This is the story of an incredible transformation taking place among Buddhist nuns in some Himalayan communities. The film shows the struggle of a group of nuns of the Drukpa lineage who break centuries of tradition to cross barriers of male dominance which have excluded them from some practices and learning, and kept them secondary to the monks.

Their cause has been decisively pushed by one man - His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa, the spiritual head of the Drukpas. No other master of Tibetan Buddhism has done what he has - given nuns a status equal to monks in his order– through training them personally in higher scriptures and a range of secular skills, including Kung Fu. While Kung Fu may be a familiar sight in China or in martial arts movies, it was never before a part of the practice of Buddhist nuns. His Holiness has encouraged the nuns to perform ceremonies that have been the exclusive domain of men so far including the ‘Dance of the Dragons’. This dance has typically been performed only by all-male teams in the Himalayan traditions.

The film is told through the eyes of Kunzang, a 29 year old nun. They are rehearsing to perform a spectacular Dragon Dance. For the 10 nuns who have to move each unwieldy, tubular dragon in coordination with the beating drums, the task requires technique, concentration and determination. For the Drukpas, the Dragon Dance is more than just an auspicious dance. It is a way to showcase their commitment to women’s empowerment.

Talking about the film, Arjun Pandey, Producer and CEO, Twenty Four Frames said, “Women have always been the neglected lot across the globe. But the scenario is now fast changing. There is a rapid transformation taking place. This transformation of the Nuns in Ladakh is history in the making. The hitherto male bastion is fast witnessing a positive change and we are glad to be the ones bringing it to the entire world.” Speaking further on the film Arjun said, “it’s a poignant story through Kunzang, the protagonist brought alive by the amazing colors and visuals of Buddhist culture and tradition.”

Besides this, the nuns must paint and prepare their nunnery to receive thousands of visitors who would be coming in just a few weeks for a huge event – the Annual Drukpa Council. People from all over the world and top masters of the Drukpa Lineage attend the Council. The nuns have to show all the visitors that despite the held belief that women cannot achieve this, they are more than equal to the task.

Set against the starkly beautiful Ladakh mountains, in the crown of Indian’s Himalayan state of Jammu & Kashmir, the film follows Kunzang and her friends as they count down the four days they have to do a full performance for their teacher. They need to convince him that they can pull it off; otherwise this just might be the last Dragon Dance that they perform! Will they be able to do it?

To find out, watch Kung Fu Nuns on BBC World News at 10:00 am and 11:00 PM India time on Saturday, 3rd of September or 4:00 pm and 11:00 PM on Sunday, 4th of September 2011.

[GeneChing]

Buddhist nuns embrace the power of kung fu (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/26/buddhist-nuns-kung-fu-confidence?newsfeed=true)

Nepalese monastery is enjoying a surge in popularity after spiritual leader introduces martial arts classes
Syed Zain al-Mahmood in Kathmandu
guardian.co.uk, Monday 26 September 2011 08.56 EDT

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/9/26/1317041617064/Kung-fu-nuns-007.jpg
Kung fu nuns
Nuns practising kung fu at the Druk Gawa Khilwa Buddhist nunnery in Ramkot, Nepal. Photograph: Simon De Trey-White/Eyevine

A Buddhist monastery near Kathmandu is enjoying a surge in popularity after its spiritual leader directed its 300 nuns to use martial arts techniques.

Enrolment is rising and Buddhist nuns as far afield as the Himachal Pradesh in India want to become kung fu instructors.

The Druk Gawa Khilwa (DGK) nunnery near the Nepalese capital teaches its nuns a mixture of martial arts and meditation as a means of empowering the young women. In Buddhism, like many religions, the voices of women have traditionally been muted. But the leader of the 800-year-old Drukpa – or Dragon – order, to which DGK belongs, is determined to change all that.

"As a young boy growing up in India and Tibet I observed the pitiful condition in which nuns lived," says His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa, the spiritual head of the Drukpas.

"They were considered second-class while all the privileges went to monks. I wanted to change this."

Although nuns have usually carried out only household chores in Buddhist monasteries, the nuns of DGK, who come from places as far apart as Assam, Tibet and Kashmir, are taught to lead prayers and given basic business skills. Nuns run the guest house and coffee shop at the abbey and drive DGK's 4X4s to Kathmandu to get supplies.

But for many, the breakthrough was the introduction of kung fu three years ago, shortly after the Gyalwang Drukpa visited Vietnam and observed female martial arts practitioners there.

"Spiritual and physical wellbeing are equally important for our nuns," says the leader.

Sister Karuna, a soft-spoken young nun from Ladakh in the north of India, says kung fu has given the nuns self confidence and also helps in meditation. "We love kung fu," said Karuna, as she prepared to swap her maroon prayer robe for a martial arts suit with a bright yellow sash. "Now we know we can defend ourselves. We also have the fitness for long spells of meditation."

Jigme Thubtem Palmo, 32, who left her family and a career as a police officer in Kashmir six years ago to join the monastery, says young women in the region are now more interested in becoming nuns than before. "We will soon build facilities for 500 nuns," she said.

The shaven-headed DGK nuns recently stunned an audience with a colourful martial arts display at the third annual Drukpa council summit held in Ladakh.

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, a former librarian at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, says she will introduce kung fu at the nunnery she has set up in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.

"It's excellent exercise, good for discipline, concentration and self-confidence," says Palmo. "Also, when any young men in the area know nuns are kung fu experts, they stay away."
There's an amazing documentary or at least a decent kung fu film in this story....;)

[GeneChing]

Interesting how this story gains traction every once in a while.

The Kung Fu nuns of Ladakh (http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report_the-kung-fu-nuns-of-ladakh_1593948)
Published: Sunday, Oct 2, 2011, 8:45 IST
By Apoorva Dutt | Place: Mumbai | Agency: DNA

http://static.dnaindia.com/images/cache/1593949.jpg
The Drukpa nunnery in Ladakh is home to a self-empowered branch of feminist Buddhism

The early-morning peace of Ladakh, says Tenzin, a local shopkeeper, is broken every morning by them. I follow the wave of his arm. You would expect perhaps a noisy neighbourhood, a boisterous bunch of hoodlums, or a gaggle of over-enthusiastic tourists. Tenzin is, in fact, waving towards the Buddhist nunnery of His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa, a majestic array of buildings with thousands of prayer flags fluttering around it. The culprit?

“The nuns,” he says vehemently.

Every day at 4am in the Drukpa nunnery, the thin, tinny silence of Ladakh is shattered by the shrill haee-yas and huuus of the nuns practicing their kung fu. Over a hundred under-25 Buddhist nuns, far from the fabled birthplaces of kung fu, spring kick and punch into the thin mountain air. They are taught by Jigmet Gendum, a surly Vietnamese monk who barks orders and walks amongst the ranks, straightening legs and correcting postures along the way.

The fact that they are Buddhist nuns — a religion known less for its acceptance of violence and physical combat, and rather more for its relentless misogyny in limiting women to only a certain level of enlightenment, makes these nuns an unusual sight: like something Hollywood might dream up. But the kung fu nuns — as they are known throughout the world — are only the most public manifestation of the Drukpa leader’s attempts at female emancipation.

‘I wanted to be like Jackie Chan’
Migyur Palmo, 20, has been at the Drukpa nunnery for four years. She loves kung fu, Jackie Chan movies, has her own email id, but doesn’t understand the appeal of Facebook. “It’s a waste of time,” she says, crinkling her forehead disapprovingly.

It has taken me an hour to get her to open up: for the first forty minutes, she answered questions with the rehearsed ease of a beauty contestant. Migyur is attractive, well-spoken, and unfailingly devoted to the life she has chosen. No, she never wanted to be anything other than a nun. No, she was never persuaded to become a nun. No, she doesn’t miss her old life. All she wants is enlightenment. So does she want to become a Buddhist guru herself one day? No, no, she corrects me quickly. She means in the next life. In this life, serving the Drukpa and helping people are her goals.

It is when I ask her about kung fu that she opens up. “I saw Jackie Chan movies when I was younger,” she giggles. “I wanted to fight like him, and do all the fancy moves. I love that the most. Of course,” she adds quickly, “Kung fu for us is just exercise, not for fighting. It makes us healthy and we even meditate better.”

She occasionally misses her family, Migyur finally admits. “I can’t leave the nunnery for longer than a week per year. But they had also felt that it was important for every family to have a nun, as a sort of representative.”

Ayee Wangmo, a good friend of Migyur’s, is an 18-year-old nun who ran away from home to the nunnery after the Drukpa gave a speech at her Ladakhi village. “I had never heard anyone talk about such things,” she says wonderingly. “It changed me, from the inside, you know?” Ayee says that in her first year, she was desperately homesick. “I missed my sisters. I would get distracted and my mind would wander. I was too talkative. But the other nuns mentored me.” Ayee concludes, “Coming here was the best decision I ever made.”

‘My father didn’t understand’
Carrie Lee, the president of Live to Love NGO, which works with the Drukpa in the Ladakh region, believes that the Drukpa is not exactly progressive, but in fact, returning Buddhist women to the stature that was given to them many centuries ago. “I call the Drukpa lineage the ‘get-off-your-ass-and-do-something lineage,’” she laughs. “Most Buddhist nuns are treated as servants. At the Drukpa’s nunnery, they consider themselves to be mentally and physically stronger than the men. I remember one occasion when the nuns and monks were on a trek together, and the nuns complained the monks would slow them down as they don’t work as much as the nuns do!”

The Drukpa nunnery might be the only instance in the world where there is a waiting list to get in. Kanchok Wangmo, 19, had to fight her family to come to the nunnery. “I wanted to help people. They told me to stay at home and become a teacher. But anyone can become a teacher, only a few can study under guruji’s tutelage,” she explains. Kanchok, who is from a small Himachal village, is more forthcoming about her transition from layperson to nun. “I was a little disappointed when I came here, because I expected there to be a college,” she says sadly. “But it’s basic education, which I’ve already had.” She talks freely about how her father, a rice farmer, was unable to accept her as a nun and cut off ties with her for two years. “Oh, he just missed me,” she says affectionately. “He didn’t understand.”

Despite the time I had spent with these nuns, I too, didn’t understand. From a city-bred atheist’s point of view, I questioned them persistently: but why? Why, when you could help people as a doctor, a teacher, or as a good mother does? Kanchok answered patiently. “I wanted to be a doctor once, like my elder sister is now. But why fix the body, which only manifests symptoms of the sickness, when you can fix the source of the problem — a fault with the soul?” But you must miss something? Kanchok hesitates, and it is clear she has thought of something, or someone, before she answers: “In this life, we have no money or power. By becoming a nun, I hope to achieve a better spiritual status in my next life [that is, be reborn as a man] and help more people.”

Feminist Buddhism
“Seeing nuns doing kung fu is a beautiful thing,” says His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa. “I want to help women, and my own nunnery is the best place to start. I also make sure that I teach texts to the nuns directly. Then, if the monks want to know these teachings, they have to learn from the nuns.” The Drukpa explains that these women have faced a lot of oppression. “They suffered with their families and a backward lifestyle. Now, after centuries, they are being trusted with ancient secrets and texts.”

Many of the nuns who come to the nunnery are orphaned or homeless. But many others have chosen this life, despite having all the opportunities the ‘other’ world had to offer. “One nun used to be a J&K counter-terrorism agent. Another one was a week from leaving for Canada for a marketing job when she joined the Drukpa nunnery,” points out Mary Dorea, a volunteer with Live to Love. “An increasingly self-empowered branch of feminist Buddhism is emerging.”

Chandramouli Basu is the director of the BBC documentary Kung Fu Nuns, and he was in Ladakh to show the film to the Drukpa nunnery on the occasion of the Annual Drukpa Council 2011, a meeting of religious leaders and followers from across the globe. The movie tells the story of Kunzang, a 29-year-old nun, as she and her fellow nuns prepare to perform the ritual of the Dragon Dance, which was previously only meant for monks to perform.

Anxious to prove themselves, the nuns sweat it out in preparation.

“The rapid transformation at the nunnery is inspiring,” says Basu. “Especially seeing it happen against the setting of religion, which is perceived as being the last pillar of conservatism,is a source of hope.”

The film was screened in the same courtyard at the nunnery where the nuns practice their kung fu every morning. Thousands of nuns sat on the stone floor, cross-legged, cheering wildly under the clear, starlit Ladakhi sky, whooping when they recognised a nun on the screen, oohing sympathetically as one broke her ankle during rehearsals. Kanchok, sitting next to me, squeezed my hand happily as the movie ended with the successful performance of the Dragon Dance. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

[LFJ]

"The Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery in Kathmandu, Nepal, houses the world's first order of kung fu nuns."

http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/nepal-s-kung-fu-nuns-practise-karma-with-a-kick-29224499.html

I guess Yongtai doesn't count? :confused:

[GeneChing]

I know, I know....needs pix. :rolleyes:

Kung fu nuns teach cosmic energy to CERN scientists (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/16/science-cern-nuns-idUSL3E8MG3W420121116)
By Robert Evans
GENEVA | Fri Nov 16, 2012 11:28am EST

Nov 16 (Reuters) - A dozen kung fu nuns from an Asian Buddhist order displayed their martial arts prowess to bemused scientists at CERN this week as their spiritual leader explained how their energy was like that of the cosmos.

The nuns, all from the Himalayan region, struck poses of hand-chops, high-kicks and punches on Thursday while touring the research centre where physicists at the frontiers of science are probing the origins of the universe.

"Men and women carry different energy," said His Holiness Gyalwang Drukpa, a monk who ranks only slightly below the Dalai Lama in the global Buddhist hierarchy. "Both male and female energies are needed to better the world."

This, he said, was a scientific principle "as fundamental as the relationship between the sun and the moon" and its importance was similar to that of the particle collisions in CERN's vast "Big Bang" machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The nuns, mostly slim and fit-looking teenagers with shaven heads and clad in flowing burgundy robes, nodded sagely.

But the 49-year-old Gyalwang Drukpa, head since the age of four of one of the new independent schools of Tibetan Buddhism centred in India and Nepal, stressed that their visit to CERN was not just scientific in purpose.

GENDER EQUALITY

By taking the nuns around the world and letting people of other countries enjoy their martial displays, he told physicists and reporters: "I hope to raise awareness about gender equality and the need for the empowerment of women."

The nuns themselves -- who star on Youtube videos -- have benefited from this outlook, he said.

For centuries in Tibet -- incorporated into communist China since 1951 -- and its surrounds, women were strictly barred from practising any form of martial art.

In his homeland Himalayan region of Ladakh, the Gyalwang Drukpa said, women were mainly servants, cooks and cleaners to monks.

About three years ago he decided to break out of this pattern and improve the health and spiritual well-being of women by training them in kung fu and even allowing them to perform sacred rites once also restricted to men.

"And a very good thing too," declared CERN physicist Pauline Gagnon, who recently wrote a blog study pointing to the low, although growing, proportion of women in scientific research around the world.

The visit to CERN, whose director general Rolf Heuer recently sponsored a conference of scientists, theologians and philosophers to discuss the tense relationship between science and religion, was not the first by a top religious leader.

In 1983 the sprawling campus on the border of France and Switzerland hosted the Dalai Lama, Buddhism's most revered figure, who argues that most scientific discoveries prove the truth of the view of the cosmos expounded by his faith -- sometimes dubbed by outsiders an "atheistic religion."

Pope John-Paul II preceded him in 1982 and the present Pope Benedict has a standing invitation from Heuer. (Reported by Robert Evans, edited by Paul Casciato)

[GeneChing]

Luv the berets...

Everybody likes Kung Fu Fighting, including nuns (http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/World/Story/A1Story20121120-384539.html)
http://news.asiaone.com/A1MEDIA/news/11Nov12/20121120.095259_kungfununs_reuters.jpg
The 12th Gyalwang Drukpa, Jigme Pema Wangchen, (L) poses with Kung-Fu trained nuns accompanying him at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin near Geneva.
Reuters
Tuesday, Nov 20, 2012

SWITZERLAND - A dozen kung fu nuns from an Asian Buddhist order displayed their martial arts prowess to bemused scientists at The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) this week as their spiritual leader explained how their energy was like that of the cosmos.

The nuns, all from the Himalayan region, struck poses of hand-chops, high-kicks and punches on Thursday while touring the research centre where physicists at the frontiers of science are probing the origins of the universe.

"Men and women carry different energy," said His Holiness Gyalwang Drukpa, a monk who ranks only slightly below the Dalai Lama in the global Buddhist hierarchy. "Both male and female energies are needed to better the world."

This, he said, was a scientific principle "as fundamental as the relationship between the sun and the moon" and its importance was similar to that of the particle collisions in Cern's vast "Big Bang" machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The nuns, mostly slim and fit-looking teenagers with shaven heads and clad in flowing burgundy robes, nodded sagely.

But the 49-year-old Gyalwang Drukpa, head since the age of four of one of the new independent schools of Tibetan Buddhism centred in India and Nepal, stressed that their visit to Cern was not just scientific in purpose.

By taking the nuns around the world and letting people of other countries enjoy their martial displays, he told physicists and reporters: "I hope to raise awareness about gender equality and the need for the empowerment of women."

The nuns themselves, who star on Youtube videos, have benefited from this outlook, he said.

For centuries in Tibet , incorporated into communist China since 1951, and its surrounds, women were strictly barred from practicing any form of martial art.

In his homeland Himalayan region of Ladakh, the Gyalwang Drukpa said, women were mainly servants, cooks and cleaners to monks.

About three years ago he decided to break out of this pattern and improve the health and spiritual well-being of women by training them in kung fu and even allowing them to perform sacred rites once also restricted to men.

"And a very good thing too," declared Cern physicist Pauline Gagnon, who recently wrote a blog study pointing to the low, although growing, proportion of women in scientific research around the world.

The visit to Cern, whose director general Rolf Heuer recently sponsored a conference of scientists, theologians and philosophers to discuss the tense relationship between science and religion, was not the first by a top religious leader.

In 1983 the sprawling campus on the border of France and Switzerland hosted the Dalai Lama, Buddhism's most revered figure, who argues that most scientific discoveries prove the truth of the view of the cosmos expounded by his faith.

Pope John-Paul II preceded him in 1982 and the present Pope Benedict has a standing invitation from Heuer.

[GeneChing]

What I love about this article? In the end, the The Bachelor: Shaolin link comes right back here. Thanks for that, Mr. Campbell! :)

Physicists And Kung Fu Nuns (http://www.science20.com/science_20/physicists_and_kung_fu_nuns-96942)
By Hank Campbell | November 22nd 2012 10:35 AM

What can Kung Fu Nuns teach CERN scientists about cosmic energy?

To start with, they would have to convince CERN scientists that 'cosmic energy' actually exists, and they recently got a chance to do that when the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) hosted Drukpa Buddhist's Spiritual Head, His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa.

In western academic culture, we always see people call Buddhist leaders 'His Holiness' because that is the title but referring to a Catholic Pope as Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church and Primate of Italy is frowned upon - instead we just see griping about Galileo and gay pederasts whenever a Roman Catholic is mentioned. Contrast that to the Being Human conference I went to earlier this year, which had zero western religious speakers though you could have created a drinking game built around how many times the psychologists and sociologists there mentioned meeting His Holiness The Dalai Lama - and they even had some Buddhist speakers. It sucks being a Buddhist in actual Tibet but since these guys are instead all over the West meeting and greeting the social sciences, it seems to be a pretty sweet life.

Anyway, CERN, WHO, WWF, the Green Cross and others invited His Holiness The Gyalwang Drukpa to talk about how scientists and spiritual leaders can play together nicely in promoting global well-being. That means encouraging eastern religion to accept some science so invoking cosmic energy was odd.

Global well being is nice and all but what is really cool is that His Holiness The Gyalwang Drukpa brought along a group called The Kung Fu Nuns. Sort of cool, anyway. They sound like they should be starring in a Quentin Tarantino movie but it seems they mostly work in hospital clinics and hold the world record for tree planting rather than ass-kicking, which seems rather tame for a sect whose name means 'Dragon'.

His Holiness The Gyalwang Drukpa said,"The spiritual community should be working with the scientific community to tackle today's global problems instead of resisting science. While we may use a different language, we are talking about the same thing and heading in the same direction."

That seems obvious and he is doing his part for gender equality, since the Kung Fu Nuns are women and Asian culture is generally still in the 19th century regarding treatment of women. In an American society that worries if math classes are only 48% women and calls an invitation for coffee in an elevator a rape threat, it's difficult to see why so many in academia embrace Eastern religious leaders, but His Holiness The Gyalwang Drukpa has bucked tradition and is a proponent of gender equality and that is to be applauded. Four years ago he brought Kung Fu to their nunnery and doesn't make them just wash the dishes and stuff any more.


Expecting a hot Nunja? You will be disappointed. But unlike the Western military, Kung Fu nuns don't get their own special self-esteem-based scoring system for physical tests. They still have to shave their heads just like the men too. Credit: Drukpa sect

We're a science site and we want to learn new things, so if you are a Kung Fu Nun in training and have learned to do that Chöd-Dance, please send a video.

If they really want to be embraced by the West, they should create a television show called The Bachelor: Shaolin:

[GeneChing]

Look Who is Kung Fu Fighting (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/look-who-is-kung-fu-fighting/1169304/0)
Geeta Gupta : New Delhi, Sun Sep 15 2013, 05:48 hrs

http://static.indianexpress.com/m-images/Sun%20Sep%2015%202013,%2005:48%20hrs/M_Id_419836_kung_fu.jpg
Under an elemental blue sky, with rugged mountains framing them, a group of 20-odd Buddhist nuns, clad in maroon robes and with their heads shaven, punched the air with clenched fists. They were practising kung fu. Even three years ago, that would have been a sight unseen at Naro Photang nunnery in Shey, near the Ladakh capital Leh. It was a privilege reserved for men, for the monks.

Among the women was Jigme Wangchuk, a 15-year-old Buddhist nun from a monastery in Kathmandu, who was in India to attend the annual Drukpa Council that concluded last week at the Hemis monastery in Ladakh. Before she stepped out for kung fu practice, Wangchuk spoke about how she was barely six, a Class II student in Bhutan, when she realised she wanted to be a nun and practise "dharma". Her mind, she said, was firmly made up to give up the "material" life — even against the wishes of her parents. While it is common for some Buddhist families to "give away" children born after their second child to "dharma", Wangchuk insisted her parents loved her too much to agree. "They were sad and told me I was too young to lead the tough life of a nun. But I was sure," said the young girl, who is fluent in English, Hindi, Nepali and the Bhutanese Drukpa language, and showed a remarkable confidence for her age. "It is very difficult to be a nun. We have to prove ourselves. For me, it was difficult to concentrate while meditating; but then it got better, and I found meaning," she said.

The perfection of a nun would be attained if she achieved the highest levels of "concentration" and when she knew "everything about dharma", she said. She was equally kicked about mastering the ancient martial art. "I love kung fu. It makes me feel healthier and it helps in improving my concentration," Wangchuk said. The morning after the kung fu session, she led the dragon dance at the Hemis monastery — which too, till 2009, was a male preserve.

Like her, other nuns have benefited from a new line of thinking in the Drukpa sect. Consigned so far to the domestic chores of washing and cleaning, and told to live with the belief that they were meant to serve the men so that they could be reborn as monks and gain "enlightenment", women had little avenue for growth in the spiritual hierarchy. "Women, even nuns, have always been considered secondary and it needs to change now. There is an improvement in the nuns' life with promoting gender equality, and that gives me great encouragement," said the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa, spiritual head of the nearly 1000-year-old Drukpa lineage, which follows the Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. The sect was established in 1206 and has followers across Tibet, Bhutan, China, Nepal and India.

The Gyalwang Drukpa visited Vietnam in 2008, and was inspired by Vietnamese nuns engaged in combat training. He decided to introduce the martial art and invited a Vietnamese master to the Druk Gawa Khilwa monastery in Kathmandu. At the nunnery in Leh, the martial art was introduced in 2010, and about 400 nuns learn kung fu at the two monasteries now. While training and practice will soon turn them into instructors, for now the nuns are trained by Dang Dinh Hai, a third generation Vietnamese kung fu master.

Over the last five years, in Ladakh and Kathmandu, nuns have been encouraged to step out of the nunnery and the confines of a wholly domestic life. They were a part of the massive tree plantation drive initiated after the flash floods of 2010 washed away several villages in Ladakh. They also work as volunteers at the SNM district hospital in Leh.

Jigme Rigme Lhamo, 36, who came to the order in 1999, said kung fu training has made the nuns more confident, though the many moves to ensure gender equity in the order faced staunch resistance. "A lot of people complained before they reached an understanding and got helpful. When we first performed the dragon dance, the keepers of dharma did say the world was coming to an end," she said.

Lahmo studied till Class IX "in one of the best schools in Ladakh". She lived with her family in Nubra Valley before becoming a nun. While her parents wanted her to become an engineer, Lahmo was inspired by Mother Teresa and wanted to "help people". "My parents didn't want me to become a nun; they were very unhappy with my decision. But I am happy being a nun. If I had stayed back with my parents, I would have been able to only help them. Now I can help more people," she said. The nuns, who start their day at 3 am with a dose of kung fu and two hours of meditation, said that the tough physical exercise sustained them through the day's routine, which, besides cleaning and cooking, includes meditation, prayers, learning Tibetan grammar, Buddhist philosophy, English and computer classes.

While it was discomfiting to see a 15-year-old lead the life of an ascetic when girls her age are occupied with ambitions, games, and toys of a different order, Wangchuk was dismissive of such concerns. She chuckled and said she loved her "dharma friends". "There is nothing lacking in this life. I get to learn the scriptures and I will only get better. I play cricket and football too. I watch a lot of movies. I have seen all the kung fu movies," she said. This thread is like the Shaolin Soccer for real thread (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57758) - it keeps coming back. And given the last quote, maybe they will combine someday. ;)

[GeneChing]

This is one of those stories that just pops up again every once in a while...


Kathmandu’s sweet but deadly kung fu nuns (http://www.canindia.com/2013/12/kathmandus-sweet-but-deadly-kung-fu-nuns/#)
December 9, 2013

10Kathmandu, Dec 9 (IANS) Their smiling faces and calm demeanour mask a roaring sea of immense energy and strength. These inmates of the Druk Amitabha nunnery in Kathmandu are also deadly kung fu fighters, being trained in the martial art as part of a strict regime, which also includes yoga and meditation, to promote gender equality.

“We do it as part of meditation and also to remain physically fit. Your spiritual well being depends a lot on your physical well being,” says Wangmo, 28, who trains the kung fu nuns.

Hailing from a small village in Lahul-Spiti in northern India’s Himachal Pradesh state, Wangmo has been in the nunnery for the last seven years and has been practising kung fu for four years. “I enjoy it very much,” she says as she wipes the sweat off her brow after a demonstration of her skills.

The nuns are allowed to visit their parents and home only once in about four years.

The nunnery was established by the Gyalwang Drukpa – the highest spiritual leader of the Drukpa lineage of Buddhists across the world – more than a decade ago to honour the will of his late guru. The objective was to train nuns at par with men – and that’s exactly what happens here.

“The uplift of women and gender equality are the causes close to my heart,” says the Gyalwang Drukpa. “I introduced kung fu as part of their training regime to give them strength, both inner and outward, as martial arts are also about meditation,” he added.

“Recently, a Saudi Arabian princess asked me about the kung fu nuns and their training regime. She was interested in it because they are also trying to bring in gender equality in their society,” Drukpa added.

“The kung fu nuns are my idea of gender equality… it’s interesting,” Drukpa smiled.

A kung fu nun’s work starts at 3 a.m. and ends at 10 p.m. First on the list is meditation till 4.30 p.m., followed by prayers at 5 a.m. And breakfast at 8 a.m.

After a half-hour break, it’s again time for meditation till 10 a.m., followed by classes to learn the Tibetan language.

Lunch – strictly vegetarian – is served at 12.30 p.m., after which the nuns are allowed an hour’s to rest before they troop in for an English class.

At 4 p.m., it’s tea time followed by recreation. Evening prayers are at 5 p.m and between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. the nuns practise kung fu.

“It’s a life that we have chosen for ourselves and I am quite happy with it,” says Wangmo.

[GeneChing]

Kung Fu nuns wow all at performance in the capital (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Kung-Fu-nuns-wow-all-at-performance-in-the-capital/articleshow/32094759.cms)
Alisa Schubert Yuasa, TNN | Mar 15, 2014, 11.30PM IST

NEW DELHI: A woman screams as a sledgehammer arcs down on the 25kg slab kept on a nun's maroon-clad knees. The stubble-headed nun, still in her teens, doesn't wince. She's a kung fu trainee from the Druk Gawa Khilwa Nunnery in Tia, Ladakh, and part of a movement towards gender equality and self-empowerment.

The Kung Fu Nuns, so named by His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa, who heads the Drukpa Buddhists and established the monastery in 1992, put up a spectacular performance of martial arts at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts on Saturday. They were a group of 100, all aged 15-21 years, petite, and mostly five-foot-nothing, but their moves were electric.

None of them has trained for more than five years. "I introduced kung fu to my nuns five years ago to give them strength, both inner and outward," said the Gyalwang Drukpa. "Kung Fu Nuns is my little action and contribution to support women and gender equality."

Before the performance, the nuns gathered under a tree's shade, whispering among themselves. Daechen, 21, whose hazel eyes crinkle in the corners as she grins with guileless charm, said she loves kung fu. She has been training since she was 18, practising 2-4 times a day.

The sweet and bashful facade melted the instant they took the stage. Jogging into formation with military precision, the nuns settled into the first stance with grace, confidence and concentration. Clean swipes and high kicks were executed in total unison. Each routine used different props-swords, flags, spears. The effortless flow of their routine masked the lethality of each move. The nuns also performed the dragon dance, which is not only immensely difficult but has been traditionally reserved for Buddhist monks.

The Druk Gawa Khilwa Nunnery has grown over two decades from a strength of 15 to more than 500, of whom more than 200 learn kung fu. They are trained in spiritual development, higher Tantric yoga as well as humanitarian work. The nuns come from all backgrounds, from affluence to orphanages, but have chosen to take ordination vows with the Gyalwang Drukpa. Why? They do not give a straight answer, but the pride and grace with which they perform says more than words: it shows a tranquility and happiness with their choices in life. petite + sweet + bashful = gender equality?

[GeneChing]

Kung fu nuns teach city women self-defence moves (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/gurgaon/Kung-fu-nuns-teach-city-women-self-defence-moves/articleshow/45330201.cms)
Yogesh Kumar,TNN | Dec 1, 2014, 03.56 AM IST

GURGAON: Appearances can be deceptive. Which is why when a group of eight nuns took the stage at Raahgiri on Sunday, not many Gurgaonites would have expected them to put on a demonstration of martial arts they would not forget soon.

Equally adept with swords and sticks, the women all belonging in the 18-23 age-group, are part of the Kung Fu Nuns, so named by His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa, who heads the Drukpa Buddhists.

The movement, which aims to spread the message of gender equality and self-empowerment, has been touring across the country to conduct kung fu demonstrations and teach women self-defence.

A 20-year-old soft-spoken nun from Himachal Pradesh, who did not wish to be named, said she has been practising for the last two years. "Our goal is to spread the message of women empowerment. We want to teach some important tricks to women so that they can protect themselves in case of an emergency," she said.

Wielding swords, sledgehammers and sticks, the nuns left onlookers in awe with their strength, agility and grace. Himani Chawla, a 19-year-old visitor said it was an unusual sight. "I did not expect high kicks and clean swipes to be demonstrated by nuns," she said.

A 21-year-old nun, who was one of the performers, said that kung fu is significant not only for self-defense, but it also helps develop physical, mental and emotional strength needed for meditation.

She said platforms like Raahgiri were essential to bring about a change. "It is hard to get such platform in cities, where people come not only to enjoy activities, but to learn about social causes. Our experience at Raahgiri has been very good," she said.
...because wielding sledgehammers is one of the most important tricks for women's self defense...;)

[GeneChing]

Meet the ‘Kung Fu Nuns’ who can break bones and chant with equal ease (http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/life-style/change-of-habit/)

http://images.indianexpress.com/2014/11/kung-fu-759.jpg
They are trained in stunts such as breaking wooden planks and bricks They are trained in stunts such as breaking wooden planks and bricks
Written by Debesh Banerjee | New Delhi | Posted: November 27, 2014 12:00 am | Updated: November 27, 2014 11:59 am

Appearances can be deceptive which is why Jigme Konchok Lhamo’s angelic smile should not be taken at face value. She walks calmly on to the stage with her hands folded in meditation, and breaks out into a wide stance in a flash. A Buddhist nun from Ladakh, Lhamo is adept at kung fu and breaking bones comes naturally to her. Her smartest trick is with the Chinese hand fan. On Monday evening, she performed stunts with her hand fan accompanied by six other girls from the nunnery at the closing of the Inner Path Festival in Delhi. “I usually like to perform with more girls but this was a smaller demonstration,” she says. At the Alliance Francaise, the girls performed with sticks, swords and hand fans to the background music of Buddhist hymns and chants.

The “Kung Fu Nuns”, a term coined by the international media, from the the Drukpa lineage of Buddhism, were initiated into Chinese martial arts by the Holiness the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa Jigme Pema Wangchen in 2011. Wangchen began teaching girls martial arts at various centres of the nunnery to prove that they were at par with monks. “Kung fu empowers us. It gives us confidence and makes us feel independent,” says Lhamo, who is from Keylong, Himachal Pradesh and shuttles between the nunneries in Ladakh and Himachal, where she learnt martial arts for five years.

At the nunnery, girls between the ages of 15 to 26 are taught kung fu, even as they cook, clean, meditate and study. “We wake up at 3 am every day. We devote two hours to learning kung fu,” says Lhamo. Their free time is spent watching martial arts films, usually Jackie Chan re-runs on TV. “He has the most authentic kung fu,” she says.

They have been on a 800 km pad yatra since November 1, from Varanasi to Lumbini, which involves walking 8 to 10km daily and cleaning up villages along their route.


I hope they come to the U.S. someday. I'd love to feature them.

[GeneChing]

I like the approach of this site's reporting.

First Person: ‘I set up kung fu classes for nuns’ (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/331c8816-8a1f-11e4-9b5f-00144feabdc0.html)
As told to Jeremy Taylor by Gyalwang Drukpa

http://im.ft-static.com/content/images/75f9fb04-6d91-451d-b8c9-275e70ad8ca4.img
His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa and kung fu nuns: “Their routine is quite spectacular”©Tereza Cerveňová

I am the spiritual leader of the Drukpa school of Buddhism, the 12th reincarnation in a lineage that dates back more than 1,000 years. We approach modern-day problems using ancient Buddhist philosophy. I believe most people think nuns spend their lives in learning and quiet contemplation. In the region of the Himalayas where I live, their traditional role was always subservient. For centuries, they simply cooked and cleaned for their monk colleagues.

They were also barred from taking part in martial arts but now I’ve helped change that. In 1992, I established the Druk Gawa Khilwa Abbey in Ladakh, India, and then six years ago I decided the time was right for the nuns there to start learning kung fu.

When I first broached the idea of teaching nuns kung fu, my advisers didn’t like it at all. I had a difficult time persuading them because it was a break from tradition. They didn’t understand.

Finally they agreed and one day in 2009 I put the word out that we were going to have kung fu lessons. I was in my mid-forties then and I hadn’t practised martial arts since I was a boy. However, as we didn’t have a proper teacher at the time, it was down to me to train them.

I remember that day very well. I was extremely nervous and quite scared because I didn’t want my project to fail. Suddenly I found myself standing in front of 102 nuns, all of them dressed in their robes and waiting for me to show them what to do.

I think we had a lot of fun. There was stretching and many arm movements but I soon realised that if the nuns were going to progress, they needed a proper kung fu master instead of me.

Now we have a core group of 70 nuns practising four times a day. They get up at 3am and have their first lesson an hour later. It’s often still dark and you can hear their yelps as they kick and punch through their exercises together in the courtyard.

It wasn’t long before word of the kung fu nuns got out and people wanted to come and see them train. We decided it would be good to send the nuns out into the world, to give displays and spread the message to other women.

Their routine is quite spectacular to watch and has drawn large crowds. They swirl flags and spears, making their high kicks in unison. They also perform the dragon dance, which is extremely difficult and usually reserved for monks.

Some of the nuns can break several bricks with a single strike from their hand or head. Another part of the show involves a nun sitting with a 25kg slab of concrete on her knees. It is then broken in half with the swing of a sledgehammer.

In the past few years the nuns have visited Hong Kong, Malaysia, London and most of Europe. They were invited to America but it was cancelled because we couldn’t get them visas.

I think it is marvellous for them because some of the nuns come from very difficult backgrounds. Some of them were orphans and others were homeless. They had very low self-esteem but kung fu has helped boost their confidence. Their spiritual practice is obviously very important but physical exercise like this can only do good.

Some of the nuns left good careers to join the nunnery in Ladakh. One was about to start a job in marketing and another was a counter-terrorism agent. The nunnery is so popular now that we actually have a waiting list.

I’m hoping that this is just the start for the Drukpa nuns. I have a lot of innovative ideas, including setting up a tennis team. Who knows where that will lead? Maybe one day you will have a nun as Wimbledon champion too.

Photograph: Tereza Cerveňová

[GeneChing]

These nuns kick ASS.


Kathmandu's Kung Fu Nuns Have Refused To Be Evacuated - They're Staying Back To Help Victims (http://www.indiatimes.com/news/world/nepals-kung-fu-nuns-have-refused-to-be-evacuated-theyre-staying-back-to-help-victims-232288.html)
Kunal Anand
April 30, 2015

http://media.indiatimes.in/media/content/2015/Apr/rtr2cos6-9_1430386378_1430386383_980x457.jpg

300 women have refused to be flown by plane and chopper out of an earthquake ravaged Nepal. Clearly, they aren't ordinary women - they are nuns of the Ladakh-based Drupka order.

http://media.indiatimes.in/media/content/2015/Apr/buddhistdoor2_1430391209_725x725.jpg
buddistdoor

Or, as the world calls them, 'Kung-Fu Nuns'. These women have grown up learning kung fu and meditation their entire life from a Kathmandu nunnery, and now they're planning to stay back and use their strength to help earthquake victims here.

http://media.indiatimes.in/media/content/2015/Apr/buddhistdoor_1430386621_725x725.jpg
buddhistdoor

In fact, their leader, the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa expected them to be shaken, like the rest of Nepal. He told the Daily Mail: “I was expecting the nuns over there to be under trauma. Many people were saying that they should be evacuated but they decided to stay back and help others."

http://media.indiatimes.in/media/content/2015/Apr/baltic-review_1430386648_725x725.jpg
balticreview

"It’s raining continuously, earthquakes are repeatedly happening, the walls are falling and none of them can go back to their rooms so they have had to camp in the garden.

http://media.indiatimes.in/media/content/2015/Apr/huffpost_1430391286_725x725.jpg
huffpost

Despite all these problems, they are willing to help.”

http://media.indiatimes.in/media/content/2015/Apr/simondetreywhite_1430386676.jpg
simondetreywhite

According to him, these disasters show nature’s unhappiness with mankind's greed.: “From a spiritual point of view, we should not blame God but, instead, work with nature and respect it. Some people say that the earth is a mother. I don’t necessarily say that one should worship.

http://media.indiatimes.in/media/content/2015/Apr/2-8_1430391369_725x725.jpg
bccl

Respect, instead, means not being destructive. Scientists also say that,” he says.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsiBRVxh3qc

What he says is correct - Nepal has been built like a dangerous maze of poorly constructed buildings without concern for earthquakes.

[GeneChing]

These ladies are truly my heroines.


Meet the Kung Fu Nuns Fixing Nepal After Its Devastating Earthquakes (http://mic.com/articles/118102/these-badass-kung-fu-nuns-are-helping-to-repair-nepal-after-its-devastating-earthquakes)
By Natasha Noman May 12, 2015

Nepal has been devastated in the past few weeks. More than 8,000 people died after the country was rocked on April 25 by a magnitude-7.9 earthquake, and on Tuesday it endured yet another major earthquake, this one of magnitude 7.3, resulting in more than a thousand injuries and dozens of deaths confirmed so far. Between the two quakes, aftershocks and heavy rainfall made recovery efforts difficult.

But amid this tragedy, some unlikely heroes have emerged: the so-called "kung fu nuns." These Buddhist nuns of the Drukpa order live on the outskirts of Kathmandu at the Druk Amitabha Mountain nunnery, where they have incorporated the martial art into their Buddhist practice. Three hundred of these nuns refused to be evacuated after the April quake in order to stay and help with recovery efforts.

When their nunnery began to crumble during that first earthquake, "the nuns jumped through shattered glass windows, smashed open rattling doors and dived over a collapsing staircase," the Washington Post reported. "They have been training for about four years to react with just such speed and agility."

After tending to their monastery, the nuns have dedicated their time to helping others in nearby villages. They do everything from removing rubble to clearing paths. They distribute food, too, and help erect tents to provide shelter for the millions of Nepalis who are now homeless.

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Source: Prakash Mathema/Getty Images

Wait... where did they come from? Traditionally, Buddhist nuns are trained in simplicity and expected to perform domestic chores in nunneries and monasteries. Roughly 26 years ago, taking issue with the inherently patriarchal and sexist Buddhist monastic framework, members of the 800-year-old Drukpa order rebelled to form the more feminist Druk Amitabha Mountain nunnery. They took that goal a step further in 2008, when their leader, Gyalwang Drukpa, introduced kung fu to the nunnery after being inspired by female martial arts in Vietnam.

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Source: Mic/YouTube
In addition to martial arts, the Guardian reports, the Drukpa order teaches its nuns rudimentary business skills and how to lead prayers.

The nuns have said the kung fu has both improved their self-confidence and made them better at meditation. They have used it for campaigns promoting community work and against toxic waste, not to mention women's empowerment, the Washington Post reports. Not only are these nuns helping their community, but they are also defying gender norms in a larger way, challenging what it means to be a woman in Nepal.

http://media3.policymic.com/ODkxNjljZGI0NiMvM29iMFZLTUg5U3lIbWQ3WkdJSDlxT1Z3QW 9vPS80eDk3OjMyNDZ4MjEwNy85MDB4NTU4L2ZpbHRlcnM6cXVh bGl0eSg3MCkvaHR0cDovL3MzLmFtYXpvbmF3cy5jb20vcG9saW N5bWljLWltYWdlcy9rYm5ybmd3eXZxcXpkcGF2ZXlqcHdicTY4 dXh3c214eXVmeWdiemdnaWVpcXF0MWxucGp3c3F6emppaXk2an V0LmpwZw==.jpg
Source: AFP/Getty Images

To be a woman in Nepal: Nepal is not the worst country when it comes to gender parity, but it's by no means exemplary. Strides have been made in education, and enrollment rates for boys and girls in primary and secondary school are practically the same, according to the World Economic Forum's 2014 Gender Gap Index. But there remains a legacy of inequality, with only 47% of women literate, compared to 71% of men.

And, as is often the case in poor countries, women and girls suffer in a multitude of other ways. Women have had to bear the brunt of earthquake damages, keeping families together and participating in recovery efforts, as a substantial number of men are abroad earning remittances, Public Radio International notes. Women and girls are also particularly vulnerable to exploitation by human traffickers, who may target Nepal in the chaos.

This makes populations like the Druk Amitabha Mountain nunnery particularly important. Their ethos of female empowerment, and their role in recovery efforts, offers a symbol of hope for women and girls across the country.

http://media3.policymic.com/MmYzMjA4MmMxNCMvRWEtTDZsejBsWXlsX3RMRmFrM1RKUHpLcG xNPS8yNngxMDg6MzYyMHgyMjI2LzkwMHg1MzAvZmlsdGVyczpx dWFsaXR5KDcwKS9odHRwOi8vczMuYW1hem9uYXdzLmNvbS9wb2 xpY3ltaWMtaW1hZ2VzL3p4Mmp6b3Y4cXNsZGlxcmxyY3BwbGtp bDRmdzVzYmJ1enFxanB3aHNuOWhqMXczZTh2cjJvanFwY2xncm Z1d2EuanBn.jpg
Source: Prakash Mathema/Getty Images

Natasha Noman
Natasha is a Live News Staff Writer who focuses on global politics. Before joining Mic she reported on regional affairs from Pakistan, where in reality she spent the majority of her time there exhaustively researching the avant-garde online dating scene. She studied at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London and Columbia University. It dawned on her recently that she may be the subject of Chapter Four of Edward Said's "Orientalism."

[GeneChing]

Crouching tiger, hidden nun: the kung fu sisters of Nepal training to help their country (http://europe.newsweek.com/crouching-tiger-hidden-nun-kung-fu-sisters-nepal-training-help-their-country-328581)
By Christine Toomey 6/12/15 at 11:45 AM

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Gawa Khilwa and its nuns: "Love is not failing to defend against attack," says the head of their Buddhist order
Christine Toomey

Filed Under: Culture

At the Druk Gawa Khilwa nunnery in Nepal, nestled in mountains an hour's drive from Kathmandu, each day begins at 3am with the sound of a bell. Dawn will not seep across the highest Himalayan peaks for several more hours. As the young nuns stir from sleep, only a dim glow filters through the dormitory windows from lit pathways beyond.

No words are spoken and no glances exchanged as the young women slip from their beds and wrap their slender frames in burgundy and saffron robes. First, an underskirt and shirt without sleeves, worn even on the coldest of days. Over this, a wide lower robe is folded and tucked at the waist. Finally, a long shawl, a zen, is tossed around the shoulders to keep out the chill.

After smoothing out sheets and blankets, each woman steps up onto the firm mattress of her bed and sits cross-legged facing the wall against which her pillow rests. Each then turns within, entering the realm of meditation.

While most of the sisters spend the next two hours treading their own inner path, repeating secret mantras and recitations, alternating groups of nuns follow a very different form of practice. Instead of monastic robes, they lift a quite other set of clothes from the storage boxes under their beds: loose brown trousers and long-sleeved martial-arts jackets cinched at the waist with a cloth sash. Tying the laces of white canvas shoes, they pass quietly from their dormitories into the night air.

It is mid-October when I join them and together we snake up a stairway that leads along a steep incline, bordered on either side by scented flowers and shrubs. Today, it is warm enough to practise outside, so I follow the women as they climb three further flights of stairs onto the roof and space themselves out with a few low whispers. As their instructor brings the group to order they draw their feet together, pull two clenched fists back towards their waists and stand waiting.

At the opening command they raise their arms to shoulder height, thrust their right fist into their left palm and spring into such sharp action that it seems a temporary affront to the calm devotions of those meditating below. In the background, the only sound is a gentle symphony of cicadas, but high on the nunnery roof the peace is now pierced by shouted instructions in the practice of kung fu.

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Christine Toomey

With each position counted out, the nuns move through a series of steps that flow from graceful hand gestures through fierce air punches and swinging chops to soaring kicks and acts of fighting.

Most of the exercises are carried out individually, either with bare hands or the long fighting sticks known as bo staffs. The most startlingly beautiful are performed with blood-red fans swirled above the head and around the waist. At times the fans are spun open, at others flipped closed, the effect more dance than martial art. Other exercises involve two nuns sparring, circling each other with clenched fists, thrusting, shoving, grabbing the other's neck in the crook of their arms and pushing their opponent to the ground.

What I am witnessing in this striking pre-dawn display is more than 1,000 years of tradition being turned on its head. For more than a millennium this kung fu was reserved only for monks, its roots lying far to the north in the legendary Chinese monastery of Shaolin.

It was there in the fifth century that kung fu was said to have originated, after Bodhidarma, an Indian prince turned Buddhist monk, set out to take the teachings of the Buddha to China. On finding temples there vulnerable to attack by thieves, and many monks struggling with the rigours of monastic life, Bodhidarma devised a system of fitness and defence that drew heavily on the ancient traditions of Indian yoga.

Like yoga, Shaolin kung fu developed from observation of the way animals move. Over the centuries the Shaolin monks incorporated many different animal postures into their practice until eventually the mastery of many styles developed into a form represented by the Chinese dragon, a powerful spiritual creature.

It is telling, then, that the nuns of Gawa Khilwa belong to the Drukpa order of Tibetan Buddhism, druk being the Tibetan word for both "dragon" and "thunder". Each day that passes, I make a request to meet the head of the Drukpa order, the Gyalwang Drukpa, whose introduction of the nuns to kung fu is only one aspect of a highly unusual degree of support he shows the women in his care. On the morning of my sixth day, I am granted an audience.

The décor inside the room in which he receives me is full of established Buddhist imagery. But as we begin to speak I quickly gain an impression of a man whose robes mask a forward thinker impatient with some of the constraints of tradition. Early on, he shows me a picture of his mother and I come to understand that her absence when he was a boy perhaps provides some key to his unorthodox views. After being recognised as a reincarnation of a previous holder of the title, at the age of four he was taken from the care of his Tibetan parents to a monastery near Darjeeling, in India. He admits openly to the hardship involved.

During his training, the Gyalwang Drukpa rarely saw his parents and enjoyed little female influence. The few nuns he encountered were regarded as inferior to monks and were invariably treated badly.

"By nature women embody the wisdom of the Buddhist teachings. They are more loving and compassionate than men because of their mothering instinct," he says. It seems quite a leap from this nurturing vision of womanhood to introducing his nuns to kung fu – a move that has been criticised in more conservative Buddhist circles.

The idea came to him, he explains, after seeing nuns in Vietnam being taught the martial art by police officers who had learned combat skills to fight the Vietcong. "Some people say kung fu, knocking somebody down, is the opposite of love. And I too wondered if I was doing the right thing, introducing my nuns to the practice," he says. "But love comes in many forms. Love is not accepting failure and it is not failing to defend against attack.

"I want the nuns that I teach to be strong and confident. Becoming a monk or a nun is not a comfortable experience, but it is good training for the skills they will need in life."

The essence of Buddhism, he continues, is a process for improving the quality of one's own life and that of others.

"Buddhism is not a religion. It is not an 'ism' at all," he says. "You can call it a philosophy of life. But there are many people who misunderstand this term too, thinking of it as something academic. I'm talking about a philosophy of how you stand, sit, drink tea and do everything in life with awareness."

Far from envisioning his nunneries as sanctuaries from everyday reality, his intention is that they should act as training grounds for spiritual warriors. And there are now more women queuing up for the privilege of this training than any of his nunneries are able to accommodate.

Gawa Khilwa, for instance, at the time of my visit, has a waiting list of between 50 and 60 women. "We need women now more than ever," says the Gyalwang Drukpa, as our meeting concludes. "The answer to many questions being asked in modern society is that more empowerment of women is needed."

His intention is that the nuns at Gawa Khilwa, and other nunneries over which he presides in India, will eventually go out into society to carry out practical work. "The nuns must see these nunneries as schools from which they will one day emerge, putting their strong female energy to good use."

Since Christine visited Nepal, the country was struck by the terrible earthquake of 25 April. The nuns of Gawa Khilwa refused to be airlifted to safety and used the strength derived from kung fu to help their community, administering medical treatment, constructing shelters and carrying more than 100,000 sacks of food to remote villages. This piece was excerpted from The Saffron Road: A Journey with Buddha's Daughters (€20, Portobello).

Field Guide

How to get there: Gawa Khilwa nunnery is generally open to visitors on Saturday. The nunnery is part of the Druk Amitabha Mountain monastic complex of His Holiness the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa. It is an hour's taxi ride north-west of the capital. Access is via a narrow mountain road with ever more hairpin bends and increasingly perpendicular inclines. Druk Amitabha has limited guest quarters but overnight stays can be arranged in advance with the nunnery's office.

What to read: The Gyalwang Drukpa's most recent publications are Everyday Enlightenment and Happiness Is a State of Mind.
Might have to check out both of these books.

[GeneChing]

Luv these ladies. Some day, I hope we can do an in-depth story on them.


The 'Kung Fu Nuns' Of Kathmandu Are The Most Badass Women On The Planet (http://www.mensxp.com/special-features/today/27806-the-kung-fu-nuns-of-kathmandu-are-the-most-badass-women-on-the-planet.html)
Kung Fu Nuns Of Kathmandu

By Shantanu Prasher, Wednesday, 23 Sep 2015

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It’s a widely known fact that Buddhist nuns across the world are considered inferior to the monks. But at the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery in Kathmandu, Nepal, these nuns do things a little differently. They throw punches and kick just as hard as their monk brothers. Meet the world's first order of ‘Kung Fu nuns’ of Kathmandu.

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Atop the Amitabha Mountain on the outskirts of Kathmandu, sits a silent abode of nuns called the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery.
Kung Fu Nuns Of Kathmandu

Every day after completing their lessons of religious studies and saying their prayers, these nuns aged between 9-52 undergo a more than an hour-long session of hand chops, punches, shrieks and soaring high kicks. In short, they train in Kung Fu.

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Going against the grain, these nuns are the world’s first to ever step into learning Kung-fu. Traditionally, Buddhist nuns in the Himalayas are kept away from physically demanding exercises like martial arts, and their role is limited to doing menial household tasks. Like the scarce facilities provided to monks, Himalayan nuns have been kept away from even basic education for long.

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But the leader of the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery, His Holiness The Gyalwang Drukpa, impressed with the fighting skills of the nuns in Vietnam, dared to go against the tide and invited female Vietnamese fighters to teach them. In addition to this, nuns are also taught to lead prayers and given knowledge of basic business skills. They run and maintain a guest house and coffee shop, and also drive jeeps to Kathmandu to get supplies. All this is forbidden for Himalayan nuns.

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Kung Fu was inducted as part of the nuns’ yoga routine in late 2011, and today, they are demonstrating their skills to thousands of pilgrims in Nepal and are actively touring India and Britain.

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Widely unknown, these ‘Kung Fu’ nuns refused to evacuate when a devastating earthquake struck Nepal earlier this year. Instead, they used their training to help the affected people, in search and rescue operations, and in food distribution and moving dead bodies. They consider community duty as a spiritual exercise. These nuns defy the rules of the rarefied male-governed world of monastic life, and are only growing better and stronger while they sculpt a better future. Salute!

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[GeneChing]

...but they are embedded and I'm not up to picking through the source code to extract them right now...


Kathmandu to New Delhi with women empowerment message (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/agra/Kung-Fu-nuns-on-cycle-tour-from-Kathmandu-to-New-Delhi-with-women-empowerment-message/articleshow/50427969.cms)

Arvind Chauhan | TNN | Jan 3, 2016, 07.09 PM IST

From left to right: In third seat, Gyalwa Dhokhampa (male) the head of the Drupka Lineage Gyalwang Drukpa (male) along with his team.

AGRA: Around 235 nuns of the Drukpa Buddhist monastic order, famous as 'Kung Fu nuns' who commenced an arduous cycle yatra from Kathmandu across the Indian states of Bihar and UP to create awareness for women empowerment and environmental conservation, came to Agra.
The nuns of Druk Amitabha Mountain nunnery based in the hills of Kathmandu and Naro Photang in Ladakh, have so far covered around 2,000 km and are now headed for the last stop, Delhi under the leadership of His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa.
The cycle expedition began from Kathmandu on November 18, passed through Gorakhpur, Patna, Rajgir, Gaya, Varanasi, Allahabad, Kanpur, Saifai and Agra before it concludes on January 9 in New Delhi. The cyclists in the group are from Ladakh, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh and Nepal.
Highlighting various aspects of the Cycle Yatra and the route, Konehok Lhamo a woman cyclist said, "The expedition or the yatra of 235 women is to create awareness about women empowerment and environment consciousness." "We are thankful to UP government for providing safe passage for our voluntaries in the pre-planned route," she added.

Nuns visit Taj Mahal.

His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa, spiritual head of the Drukpa Order, environmentalist, an active proponent of gender equality and United Nations MDG Award Honoree said, "The condition of women in India is not good as compare to other nations. During our cycle expedition, we have promote the message of respecting women and giving them equivalence power with men."

Group of around 235 nuns passing by Saifai.

Speaking on his experience during the tour, Gyalwang Drukpa who founded 'Live to Love' foundation said, "People of various villages and towns provided us milk, vegetables and eatables for free of cost of cyclists and even arranged shelters for night stay."
Before heading for New Delhi, Gyalwang said, "Next year the group will ride 5000 km for the similar cause."

[GeneChing]

There's a vid too, if you follow the link.


Nepal’s ‘Kung Fu nuns’ are pedalling their way to empowerment (http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/nepal-s-kung-fu-nuns-are-pedalling-their-way-to-empowerment/story-BcN2mVOc5SF24BwOZCx24N.html)
Shamita Harsh, Hindustan Times, New Delhi | Updated: Jan 13, 2016 19:22 IST

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The Kung Fu nuns belong to the 800-year-old Drukpa order, which rebelled against the monastic Buddhist framework and founded the liberal Druk Amitabha Mountain Nunnery in Kathmandu. (Handout photo)

On January 8, an unusual group of mountain bikers reached New Delhi, after a gruelling 2500 km journey from Kathmandu. Wearing black suits and red windcheaters, armoured with helmets, riding gloves and knee caps, they looked like any other cycling tour. Except that the entire contingent was made up of Nepal’s famous ‘kung fu nuns’.
These Buddhist nuns first came into spotlight during the Nepal earthquake in April 2015, when they refused to be evacuated, instead choosing to stay back and help. The nuns volunteered for everything - from physically clearing heavy pieces of rubble to providing shelter to the homeless.
The Kung Fu nuns belong to the 800-year-old Drukpa order, which rebelled against the monastic Buddhist framework and founded the liberal Druk Amitabha Mountain Nunnery in Kathmandu. The present Drukpa leader Gyalwang Drukpa also decided to lift the ban that prevented women from practising the ancient Chinese martial art of kung fu, giving them equal status as Drukpa monks.
In most Buddhist orders, monks can lead prayers and occupy powerful positions, while nuns are assigned the menial jobs of cooking and cleaning. But at the Druk Amitabha nunnery in Kathmandu’s Ramkot village, the nuns learn the same skills as the monks, in defiance of traditional monastic mores.
The nuns’ daily routine is packed with action and activity. Their day begins at 3 am in the morning before the Himalayan sun is out. After the prayers and meditation, the nunnery buzzes with activity, from kung fu routines to English classes, as well as classes in managerial skills and leading prayers. The chores are distributed equally and by 10pm, they usually retire to their beds.
The nuns also actively engage in community work, leading from the front. The cycling tour from Kathmandu to New Delhi is one of their initiatives to promote environmental awareness and women empowerment.
“We just wanted to show people that we are capable of doing more than just sitting in the monasteries and meditating,” says Jigme Yudron, who is part of the tour. Led by their head Gyalwang Drukpa, a team of 250 nuns from Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Darjeeling, and Nepal have come together to cycle.

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A team of 250 nuns, belonging to the 800-year-old Buddhist Drukpa order, are part of the cycling tour . (Handout photo)

Their journey in India has already taken them through the cities of Gorakhpur, Gaya, Patna, Rajgir, Varanasi, Allahbad, Kanpur and Agra before they hit the brakes at Delhi. Locals have been generously offering shelter and food to the nuns as they spread their message of gender equality.
Of course, the kung fu nuns themselves are the best advertisement for their campaign. As they ride single-file one after the other, it is hard not to admire their discipline and precision. The stamina and strength needed to cycle for long distances is possible only because of their extensive training in martial arts.
“Kung fu gives us both physical and mental strength. The exercises we practice daily have come handy in helping us cycle this far. In many ways, the strain that kung fu puts on our muscles is quite similar to that of cycling for long periods of time,” explains Jigme Kunchug Lhamo, who is from Himachal Pradesh.
Kunchung joined the nunnery in 2006. She says that there are plans to expand the cycling tour further. “Next year, His Holiness is planning to rope in more girls and nuns into the tour. There were only 250 nuns this year, I think he wants to nearly double the amount. Maybe 500 or 600 nuns can take part in the cycle yatra. That way we can carry a stronger message to the people,” she says.
While the gutsy nuns are not daunted by anything, the state of traffic on the Indian roads has been a minor hurdle.
“One night on the highway, we had a mishap. One of our colleagues met with an accident with a truck. Her cycle was completely smashed but by God’s grace, she escaped any sort of injury,” says Jigme Tenzin Zhamo from Ladakh.
While they have managed to cover the Kathmandu to New Delhi stretch in 52 days, according to Gyalwang Drukpa, that is only half their journey. The cycle tour still has to cover another 1600 km stretch on their bikes to Shravasti and Lumbini before it reaches Kathmandu.
“It started off as a symbol for environmental preservation, which the cycle symbolises. But our aim was to speak to people in the villages of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar about women’s rights, to make them aware of the opportunities that can be given to women,” says spiritual leader Gyalwang Drukpa .

[GeneChing]

These Kung Fu Nuns Are Saving the World by Bike (http://www.bicycling.com/rides/advocacy/these-kung-fu-nuns-are-saving-the-world-by-bike)

More than 200 nuns from Kathmandu rode across India to promote gender equality and environmental conservationBY MOLLY HURFORD JANUARY 15, 2016

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THESE NUNS PRACTICE KUNG FU FOR SELF-DEFENSE AND AS A METHOD OF MEDITATION.Image Courtesy Of Flying Nuns

What do you call 235 nuns on bicycles? It’s not the start of a terrible joke: It was an actual question in India last week as hundreds of nuns finished an epic ride for the Live to Love Foundation.

Nuns from the Drukpa Buddhist monastic order—better known now as the Kung Fu Nuns—travelled from their nunnery in Kathmandu to Delhi over the course of nearly two months 2,200 kilometers—about 1,370 miles. As they rode, the nuns stopped in a few cities to preach gender equality and environmental conservation. During the day, they split into 10 groups for group riding and cooking.

“The cycle yatra [pilgrimage] points to the independent and collective willpower of women and their equivalence with men,” the head of their order, Gyalwang Drukpa, told local news organization the Northlines. Drupka was also responsible for teaching the women the art of kung fu, both for self-defense and to help them develop self-confidence.

Drukpa also told NDTV that the trip by bicycle “sends a strong message of conservation and environment friendliness.”

The nuns aren’t stopping at 2,200km though: A plan is already in place for a 5,000km ride next year.

Check out this video for a closer look into their lives:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c57TviqVxHw


I really must do a story on them myself. They are really inspirational.

[GeneChing]

The Kung Fu Nuns: Traveling Across South Asia to Promote Environmental, Gender Issues (http://www.india.com/lifestyle/the-kung-fu-nuns-traveling-across-south-asia-to-promote-environmental-gender-issues-957666/)
These martial arts practicing nuns are redefining what it means to be a nun—and bringing awareness to great causes along the way.
By Ammu Zachariah on February 19, 2016 at 12:37 AMEmail

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[Photo Source: Screenshot via YouTube]

Nuns are known for their contemplative and service-centered lifestyle. Most often, they hardly leave the proximity of their communities, dutifully serving the needy around them.
On the other hand, there are The Kung Fu Nuns—and true to their name, these peaceful ladies are trained in the ancient craft of martial arts! The Kung Fu Nuns were recently in the spotlight for their bike trip from Nepal to India. Pedaling their way through a grueling stretch from Kathmandu, they reached New Delhi in 52 days, covering about 1,370 miles for a mission—they wanted to spread awareness about environmental and gender equality issues.
Dressed from head to toe in biker gear—armored in black suits, helmets, riding gloves, and knee caps—this team of 250 nuns proved they are serious about the mission they have undertaken. As they traveled, the group stopped at various cities and during the day, split into groups to be able to go around starting conversations about the environment as well as gender stereotypes and inequalities. They have traveled through Gorakhpur, Gaya, Patna, Rajgir, Varanasi, Allahabad, Kanpur, and Agra.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c57TviqVxHw

The nuns first came into the spotlight during the Kathmandu earthquake in April 2015. While many local monks fled the city into the villages, these nuns refused to leave and stayed at the monastery helping those around them. It was not just their culinary skills that proved inevitable; they even cleared the concrete rubbles and provided shelter for the homeless.
The Kung Fu nuns belong to the 800-year-old Drukpa order. Their current Gyalwang Drukpa, the title for the head of the Drukpa lineage, was a game changer. He brought pivotal changes to the traditional monastic lifestyle. In 2008, he introduced the nuns to the world of Kung Fu, which was considered only for men. He believed that women should not just cook and serve while men do administrative work and various other physical labor tasks. His rationale became a turning point in the future of Drukpa order.
Today, the nuns are self-reliant; from cooking, cleaning, plumbing, administrative and electrical works, everything is done by the nuns. Being self-sufficient, they are proving to the world that just because they nuns, they aren’t meant to stay in monasteries and meditate—they can do anything. Their typical day begins at 3 a.m. and after prayer, practice and assigned work, they call it a day at 10 p.m. According to their teachings, which prompts them to skip one meal a day, the nuns generally skip dinner, believing that food can make one lazy and sleepy.
According to Gyalwang Drukpa, the nuns are only halfway through their journey. They have to cover another 1600 km through Shravasti and Lumbini before reaching back to Kathmandu. And, that’s not all. Next year, they plan to do a 5000 km ride!

K-k-k-k-k-k Katmandu
I think that's really where I'm going to
If I ever get out of here
I'm going to Katmandu

[GeneChing]

Kung Fu Nuns Martial art becomes a means of spiritual empowerment for the Buddhist nuns of Druk Gawa Khilwa nunnery in Nepal. (http://www.utne.com/mind-and-body/kung-fu-nuns-ze0z1605zgai.aspx?PageId=1)
By Christine Toomey
May 2016

http://www.utne.com/~/media/Images/UTR/Editorial/Articles/Online%20Articles/2016/05-01/Kung%20Fu%20Nuns/Prayer-flags%20jpg.jpg
Prayer flags flutter in the wind in Kathmandu, Nepal's capital and largest city, about an hour away from the Druk Gawa Khilwa nunnery.
Fotolia/anyaberkut

http://www.utne.com/~/media/Images/UTR/Editorial/Articles/Online%20Articles/2016/05-01/Kung%20Fu%20Nuns/BuddhasDaughterscover%20jpg.jpg
“In Search of Buddha’s Daughters” by Christine Toomey shares the hidden lives of women who dedicate their lives to Buddhism. Toomey presents a beautiful travelogue and an inspiring investigation of meditation, Buddhism, and the status of women in today’s world.
Cover courtesy The Experiment Publishing

In Search of Buddha’s Daughters: A Modern Journey Down Ancient Roads (The Experiment Publishing, 2015) by Christine Toomey shares the hidden world of women who dedicate their lives to Buddhism. Toomey’s journey across three continents brings to light the stories of those who have redefined strength, perseverance and peace in the face of opposition, imprisonment, and exile. The following excerpt introduces the devoted nuns of Druk Gawa Khilwa nunnery, including their unconventional practice of martial art.

To find more books that pique our interest, visit the Utne Reader Bookshelf

Turning Tradition Upside Down

At the Druk Gawa Khilwa nunnery, nestled in mountains an hour’s drive from Kathmandu, each day begins at 3 a.m. with the sound of a bell. Dawn will not seep across the highest Himalayan peaks for sev*eral more hours. As the young nuns stir from sleep, only a dim light filters through the dormitory windows from lit pathways beyond.

No words are spoken and no glances exchanged as the young women slip from their beds and wrap their slender frames in burgundy and saffron robes. First, an underskirt and shirt without sleeves, worn even on the coldest of days. Over this, a wide lower robe is folded and tucked at the waist. Finally, a long shawl, a zen, is tossed around the shoulders to keep out the chill. After smoothing out sheets and blankets, each woman steps up onto the firm mattress of her bed and sits cross-legged facing the wall against which her pil*low rests. Each then turns within, entering the realm of meditation.

While most of the sisters spend the next two hours treading their own inner path, repeating secret mantras and recitations given to them individually by the head of the Buddhist order to which they belong, alternate groups of nuns take it in turns to follow a very dif*ferent form of practice. Instead of monastic robes, they lift a different set of clothes from the storage boxes under their beds: loose brown trousers and long-sleeved martial-arts jackets cinched at the waist with a cloth sash. Tying the laces of white canvas shoes, they pass quietly from their dormitories into the night air.

It is mid-October when I join them and together we snake up a stairway that leads from their residential complex, along a steep incline bordered on either side by scented flowers and shrubs. The stairs lead to a large hall in front of which stands a giant gilded statue of the Buddha. If the weather is too cold, the nuns take up formation inside the hall. But today, as it is warm enough to practice outside, I follow the women as they climb three further flights of stairs onto the roof and space themselves out with a few low whispers. As their instructor brings the group to order they draw their feet together, pull two clenched fists back towards their waists and stand waiting.

At the opening command they raise their arms to shoulder height, thrust their right fist into their left palm and spring into such sharp action that it seems a temporary affront to the calm devotions of those meditating below. In the background, the only sound is a gentle symphony of cicadas, but high on the nunnery roof the peace is now pierced by the shouted instructions in the practice of kung fu. With each position counted out, the nuns move through a series of steps that flow from graceful hand gestures through fierce air punches and swinging chops to soaring kicks and acts of fighting.

Most of the exercises are carried out with each nun going through the motions individually, either with bare hands or with the long fighting sticks known as bo staffs. The most startlingly beautiful are performed with blood-red fans swirled above the head and around the nuns’ waists. At times the fans are spun open, at others flipped closed, the effect more dance than martial art. Other exercises involve two nuns sparring, circling each other with clenched fists, thrusting, shoving, grabbing the other’s neck in the crook of their arms and pushing their opponent to the ground. Some of the moves are conducted with the fighting sticks held in both hands and used as both shield and weapon. As each series of maneuvers comes to an end, the nuns again draw their fist into their palm then push their open hands slowly down by their sides. It is only this subtle closing movement that returns to the women the gentle demeanor of their monastic calling. What I am witnessing in this striking predawn display is more than 1,000 years of tradition being turned on its head.

For more than a millennium this practice of kung fu was reserved only for monks, its roots lying far to the north in the legendary Chinese monastery of Shaolin. It was here in the fifth century that kung fu was said to have originated, after Bodhidarma, an Indian prince turned Buddhist monk, set out to take the teachings of the Buddha to China. On finding temples there vulnerable to attack by thieves, and many of the monks struggling with the rigors of mon*astic life, the monk devised a system of fitness and defense that drew heavily on the ancient traditions of Indian yoga. Like yoga, Shaolin kung fu developed from an observation of the way animals move. Over the centuries the Shaolin monks incorporated many different animal postures into their practice until eventually the mastery of many of these styles developed into a form represented by a dragon. Unlike the fire-breathing dragon of western mythology, the Chinese dragon is a powerful spiritual creature.

It is telling, then, that the nuns of Gawa Khilwa belong to the Drukpa order of Tibetan Buddhism, druk being the Tibetan word for both ‘dragon’ and ‘thunder’.

As the first blush of sunlight bleeds over the horizon, the nuns draw their morning kung-fu practice to a close. A deep rumble of drums can be heard in the distance and high on the roof of the nunnery’s main temple I see the silhouettes of two figures blowing hard into gold-and-jewel-encrusted conch shells. This piercing bugle call is the Buddhist call to prayer. It is barely 5 a.m. and two hours of elaborate ritual and worship in the temple will follow before the nuns and I sit down to breakfast.

The ferocity of these morning exercises at Gawa Khilwa seems the antithesis of spiritual endeavor. But this practice I am privileged to have observed not only builds the women’s physical and mental strength, it also instills in them a growing sense of confidence. This is an entirely new experience for Buddhist nuns, who, through the centuries, have often been neglected and overlooked.

Origins of Buddhism

From the moment I began planning this journey, I wanted to start here, on this rooftop in Nepal. Seeing young nuns engaging in kung fu seemed to offer the perfect introduction to a story of spiritual empowerment. That it was happening so close to the place where the Buddha was born more than 2,000 years ago added to its symbolism. But this is not a straightforward tale, nor was it to be an easy one to follow, as I began to realize on the tortuous route to Gawa Khilwa.

When I descended through the smog to Kathmandu airport in the autumn of 2012, I knew little about Nepal. I knew that today it is one of the poorest countries in the world, beset by the aftermath of ten years of Maoist insurrection. This conflict only petered out in 2006, when the King of Nepal agreed to restore parliamentary dem*ocracy. Two years later, a Maoist-led parliament reduced the king’s status to that of a figurehead and declared the country a republic. But it was not the self-declared Maoists who dealt the Nepali royal family its harshest blow: rather, the bloody vengeance of a lovelorn prince. In 2001, fueled, many believe, by rage at his parents’ disapproval of the woman he wanted to marry, Crown Prince Dipendra had gone on a bloody rampage in Kathmandu’s Narayanhity Palace, gunning down almost every member of the royal family before committing suicide. To rid Nepal of the murdered royals’ ghosts, a high-caste priest volunteered to take on the negative karma of the tragedy by donning the king’s golden suit, shoes and sunglasses and riding an elephant out of the Kathmandu Valley into symbolic exile.


continued next post

[GeneChing]

But as I arrive in Kathmandu it feels as if the departed spirits of these murdered royals still breathe misfortune on those who remain in their former kingdom. When I leave the airport, I discover a place sunk in chaos. The city’s roads are dug up, its buildings are crumbling, the streets are full of hawkers and beggars, and it has the unenviable reputation of being one of the most polluted cities in Asia.

For centuries the country’s strategic position, caught in a pincer between China and India, meant that trading caravans laden with silk, wool and salt traversed high mountain passes here, bestowing great wealth on Nepal. As Kathmandu grew rich, many gilded pagodas and ornate temples, both Buddhist and Hindu, were built in the city. But those who pass through Kathmandu today leave a slurry of waste. Rubbish is piled high along the city’s roads and throughout the countryside beyond. Nepal’s greatest good fortune now is that its mountainous north contains ten of the world’s four*teen tallest mountains, including the highest point on earth, Mount Everest. With an appetite for adventure, hordes of foreign trekkers and mountaineers descend on Nepal each year in ever-growing numbers. Yet even the base camps around these high peaks are now strewn with the detritus of a throwaway modern society.

This seems an incongruous location to seek the origins of Buddhism. But it was here, in the far south of modern Nepal, in a ramshackle town called Lumbini, that the man who came to be known as the Buddha, or ‘Awakened One’, was born. At the time of the Buddha’s birth, around 480 BCE, Lumbini lay in a small north Indian kingdom ruled from Kapilavastu, the capital, by a tribe of kins*men known as the Sakya. For this reason the Buddha is sometimes referred to as Buddha Sakyamuni, or ‘Sage of the Sakyas’.

Buddha’s Life

There are many versions told of the Buddha’s life, though few details exist of the time before he became a wandering monk. Certainly his youth must have been more complex than the later poetic tales suggest, but for the purposes of this book their version of events will suffice. According to legend, the Buddha was born into great privilege, as a prince named Siddhartha Gautama, whom sages immediately predicted would one day become either a great ruler or a revered holy man. To ensure that his son succeeded him on the throne, King Suddhodana virtually imprisoned him within the walls of a royal compound and, in order that he should never want to leave, made his life one of luxury and ease. As a young prince, Siddhartha was provided with three palaces for the three seasons of the year and was surrounded by beautiful courtesans. His marriage to a cousin, Yasodhara, resulted in the birth of a son, Rahula. But by the time his son was born, Siddhartha was twenty-nine and over*come by curiosity about the world.

During secret night-time journeys beyond the palace walls, he is said to have come across four sights – of a sick man, an old man, a decaying corpse and an ascetic – none of which he had ever been allowed to see in his life of indulgence. When he turned to his char*ioteer to ask if sickness and death would eventually be part of his life too, the answer, that they would, is thought to mark Siddhartha’s awakening from innocence and prompted him to seek an alternative existence. After gazing tenderly at his wife and child as they slept, he set out secretly one night from the palace and for the rest of his life lived as a simple monk, wandering widely through the Ganges plains of northern India.

Following years of extreme asceticism, he is said to have sat down one day beneath a bodhi tree where, after weeks of intense medita*tion, he came to a series of realizations. His enlightenment embraced a deep understanding of the true nature of human suffering and a way of being released from it, into a state sometimes referred to sim*ply as nirvana, principally by banishing ignorance and craving. These realizations formed the basis for teachings that spread so widely across the globe that today more than half of the current global population is said to reside in parts of the world where Buddhism was once a dominant force.

At the start of my journey, I understand little of the rich and complex world of Buddhist teachings. I know that 2,500 years ago the Buddha summed up the reality of human existence in what came to be known as the Four Noble Truths. The first truth is a clear rec*ognition that in life there is suffering, and the second that we suffer because everything is impermanent, but because we don’t want to accept that fact, we cling to what we think will make us happy and our attachment only makes us suffer more. The third and fourth truths recognize that there is an end to suffering and this can be achieved through a way of life summed up as the Noble Eightfold Path, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right con*centration. The endless cycle of clinging and suffering, referred to in Buddhist teachings as samsara, is the condition in which humans everywhere are said to find themselves. Acknowledging this is as relevant today as it was in antiquity.

A Different World

For the jet-lagged traveler, the journey from Kathmandu to Gawa Khilwa nunnery is itself an initiation into the sorrows of mankind. After leaving the polluted city’s choked thoroughfares behind, the steep, deeply pitted road leading into the mountains is precarious and prone to frequent landslides. More than once I clamber out of the taxi to lighten its load as its wheels spin, trying to gain purchase on loose gravel, unnervingly close to the edge of a precipice.

From some distance away, as the taxi twists and turns, I begin to glimpse a striking white edifice that towers above the valley. As we draw closer I get a sense of the size of the nunnery: not just one building but a complex of many, adorned with traditional designs of brightly colored tiles around the eaves. The tall steel gates of the nunnery remain firmly shut as we draw up to the main entrance. One of the persistent power cuts that besiege Nepal has disabled the elec*tric lock. Beyond the metal grille, I watch a portly nun disappear into the bowels of a gatehouse with a wrench in her hand. Minutes later she emerges, rearranging her robes and smiling broadly. A generator growls to life, the gates swing open and I enter a different world.

By now it is already early evening and after being shown to my room in the nunnery’s guest quarters, I am left to my own devices. Most of the nuns are busy with their duties, so I take a stroll alone through the grounds towards a large hall.

In front of the hall, close to the towering gilded Buddha, are a number of smaller dragon statues. This is one external sign that Gawa Khilwa is a seat of the Drukpa, or Dragon, order, a branch of one of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism, known as the Karma Kagyu, or ‘Red Hat’ tradition, the titular head of which is the Seventeenth Karmapa, regarded by some as a possible spiritual successor to the Dalai Lama. The Drukpa order was founded eight centuries ago and over the course of hundreds of years, many of its followers became adepts at a powerful form of spiritual practice believed to lead to enlightenment within a single lifetime.

I have only just begun to unravel the complex threads of different Buddhist lineages, but I am struck that the head of the Drukpa order, known as the Twelfth Gyalwang Drukpa, chooses to live for most of the year here at Gawa Khilwa nunnery rather than in a monastery like most other senior male lamas. His encouragement of the nuns in practicing kung fu is only one aspect of a highly unusual degree of support he shows the women in his care. Most significant of all is his direct teaching of the nuns. This breaks with Buddhist tradition, which, throughout much of history, has held nuns to be inferior to monks. So much so that in the past many were treated as little more than domestic servants in monastic settings.

Reprinted with permission from In Search of Buddha's Daughters: A Modern Journey Down Ancient Roads by Christine Toomey and published by The Experiment Publishing, 2015.

This looks like a good read.
In Search of Buddha’s Daughters
A Modern Journey Down Ancient Roads (http://theexperimentpublishing.com/catalogs/spring-2016/in-search-of-buddhas-daughters/)
by Christine Toomey

[GeneChing]

Thursday, July 14, 2016 4:57:28 PM (IST)

Monks, 'kung fu' nuns on cyclethon for environmental conservation (http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=404229)

New Delhi, July 14 (IANS): Around 500 monks and 'kung fu' nuns of the Drukpa Buddhist order, who commenced a 2,500 km arduous cyclethon from Kathmandu in Nepal and will culminate in the famed Hemis Monastery in Leh, entered the Indian state of Uttarakhand on Thursday.

They are creating awareness about environmental conservation.

"Recently the Himalayas faced several environmental disasters that caused unprecedented loss of life and upset the natural ecosystem," a statement quoting the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa, the spiritual head of the 1,000-year-old Drukpa Order, who is leading the cyclethon, said.

He said the aim through this journey is to inspire people to be one with nature instead of being in a constant state of war with it.

"The Himalayas and the earth were formed millions of years before we were and it is our duty to respect them," said the Gyalwang Drukpa, the 12th reincarnation of the head of the Drukpa Order.

'Kung fu' nuns are Buddhist nuns who grow up learning the martial art. They belong to the Druk Amitabha Mountain nunnery based in the hills overlooking Kathmandu.

Earlier, only the 'kung fu' nuns went on the 2,200 km cycle expedition from Kathmandu. After passing through the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, it ended in Delhi on January 9 this year.

The Drukpa Order that originates from the Himalayan region of Ladakh in Jammu & Kashmir has built a strong reputation of community action and citizen empowerment for many years.

This expedition will culminate at the 17th century Hemis monastery of Drukpa lineage, the largest such in Ladakh, prior to the grand Naropa Festival, popularly known as the Kumbh Mela of the Himalayas, slated from September 13 to October 1.

The Gyalwang Drukpa was honoured by the United Nations with the Millennium Development Goals Award in September 2010 for promoting environmental education and gender equality.

No pic, but their cyclethon continues...

[GeneChing]

There is a pic, but my Mac isn't letting me cut&paste it here. :(

Nepal's 'Kung fu nuns' return to India on annual cycle yatra, this time to Ladakh (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/dehradun/Nepals-Kung-fu-nuns-return-to-India-on-annual-cycle-yatra-this-time-to-Ladakh/articleshow/53229771.cms)

TNN | Jul 15, 2016, 08.00 PM IST

Nepal’s ‘kung fu nuns’ on their annual cycle yatra.

DEHRADUN: Armed with a will to show the world that women are no less in any field and a wish to spread awareness about the environmental conservation, Nepal's 'kung fu nuns' returned to India on their annual cycle yatra, this time to Ladakh through the borders of the Uttarakhand state on Thursday. The cycle yatra aimed at combating gender stereotypes and to promote collaborative action for the environment entered India through Banbassa checkpoint near the border area of Uttarakhand and was led by the Gyalwang Drukpa, of the Ladakh based Drukpa Order.
It is learned that 300 monks and nuns bicycled into India at the Banbassa checkpoint (Uttarakhand) and few will be joining in coming days as a part of their 2,500km journey to Hemis Monastery in Ladakh. "The Drukpa Order, which has come to be known for its insistence on gender equality and celebration of diversity regularly organises such events to highlight issues of global significance. The Cycle Yatra commenced from Kathmandu on July 3 from one of the monasteries of the Drukpa lineage and has become an annual feature of Order's efforts to promote awareness about the environmental crises in the region and inspire collaborative action to resolve it" said Jigme Yeshe Lhamo, a nun, a "Kung-Fu" nun part of the cycle yatra.
Adding to which, the 27-year-old nun said, "We have previously held 7 pad-yatras and this is the fourth cycle yatra for the same cause. I joined the order when I was 16 and have been to 2 cycle yatras before. This is held annually to spread word about the causes we support like breaking gender stereotypes and spreading awareness about environment conservation. People lovingly call us as the Kung Fu nuns and we love being addressed like that. We all know martial art-kung fu and as part of the cycle yatra we keep interacting with village women on our way about women empowerment" These bravehearts armed with trekking cycles/bikes and 2 trucks carrying their luggage, tents, food items travel at least 60-70km in the daytime before staying for the night in either open fields, monasteries, temples or schools. "We might reach Haridwar and later Dehradun in may be next 3-4 days or a week's time. We don't get disheartened or tired when we think about the motive of our journey despite the strain. In fact, we will culminate our journey at a very auspicious time of the Naropa festival which is held every 12 years and also is called the Himalayan Kumbh Mela, which makes it all the more special" said Lhamo.
The two month long Yatra traverses through some of the most arduous routes in the Himalayan region and the journey nevertheless is undertaken amidst adverse conditions. From the quake-hit regions in Nepal, to the monsoon hit towns in Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Pathankot, Srinagar, Sonmargand Kargil (J&K)-The Yatra will culminate at Hemis Monastery, 45 kilometres from Leh where it is scheduled to arrive, prior to Naropa 2016 - a grand spiritual festival that is held once in every 12 years, celebrating the 1000th birth anniversary of the Indian Saint Naropa, patron of the Drukpa Lineage, which the participating nuns and monks say make it very special. "The Himalayas have been the home of the Drukpa Lineage for over 1000 years now.
Recently, the region has faced several environmental disasters that caused unwanted and unprecedented loss of life and upset the natural ecosystem. Our aim through this journey is to inspire people to be one with nature instead of being in a constant state of war with it. The Himalayas and the earth were formed millions of years before we were and it is our duty to respect them," said the Gyalwang Drukpa - the 12threincarnation of the head of the Drukpa Order. In the entire 2-month cycle expedition, the message of respecting women and environment conservation will be spread by all possible means.

[GeneChing]

Still impressive.


'Kung-fu nuns’ stopover in city to spread message of gender equality, climate change (http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/kung-fu-nuns-stopover-in-city-to-spread-message-of-gender-equality-climate-change-2940278/)
Dressed in cycling gear and safety helmets, they all lined up behind the oldest of them all —54-year-old monk Gyalwang Drukpa — the head of the Ladakh-based Drukpa order.
Written by Jagmeeta Thind Joy | Chandigarh | Published:July 28, 2016 1:37 pm

http://images.indianexpress.com/2016/07/cyclists-759.jpg
The group in Chandigarh on Wednesday. Photo by Jaipal Singh

At first sight, it looked like a large group of professional cyclists on an expedition.
Dressed in cycling gear and safety helmets, they all lined up behind the oldest of them all —54-year-old monk Gyalwang Drukpa — the head of the Ladakh-based Drukpa order.
Revered by the Buddhists as the 12th reincarnation of the Drukpa, Gyalwang is on a two-month cycling mission with his team of, what he calls, ‘Kung-fu nuns’.
Gyalwang Drukpa, who arrived at the regional campus of the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development in Sector 12 on Wednesday, said: “Our aim is to spread the message of peace, gender equality and create awareness about environmental concerns. This is the our fourth cycling expedition.”
Except the Drukpa head and a few male support staff, the rest in the team are all nuns and have been been trained in Kung-fu. “We particularly chose the nuns for the expedition to showcase women power and the fact that they are trained in self defence, which is the need of the hour today,” said the spiritual head.
The 200 nuns, all in the age group of 15 and 45 years, belong to various nunneries of the Drukpa sect spread across India, Bhutan and Nepal. They started the expedition from Kathmandu on July 3 and would cover 2,500km before reaching Leh.
Gyalwang Drukpa said: “We aim to reach Leh between September 8 and 10. The cycle yatra is timed with the Naropa spiritual festival that takes place at our Hemis Monastery in Leh. The festival takes place once in 12 years and this year we are celebrating the 1000th birth anniversary of the Indian saint Naropa, patron of the Drukpa lineage.”
The cyclists have traversed through Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana and will now head to Amritsar from Chandigarh. After Amritsar, they will head to Jammu, Srinagar, Sonmarg, Kargil and end at Leh.
Jigme Konchok, a 22-year-old nun, said: “It has been an amazing experience even though we had to battle extreme weather conditions.”
For Jigme Tenzin Lhamo, a young nun from Himachal Pradesh, the expedition has been particularly tough, given the increasing traffic on the highways. “The traffic and pollution were dense in Uttar Pradesh and the highways were congested. We have been lucky to have the support of the state police. As a rule, we cycle in a single line and start our day early around 5.30 am and end at 6pm. We cover a distance of 70km to 80km a day,” said Lhamo.
The nuns said most people are curious to find out more about them and the reason for the expedition. “We share our concerns for women safety and climate change. We also request people to take to cycling, as it is not only good for the environment, but also for health,” said Lhamo.
Gyalwang Drukpa said the aim of the ‘Kung-fu nuns’ is to fight against gender stereotypes and environmental degradation.

[GeneChing]

I should really split them off into their own indie thread.


Why 500 ‘Kung Fu Nuns’ are cycling across the Himalayas (http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2016/08/29/why-500-kung-fu-nuns-are-cycling-across-the-himalayas/)
On a mission to raise awareness about human trafficking, and with their radical athletic prowess, these Buddhist nuns are perfect purveyors of their sect’s teachings on gender equality
BRIGIT KATZ 08.29.16

https://tbmwomenintheworld.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/gettyimages-143715917.jpg?w=1024
BUDDHIST NUNS PRACTISE KUNG-FU AT THE AMITABHA DRUKPA NUNNERY ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF KATHMANDU. (PRAKASH MATHEMA/AFP/GETTYIMAGES)

Since the devastating earthquake that struck Nepal in April of last year, killing thousands and tipping the country into chaos, the porous border between Nepal and India has become a hotbed for human trafficking. In the span of just three months following the disaster, 725 people were smuggled into India, where they were sold into forced labor and prostitution. Women and girls are especially vulnerable to sexual exploitation, and the strained Nepalese government has, for the most part, been unable to protect them.

Enter 500 bicycle-riding, kung-fu-fighting nuns.

Throughout the months of July and August, the Drukpa Lineage nuns, who belong to an order of Himalayan Buddhism, have been cycling across the Himalayas to promote gender equality and address the region’s growing human trafficking crisis. Dressed in vibrant orange biking gear, they weave through traffic and pedal up mountain slopes, persevering through blistering heat and heavy rains. The nuns’ bicycle “yatra,” or pilgrimage, began in Kathmandu, where their nunnery is located. By the time they reach their final destination of Ladakh, India, they will have biked more than 2,500 kilometers.

https://tbmwomenintheworld.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/dsc_5577.jpg?w=1024&h=683
THROUGHOUT JULY AND AUGUST, MEMBERS OF THE DRUKPA LINEAGE NUNS HAVE BEEN CYCLING ACROSS THE HIMALAYAS.

https://tbmwomenintheworld.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/dsc_4899.jpg?w=1024&h=683
THESE QUIET AND CONTEMPLATIVE WOMEN CAN BIKE THOUSANDS OF MILES IN THE OPPRESSIVE HEAT AND RAINS.

https://tbmwomenintheworld.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/dsc_4881.jpg?w=1024&h=683
DURING STOPOVERS IN REMOTE VILLAGES, THE NUNS LEAD PRAYERS AND IMPART TEACHINGS OF PEACE AND RESPECT.

During stopovers in remote villages, the nuns lead prayers and impart teachings of peace and respect. Part of their mission is to promote environmental awareness; because diesel fumes are melting Himalayan glaciers and causing respiratory diseases among residents, the nuns have been encouraging villagers to rely more heavily on bicycles. When the nuns visit areas plagued by violence — like Kashmir, for instance — they also deliver lectures on the importance of diversity and tolerance.

Foremost on the nuns’ agenda, however, is the promotion of female empowerment.

Though women and girls in the region became particularly susceptible to violence after the Nepal earthquake — with economically devastated families often handing their daughters over to traffickers who promise a better life abroad — gender inequality has long been a pervasive problem among the countries that envelop the Himalayas. India, Nepal, and Pakistan — all of which are destinations for the bicycling nuns — consistently rank on the bottom tier of indices measuring women’s access to education, political empowerment, and health.

“We are spreading these messages: girls also have power, they are not weak,” said Yeshe Lhamo, a 27-year-old nun who is participating in the yatra. “In these regions, they listen to and respect religious teachings, so for a religious person to say that diversity and equality is important, maybe people can make this their spiritual practice too.”

Leading the yatra is one of only a few men who have accompanied the nuns on their journey: His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa, a.k.a. Buddhism’s answer to the Rock Star Pope. During his tenure as the spiritual leader of the Drukpa Lineage, the Gyalwang Drukpa has emerged as a fierce promoter of women’s rights, reforming the status of women within the Lineage. Although the order has historically relegated nuns to cooking and cleaning tasks, the Gyalwang Drukpa encouraged female devotees to study esoteric teachings that were once reserved for monks. To further bolster the nuns’ self-esteem, he enlisted a Vietnamese martial arts expert to teach them kung fu.

“There was a ban against exercise for nuns,” explained Carrie Lee, President of Live Love International, a network of non-profit organizations founded by the Gyalwang Drukpa. “They broke that ban. They learned kung fu. It’s instilled a lot of confidence in them.”

With their radical, defiant athletic prowess, the “Kung Fu Nuns”are perfect purveyors of the Gyalwang Drukpa’s teachings on gender equality. These quiet and contemplative women can bike thousands of miles in the oppressive heat and rains. They can subdue physical threats with their knowledge of marital arts. They are living proof that women can be as strong as their male counterparts.

“Many men, they meet us and say, ‘Oh, if I joined you [in the yatra], maybe I can’t do it,” Lhamo said with a laugh. “[Other] people, they don’t understand. They tell us, ‘Girls shouldn’t cycle like that.’ But we tell them, ‘Why? If a man can do it, why can’t a girl cycle? … We are human beings, and they are also human beings.”

Lhamo was 17-years-old when she first encountered the Gyalwang Drukpa, who visited her village to deliver a lecture on compassion — which, he insisted, required action, not only prayer and good intentions. Lhamo was struck by his teachings and his poise. She immediately decided that she wanted to join the Drukpa nuns and devote her life to helping others.

Because she was only in 11th grade at the time, Lhamo’s parents were reluctant to allow her to abandon her studies and relocate to the Druk Amitabha Mountain nunnery in western Kathmandu. But Lhamo would not be deterred. “I …told them that I will become a nun,”she said. “They were not happy, but after one year, when I go back to home, they were very happy to see me and they said if I wanted to become a nun and I’m happy, they don’t have any problem with that.”

And so Lhamo settled into life at the nunnery. For much of the year, her days consist of meditating, praying, performing upkeep on the nunnery grounds, and working in its office. The nuns perform all of the tasks required to maintain the nunnery: some work as plumbers, some as electricians, still others field emails and manage accounts. They can attend business classes and, of course, study kung fu.

The yatra, however, has thrust the nuns out of monastic life and onto the frontlines of the human trafficking crisis. A few weeks ago, as they prepared to cross into India, Lhamo and her fellow cyclists saw police detain a man who had been leading a group of young girls across the border. He claimed he was taking them to India to get medications that were not available in Nepal. Police told the nuns that this person was more likely seeking to sell the girls into prostitution.

“We were very happy that police [were] asking many questions and the girls are getting saved,” Lhamo said. “We want to tell people more and more about [traffickers’ tactics].”

In their mission to save the girls of the Himalayas, the nuns face steep obstacles: poverty, suffering, cultural norms that have long devalued females. Change, if it comes, will likely come slowly. Lhamo knows this, but she also believes in the nuns’ ability to plant the seed of gender parity in communities where women and girls are at risk — and, perhaps more importantly, to inspire women and girls to believe in their own worth.

“Of course, one Bicycle yatra cannot change the world overnight,” she said. “But our message of diversity may inspire one person, one little girl, one mother. Sometimes one person can make a big difference. A mother can change her whole family. One little girl can do amazing things.”

[GeneChing]

"Kung Fu" nuns bike Himalayas to oppose human trafficking (http://news.trust.org/item/20160916025029-jbu5p/?source=reTheWire)
by Nita Bhalla | @nitabhalla | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Friday, 16 September 2016 02:48 GMT

http://d2sh4fq2xsdeg9.cloudfront.net/contentAsset/image/cfe25c07-2a8c-4fc2-afd3-947efaffe5a0/image/byInode/1/filter/Resize,Jpeg/jpeg_q/70/resize_w/1230');

ABOUT OUR TRAFFICKING COVERAGE
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500 Buddhist nuns ride 4,000 km from Nepal's Kathmandu to Leh in India to change the attitude that girls are less than boys and show that "women have power and strength like men"
By Nita Bhalla

NEW DELHI, Sept 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Clad in black sweatpants, red jackets and white helmets, the hundreds of cyclists pedaling the treacherously steep, narrow mountain passes to India from Nepal could be mistaken for a Himalayan version of the Tour de France.

The similarity, however, ends there. This journey is longer and tougher, the prize has no financial value or global recognition and the participants are not professional cyclists but Buddhist nuns from India, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet.

Five hundred nuns from the Buddhist sect known as the Drukpa Order, on Saturday complete a 4,000-km (2,485 mile) bicycle trek from Nepal's Kathmandu to the northern city of Leh in India to raise awareness about human trafficking in the remote region.

"When we were doing relief work in Nepal after the earthquakes last year, we heard how girls from poor families were being sold because their parents could not afford to keep them anymore," 22-year-old nun Jigme Konchok Lhamo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"We wanted to do something to change this attitude that girls are less than boys and that it's okay to sell them," she said, adding that the bicycle trek shows "women have power and strength like men."

South Asia may boast women leaders and be home to cultures that revere motherhood and worship female deities, but many girls and women live with the threat of violence and without many basic rights.

From honor killings in Pakistan to foeticide in India and child marriage in Nepal, women face a barrage of threats, although growing awareness, better laws and economic empowerment are bringing a slow change in attitudes.

"KUNG FU" NUNS

The bicycle trek, from Nepal into India, is nothing new for the Drukpa nuns.

This is the fourth such journey they have made, meeting local people, government officials and religious leaders to spread messages of gender equality, peaceful co-existence and respect for the environment.

They also deliver food to the poor, help villagers get medical care and are dubbed the "Kung Fu nuns" due to their training in martial arts.

Led by the Gyalwang Drukpa, head of the Drukpa Order, the nuns raise eyebrows, especially among Buddhists for their unorthodox activities.

"Traditionally Buddhist nuns are treated very differently from monks. They cook and clean and are not allowed to exercise. But his Holiness thought this was nonsense and decided to buck the trend," said Carrie Lee, president of Live to Love International, a charity which works with the Drukpa nuns to support marginalised Himalayan communities.

"Among other things, he gave them leadership roles and even introduced Kung Fu classes for the nuns after they faced harassment and violence from monks who were disturbed by the growing shift of power dynamics," she said.

Over the last 12 years, the number of Drukpa nuns has grown to 500 from 30, said Lee, largely due to the progressive attitudes of the 53-year-old Gyalwang Drukpa, who was inspired by his mother to become an advocate for gender equality.

The Gyalwang Drukpa also participates in the bicycle journeys, riding with the nuns as they pedal through treacherous terrain and hostile weather and camp out in the open.

http://d2sh4fq2xsdeg9.cloudfront.net/contentAsset/image/cfe25c07-2a8c-4fc2-afd3-947efaffe5a0/multimediaFileUpload1/byInode/1/filter/Resize,Jpeg/jpeg_q/69/resize_w/1230
Buddhist nuns from the Drukpa lineage pose for a picture in Himachal Pradesh during their cycle across the Himalayas to raise awareness about human trafficking of girls and women in the impoverished villages in Nepal and India, August 30, 2016. REUTERS/Live To Love International/Handout via REUTERS

"PRAYING IS NOT ENOUGH"

The Drukpa nuns say they believe they are helping to change attitudes.

"Most of the people, when they see us on our bikes, think we are boys," said 18-year-old nun Jigme Wangchuk Lhamo.

"Then they get shocked when we stop and tell them that not only are we girls, but we are also Buddhist nuns," she said. "I think this helps change their attitudes about women and maybe value them as equals."

South Asia, with India at its centre, is also one of the fastest growing regions for human trafficking in the world.

Gangs dupe impoverished villagers into bonded labour or rent them to work as slaves in urban homes, restaurants, shops and hotels. Many girls and women are sold into brothels.

Experts say post-disaster trafficking has become common in South Asia as an increase in extreme events caused by global warming, as well as earthquakes, leave the poor more vulnerable.

The breakdown of social institutions in devastated areas creates difficulties securing food and supplies, leaving women and children at risk of kidnapping, sexual exploitation and trafficking.

Twin earthquakes that struck Nepal in April and May 2015, which killed almost 9,000 people, left hundreds of thousands of families homeless and many without any means of income, led to an increase in children and women being trafficked.

More than 40,000 children lost their parents, were injured or were placed in precarious situations following the disaster, according to Nepali officials.

The Drukpa nuns said the earthquakes were a turning point in their understanding of human trafficking and that they felt a need to do more than travel to disaster-hit mountain villages with rice on their backs.

"People think that because we are nuns, we are supposed to stay in the temples and pray all the time. But praying is not enough," said Jigme Konchok Lhamo.

"His Holiness teaches us that we have go out and act on the words that we pray. After all, actions speak louder than words," she said.

(Reporting by Nita Bhalla, Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, land rights and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

So inspiring

[GeneChing]

Tricycle's Daily Trike


How to Combat Fear (http://tricycle.org/trikedaily/how-to-combat-fear/)
The head of the Drukpa School of Tibetan Buddhism teaches us how compassion can make sure that we’re not fractured by differences.
By Gyalwang Drukpa NOV 10, 2016

http://tricycle.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Kung-Fu-Nuns-Drukpa-Order-1001x667.jpg
Kung Fu Nuns | Wikimedia Commons
I come from a part of the world where ethnic and religious minorities must navigate extremist elements, geopolitical instability, and limited resources. We know about uncertainty, survival, and fear. I’ve seen many of my own friends base decisions on fear; I’ve seen communities torn apart by it. I’ve seen fear creep into different crevices of peoples’ lives and politics. Fear thrives in the absence of mutual understanding and diversity, and it is a poisonous weapon. But there is an antidote: compassion. Compassion combats fear.

In my religion, we believe in karma. Many people misunderstand the concept of karma. Karma is not a pre-determined destiny. Karma does not mean we accept injustice or inequality. Karma just means cause and effect. Karma means we are empowered to be part of the solution. Karma gives us a method to combat fear, terror, injustice, and inequality. Karma means that we are not defined by our situation but rather by the choices we make.

As a believer in karma, I encourage the world to choose courage and compassion. Far too often we wait for leaders and governments to bring us peace. But think about it: it is individuals who build peace. And when individuals build peace, it is strong, it is lasting, and it is genuine. That does not mean that we sit nicely on a meditation cushion and enjoy our own inner peace. Peace requires action. Peace requires a real sense of urgency. Peace requires courage and hard work. Peace means that each and every one of us has an obligation to build mutual understanding and an obligation to reject fear. Peace requires us to not only accept but to celebrate the differences among us. Fear needs us to reject differences. Peace encourages us to embrace differences.

The nuns of my lineage, often known as the Kung Fu Nuns, are great examples of that courage. In my part of the world, nuns are not afforded much opportunity for education or leadership. However, the nuns of the Drukpa Order take on real leadership roles and responsibilities within our community. They learn to work with each other even though they come from different countries and speak different languages. The nuns are learning Kung Fu as a means to instill physical and mental confidence, breaking centuries of tradition. After the Nepal earthquakes of 2015, for example, the Kung Fu Nuns delivered medical and relief supplies to some of the hardest hit regions. They traversed mountainsides and river-rafted to help Nepalis of all religions and backgrounds. They rejected fear and chose courage instead.

In light of all the violence in the world, the Kung Fu Nuns and I have embarked upon a bicycle journey from Kathmandu to Kashmir to celebrate diversity and build mutual understanding. In Ladakh, where many of my nuns come from, there is a long history of diversity. Located along the Silk Route, the people of this community celebrated different religions, languages, ethnicities, and traditions. They know that these differences do not fracture us. Diversity strengthens us. Diversity is not something to be tolerated—it is to be celebrated. We should welcome it with curiosity, delight, and joy. This is what fear fears. While cycling is a small gesture, I hope we serve as an example of how women, religious leaders, and individuals from all communities have a role in peace building. You also have a role in peace building. Some of you have a large platform and can speak out for others who are not heard. Some of you are not in public service, but may make a big difference in your work place, in school, or at home. Every one of us can create an immediate impact and can build peace.

(These remarks were given by His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa to the Bucerius Summer School on Global Governance in August 2016.)

[GeneChing]

AUGUST 24, 2017 / 5:10 PM / 14 HOURS AGO
Kung Fu nuns strike back at rising sex attacks on women in India (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-nuns-kungfu-idUSKCN1B5007)
Nita Bhalla

http://s2.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20170825&t=2&i=1198468098&r=LYNXNPED7O00C&%20w=1280
Buddhist nuns in India's remote Himalayan region of Ladakh teach around 100 girls and young women the martial art of Kung Fu amid rising reports of rape in India. Taken on Aug 18, 2017. THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION/NITA BHALLA
LADAKH, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - As dawn breaks, the sun edges over the expansive jagged mountains of Ladakh - a remote Buddhist ex-kingdom in the Indian Himalayas bordering Tibet - to reveal a world where time appears to have stood still.

The chant of monks in a centuries-old monastery can be heard in the distance. Villagers slowly emerge from whitewashed stone cottages to tend to their wheat and barley fields, and ready their goats to search for pasture.

Complete with its picture-perfect temples precariously perched atop rocky mountain outcrops, giant shrines and mantra-engraved walls, Ladakh’s age-old Tibetan Buddhist way of life appears almost untouched by modernity.

Until, that is, you hear the energetic yells of scores of young women, clad in sweatpants and trainers. Fanned out in front of a majestic white temple-like structure, they stretch, lunge, jump, kick and punch on the orders of nuns.

Meet the Kung Fu nuns - women from an age-old Buddhist sect who are using their martial arts expertise to challenge gender roles in this conservative culture and teach women self-defense, as reports of rapes rise in India.

Unlike other nuns, their chants and prayers are followed by jabs and thrust kicks. Between meditation sessions, they attend gender equality lessons. Even their traditional maroon robes are periodically swapped for martial arts attire, with black belts.

“Most people think nuns just sit and pray, but we do more,” said 19-year-old Jigme Wangchuk Lhamo, one of the Kung Fu trainers, as she rested after an intense two-hour session in Hemis village, 40 km (25 miles) from the northern city of Leh.

“We walk the talk. If we act, people will think if: ’If nuns can act, why can’t we?’”

“Kung Fu will make them stronger and more confident,” she said, adding that they decided to teach self-defense after hearing of cases of rape and molestation.

HEROES

Wangchuk is one of around 700 nuns globally who belong to the Drukpa lineage - the only female order in the patriarchal Buddhist monastic system where nuns have equal status to monks.

Traditionally, nuns are expected to cook and clean and are not permitted to exercise. But this changed almost a decade ago when the leader of the 1,000-year-old sect, His Holiness The Gyalwang Drukpa, encouraged the nuns to learn Kung Fu.

Inspired by his mother to advocate for gender equality, he also gave the nuns leadership roles and helped them study beyond Buddhist teachings to become electricians and plumbers.

The nuns are active in the communities where they live, mainly in Nepal and India, treating sick animals and organizing eye care camps for villagers.

They trek and cycle thousands of kilometers through Himalayan mountain passes to raise awareness on issues ranging from pollution to human trafficking.

Following a massive earthquake in April 2015 in Nepal, they refused to leave but trekked to villages to remove rubble, clear pathways and distribute food to survivors.

Carrie Lee, president of Live to Love International, a charity which works with the Drukpa nuns to support marginalized Himalayan communities, says they are exceptional role models.

http://s2.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20170825&t=2&i=1198468094&r=LYNXNPED7O003&w=940
Buddhist nuns in India's remote Himalayan region of Ladakh teach around 100 girls and young women the martial art of Kung Fu amid rising reports of rape in India. Taken on Aug 18, 2017. THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION/NITA BHALLA
“The Kung Fu Nuns are heroes of the Himalayas,” she said.

“They are fiercely compassionate and brave. Not even earthquakes, avalanches, monsoons and cloudbursts can stand in their way.”

CAT-CALLING

Lee isn’t far wrong.

The nuns are now taking on one of the biggest threats facing women and girls in India today. Rape.

http://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20170825&t=2&i=1198468093&r=LYNXNPED7O008&w=1200
Slideshow (8 Images)

Stories feature daily in Indian newspapers and television channels of girls being raped on their way to school, students molested in taxis, and women stalked heading home from work.

The National Crime Records Bureau says 34,651 rapes were reported in 2015 - or four rapes every hour - a rise of 43 percent from 2011.

There were 82,422 sexual assaults, an 67 percent increase over the same period.

These figures are just the tip of the iceberg, say activists, as many victims are afraid to report cases, scared they will be blamed and shamed by their family and community.

A wave of public protests after the fatal gang rape of a woman on a Delhi bus in 2012 jolted many in the world’s second most populous country out of apathy, and forced the government to enact stiffer penalties on gender crimes.

Since then, a spike in media reports, government campaigns and civil society programs have increased public awareness of women’s rights and emboldened victims to register abuses.

But with reports continuing every day, and many women feeling increasingly concerned about their safety, the Drukpa saw an opportunity to help in their own way.

"We thought we must share what we know with others," said 28-year-old nun Jigme Yeshe Lhamo at a five-day workshop at Naro Photang - a majestic Buddhist palace-like building belonging to the centuries-old nearby Hemis monastery.

Almost 100 women aged between 13 to 28 followed a rigorous 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. schedule during the course in August.

It included techniques on handling being attacked from behind, moves such as takedowns and strikes, and discussions about how to react in possible sexual assault scenarios.

"It's been tough and my whole body is aching but the nuns were very inspiring. All girls should learn Kung Fu," said one participant Tsering Yangchen, a 23-year-old student.

"I am often uncomfortable going to the market as there are boys standing around looking, whistling and cat-calling. I was always hesitant to say anything but now I feel much more confident to speak out and even protect myself if I have to."

There are more images in the slideshow if you follow the link.

Kung Fu Nuns & Shaolin Nuns (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?47834-Kung-Fu-Nuns-amp-Shaolin-Nuns) & Indian women counter rape with martial arts training (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?65680-Indian-women-counter-rape-with-martial-arts-training).

Here's the official website of the Druk Gawa Khilwa Abbey (http://www.drukpa-nuns.org/).

[GeneChing]

Buddhist Nuns Fight New Battles with Kung Fu
By Lori Ann White
January+February 2018 Kung Fu Tai Chi (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=1390)

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[GeneChing]

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Thread: SHAOLIN SPECIAL January+February 2018 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70538-SHAOLIN-SPECIAL-January-February-2018&p=1306819#post1306819)
Thread: Kung Fu Nuns & Shaolin Nuns (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?47834-Kung-Fu-Nuns-amp-Shaolin-Nuns)

[GeneChing]

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Thread: SHAOLIN SPECIAL January+February 2018 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70538-SHAOLIN-SPECIAL-January-February-2018&p=1306819#post1306819)
Thread: Kung Fu Nuns & Shaolin Nuns (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?47834-Kung-Fu-Nuns-amp-Shaolin-Nuns)

[GeneChing]

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Thread: SHAOLIN SPECIAL January+February 2018 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70538-SHAOLIN-SPECIAL-January-February-2018&p=1306819#post1306819)
Thread: Kung Fu Nuns & Shaolin Nuns (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?47834-Kung-Fu-Nuns-amp-Shaolin-Nuns)

[GeneChing]

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Thread: SHAOLIN SPECIAL January+February 2018 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70538-SHAOLIN-SPECIAL-January-February-2018&p=1306819#post1306819)
Thread: Kung Fu Nuns & Shaolin Nuns (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?47834-Kung-Fu-Nuns-amp-Shaolin-Nuns)

[GeneChing]

http://news.streetroots.org/sites/default/files/styles/article_image_full/public/SR_KungFuNuns1_StreetRoots.jpg?itok=9V2thptN
The Kung Fu Nuns, of the Drukpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, teach girls that women can be just as powerful as men. (Photos courtesy of Kung Fu Nuns )

These Buddhist nuns empower girls – with kung fu (http://news.streetroots.org/2018/03/09/these-buddhist-nuns-empower-girls-kung-fu)
In addition to their humanitarian work, they teach women and girls self-defense and that 'they can be as strong and as powerful as a man'
by Tony Inglis | 9 Mar 2018

http://news.streetroots.org/sites/default/files/SR_Kung-Fu-Nuns_4.jpg
Nuns from the Himalayan Drukpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism go into communities to teach women and girls how to defend themselves using the mythologized techniques of kung fu. Photo courtesy of Kung Fu Nuns

In the West, perceptions of kung fu are reflected by our pop culture. Generations of kids who grew up watching Bruce Lee movies have gone on to create art that uses kung fu as a touchstone – from rapper Kendrick Lamar, who styled the tour and videos supporting his 2017 album “****” around the ancient martial art, to a series of box-office-smashing movies about a gifted animated panda.

In the East, specifically in China, kung fu is a national symbol viewed with reverence and seriousness. As The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos wrote, a film like “Kung Fu Panda” “could only be made by a foreigner because Chinese filmmakers would never try to play with such solemn subjects” as kung fu or pandas. The idea of flipping kung fu conventions on their head at all, never mind creating something that portrays it as zany and cartoonish, is outlandish and disrespectful.

“Actually,” said Jigme Konchok Lhamo, “kung fu is not for fighting or causing pain; it is for self-defense. It was the same for Shaolin monks. They would stay in retreats alone in the mountains, where there were robbers and thieves, so it was just to protect themselves. The Bodhidharma taught kung fu to monks for self-defense, not fighting or violation.”

This is how Konchok shoots down the common misconceptions about kung fu. She is a nun from the Himalayan Drukpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Here, the traditionally patriarchal makeup of Buddhist orders of monks and nuns has been subverted, and it is these young women who have taken the lead.

A part of the mission they have taken upon themselves includes going into communities – so far, in the towns surrounding their monastery in Nepal, as well as parts of the northern Indian region of Ladakh – to teach women and girls how to defend themselves using the mythologized techniques of kung fu.

http://news.streetroots.org/sites/default/files/SR_Kung-Fu-Nuns_5.jpg
Girls are taught by nuns of the Drukpa lineage how to use kung fu techniques for self-defense. Photo courtesy of Kung Fu Nuns

Being branded as ass-kicking kung fu nuns is an eye-catching and unusual headline. But when I spoke to Konchok and her fellow Drukpa nun Jigme Wangchuk Lhamo – at Trust Conference, the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual human rights and anti-trafficking seminar in London – it was the dedicated and inspiring humanitarian work they do in the region that they eruditely and excitedly want to discuss and impress upon.

“We traveled a long distance to bring a message to young girls,” said Wangchuk, who along with Konchok took part in an onstage panel at the conference. “They can be as strong and as powerful as a man, if you give them what they want and what they need, if you give them a chance.”

Konchok called it an opportunity.

“Girls maybe wouldn’t have believed before that they could do that,” she said. “That’s how kung fu came in. You always hear about Shaolin monks, right? But what about kung fu nuns? That’s a huge thing!”

They both had a fizzing energy – finishing each other’s sentences and always united in what they believe. Multiple times during our conversation, they spoke in spontaneous unison. Sometimes it was hard to keep up, but their passion for their service pulled me through.

“After learning kung fu, we became more confident. We were physically and mentally strong, and it even helps us with our meditation in our spiritual lives,” Konchok said. “Just because we practice and teach kung fu doesn’t mean we don’t follow our spiritual path too. We do each and every thing side by side.

“We have been learning to play drums and to perform the dragon dance – all the things that girls were prohibited from doing in the early days of our order. So it’s not just kung fu. We have been doing all the things that society says girls and women can’t do, and that’s in terms of our Buddhist nunnery life also.”

The Buddhist lineage the two young women belong to wasn’t always as forward-thinking and unconventional as it now seems. In 2008, the Gyalwang Drukpa, the leader of the Drukpa line, began reforms that brought the order’s nuns to the forefront and started their new tradition of dispersing thoughts that prioritize the fight for women’s equality and empowerment.

“People think that nuns should stay inside a nunnery, serving monks, washing their clothes, acting like a waiter or something,” Konchok said. “They say we have to be peaceful, always meditating, (they begin to talk as one) in retreat, praying, chanting, sitting, doing nothing. We have a higher level of thinking here.

“In our lineage, our monks have always supported us and shown us respect. We are equal.”

It was this alternative attitude that inspired Wangchuk to dedicate her life to the order.

“When I was small, my thoughts were really big,” she said. “I hated when people said girls can’t do anything. I loved helping and serving others, and from very early on, I knew I wanted to do this for my whole life. I had heard about what the Gyalwang Drukpa was doing from my uncle, who was a monk within the order, and he said, ‘I have the perfect place for you; you can find your dream there.’

“I found this place, and I knew it was where I wanted to be. It meant the opportunity to do anything I wanted – to learn kung fu, to help and give support to other girls, and to help us discover and take heed of our own power.”
continued next post

[GeneChing]

http://news.streetroots.org/sites/default/files/SR_Kung-Fu-Nuns_10.jpg
The Kung Fu Nuns perform kung fu techniques. Photo courtesy of Kung Fu Nuns

In the historically gendered hierarchy of the religious establishment, achieving what the Drukpa nuns have is especially radical. They are now even entrusted with the secrets to the most esoteric form of meditation, something that was only previously available to male members of the order.

This is even more apparent as we live through #MeToo and Time’s Up, movements in the Western world where women are beginning to be listened to when speaking out about experiences of systemic harassment, male privilege and sexual abuse that seem to have infected all walks of life.

By speaking out and teaching kung fu, Wangchuk, Konchok and their community of fellow nuns are encouraging women and girls in marginalized sections of their region to start making change in their own way.

“This world says ‘ladies first,’ but this phrase is useless if it isn’t applied in real life. There is nothing first in this world for ladies,” Wangchuk said. “It’s often said that our kung fu workshops empower women. And you say this about street papers too – they empower homeless people. But actually, what we are doing is not giving people power but allowing them to discover their own power. We all have our own power. We just need the support and the love to find it.”

Behind the kung fu classes that made them famous, the Drukpa nuns do less publicized, but far more extraordinary, work in the communities surrounding their monastery home. This includes an eco pad yatra (walking pilgrimage) to remote villages, collecting plastics and other non-biodegradable waste to educate communities about protecting the environment. In the wake of the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, they rode bicycles in high altitude through the Himalayas to help with the relief effort, clearing rubble and helping deliver aid to people in places that even the world’s largest organizations couldn’t reach. At the same time, they advocated against the spike in slavery, human trafficking and sexual assault that sprung up in the aftermath.

http://news.streetroots.org/sites/default/files/SR_Kung-Fu-Nuns_8.jpg
The Kung Fu Nuns deliver aid as part of their humanitarian work. Photo courtesy of Kung Fu Nuns

Not only did this make a real, visible difference, but it also showed their detractors what 700 Buddhist women could achieve together.

“After the earthquake, we heard that girls were being sold because their families believed that they weren’t capable of doing anything to help rebuild,” Konchok said.

“But we have been doing so much work, and doing it ourselves. We told these people: ‘Look, we are girls, and we can do it, so why can’t yours? We are from the same place, the same culture; why are you pushing your girls back? You should have faith in your daughters and encourage them. Why don’t you give them a chance?’ This especially shocked us because we are nuns, but we are also sisters and daughters too.”

Now that they and their fellow nuns are achieving international recognition for their work, they hope that they can inspire a similar change in the wider world. But, of course, being confined to their humble surroundings, they are taking their movement one step at a time.

“If we leave an impact on one person and that person impacts on another, eventually we will begin to see people change their way of thinking, until it spreads throughout whole communities, Konchok said. “Here (at Trust Conference), we have met all these people who support us and what we do. That makes it seem like a bigger change is coming. We may only effect that change in a small part of the world, but it is still a change.”

http://news.streetroots.org/sites/default/files/SR_Kung-Fu-Nuns_9.jpg
Kung Fu Nuns perform kung fu techniques. Photo courtesy of Kung Fu Nuns

At Trust Conference, Wangchuk and Konchok wowed the crowd with their high kicks and somersaults on stage. But more impressively, the young women roused the audience with wisdom beyond their years and an idealism that perhaps the older, more experienced attendees had since replaced with cynicism.

They talked about the importance of not only supporting women from an early age, but also better educating boys so that they grow up to respect women. They summarized a vision of equality about which they spoke so enthusiastically to me earlier that day.

“Most boys are told that they have all the power in the house, and girls are told to sit silently,” Konchok said. “But the problem is that’s what has been passed down to them by parents. I want parents to teach their daughters to be strong, to defend themselves. It’s not compulsory that you need to know kung fu or to fight. It’s more the mentality they have to change.”

Wangchuk agreed: “We’re not saying that men can’t change. We can – we have to – change their thinking. But it’s up to parents, too. Don’t warn your daughter not to go out; warn your sons to behave well and treat women with respect.

“Until we are all equal, as long as we push one part of society down, no matter whether that be women or some other demographic, we will never achieve peace.”

Courtesy of INSP.ngo

Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Learn more about Street Roots

This thread is really all about the Drukpa nuns save a few mere posts. I should copy that out into their own separate thread some day.

[GeneChing]

https://dazedimg-dazedgroup.netdna-ssl.com/1000/azure/dazed-prod/1260/6/1266822.jpg

Climate change and kung fu nuns: the fight for women’s safety in South Asia (https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/44392/1/climate-change-migration-sex-trafficking-crisis-south-asia)
A FUTURE WORLD LIFE & CULTURE 14.05.2019
Text Brit Dawson
Illustration Marianne Wilson

In South Asia, there’s a devastating correlation between weather-related disasters and the rising number of women being trafficked for sex

Every year, in the remote depths of the Himalayas, hundreds of nuns clean plastic from the waterways of the mountain range. Trekking miles, the group picks up tonnes of rubbish, carrying it down the mountains, and shipping it back to Delhi to be recycled.

Known as the Kung Fu Nuns of the Drukpa Lineage, these women are at the forefront of environmental and social change in the Himalayas. With an increasingly temperamental climate exacerbating natural disasters and rapidly melting the mountain’s glaciers, Himalayan communities are facing extinction. For women and girls in the region, there’s an even more immediate threat: as they’re thrust into poverty and displaced from their homes, they become increasingly vulnerable to sex trafficking.

In the aftermath of the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the Kung Fu Nuns offered aid to remote villages in need. Observing a disturbing increase in people selling off their daughters following the disaster, the nuns took direct action by way of bike rides across the Himalayas. “It was to show these villages that women were strong and capable enough to bicycle,” the group’s communications coordinator Carrie Lee tells me, “so they’d also be physically strong enough to farm, thereby worthwhile keeping and raising, and not selling off.”

Although the Kung Fu Nuns are one of a kind, the plight of those they’re determined to help is not unique to the Himalayas. With 18.8 million people displaced from their homes due to weather-related disasters in 2017 alone, climate change is an enormous threat to countless women and girls – not in some far-off future, but right now.

A Future World, Kung Fu Nuns

https://dazedimg-dazedgroup.netdna-ssl.com/2000/azure/dazed-prod/1260/6/1266831.JPG
The Kung Fu Nuns on their 2016 bicycle ‘yatra’ Courtesy Live to Love International / Wendy J.N. Lee

With some of the highest numbers of climate-related displacements in the world, people in South Asia are particularly at risk. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, in 2017 there were a total of 2.7 million new disaster-related displacements in India (1.3 million), Bangladesh (946k), and Nepal (384k). Dubbed ‘climate refugees’ – though this term isn’t recognised by international law – those migrating are often doing so within their own country, meaning they don’t have legal rights specific to their situation (unlike refugees crossing borders to flee conflict). This lack of recognition, and the fact they’ve typically been uprooted with no warning, often means internally displaced people don’t get the help they need, and it’s within this insecure environment that traffickers thrive.

Drawing on research conducted after two cyclones hit Bangladesh (in 2007 and 2009), a 2016 report by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) identified women-headed households as especially vulnerable to exploitation.

“The poorest and most vulnerable will be hit first and worst,” Steve Trent, co-founder of the Environmental Justice Foundation, explains. “And among those, it’s nearly always women and children. Where you have environmental degradation and forced land clearance, you see migration towards urban city centres; there you see women who are incredibly vulnerable being coerced or forced into the sex trade, as they have no other means of survival.”

This gender imbalance is reflected in broader trafficking statistics. As reported by The Global Slavery Index, there were 40.3 million people worldwide living in modern slavery in 2016, 71 per cent of whom were female. Of this percentage, nearly three out of every four women and girls trafficked were done so for the purpose of sexual exploitation. While in South Asia, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) states that in 2016, women and girls made up 59 per cent of the region’s total number of trafficking victims.


“There’s a perception that it’s somewhere else and in the future, but it’s not, it’s here and now” – Steve Trent

Although there’s largely a lack of both media attention and state action when it comes to trafficking, there are local organisations working tirelessly to rescue victims and prosecute perpetrators. One of these is India’s Rescue Foundation, a non-governmental organisation taking direct action to rescue trafficked women and girls from prostitution. Speaking over the phone from their base in Mumbai, project director Gerard Mukhia tells me he believes climate-related trafficking directly correlates with how quickly and efficiently governments respond to disasters.

“If you have a chaotic response to a situation like an earthquake, in that chaos families will get scattered,” Mukhia reveals. “But if you have a response team who are coordinated, and focus their efforts on not just helping families recover, but also protecting them from being separated, I think that would really play a big role (in the reduction of human trafficking).”

Mukhia tells me that following the 2015 Nepal earthquake, trafficking into India “increased by 500 per cent”, meaning victims were more spread out across the country. “A lot of the prostitution was brothel-based,” Mukhia reveals, “but now it’s branched out into massage parlours, spas, commercial residences, and private residences.” Based on this, the Rescue Foundation started running community awareness programmes, in order to educate local people who could then provide rescue help. “It’s something that’s in their peripheral, but they don’t want to acknowledge it exists,” Mukhia explains, going on to tell me that local cooperation has increased since the awareness programme began.

Education is also central to the Kung Fu Nuns’ method of working. “The nuns’ motto is: ‘No one’s coming to rescue you’,” Lee tells me, “so they do self-defence training. Not that in a week a girl is going to learn to be a badass kung fu master, but in these regions it’s the only safe place for these girls to come, and for the first time in their lives they’re learning the words ‘molestation’ and ‘rape’.”

A Future World, Kung Fu Nuns

https://dazedimg-dazedgroup.netdna-ssl.com/2000/azure/dazed-prod/1260/6/1266827.JPG
Kung Fu Nuns, 2017Courtesy Live to Love International / Wendy J.N. Lee

It’s a bleak idea that nobody is coming to rescue trafficking victims, and although organisations like the Rescue Foundation are working tirelessly to help, there isn’t nearly enough acknowledgement of how big the problem is, particularly when it’s linked to climate displacement. “There’s a perception that it’s somewhere else and in the future,” Trent asserts, “but it’s not, it’s here and now. The Western world has benefited the most from carbon, and yet people in poorer states are feeling the real impacts – whether it be forced migration, or the ultimate destination for a vulnerable woman into the sex slave trade.”

With Greta Thunberg leading weekly school strikes, and activist group Extinction Rebellion taking direct action, climate change is being talked about now more than ever, but it seems little is actually being done when it comes to legislation in severely affected countries, particularly when human rights are involved. “There’s a role for education in rural areas, but you don’t need everyone to understand the connection between climate migration and trafficking in order for a city authority to put a plan in place to prevent people being trafficked,” Alex Randall, programme manager at the Climate and Migration Coalition explains. “You’ve got to create cities that can grow, where rural migrants can go to and be safe, and that’s as much about their work, housing, and education rights as it is about social safety nets.”

Although it might feel like a problem far too big to tackle, there’s so much that can be done in the face of this mass climate displacement – whether that’s educating both those at risk and the wider world in general about the heightened danger of sex trafficking, or fighting to make social and legal change. India’s proposed anti-trafficking bill, for example – though flawed – is a step in the right direction, proving the country is paying attention to the problem.

With human trafficking at a 13-year record high, and the world in a climate emergency, action needs to be taken now. “Many causes are driven by a kind of dialogue that says perfect is possible,” Trent concludes, “and in this situation perfect is not possible, but I refuse to let perfect be the enemy of good. If we get to good, we can be changing the lives, right now, of many tens of thousands of people.”

In the film below, PhD student Otto Simonsson meets some of the young Bangladeshi girls forced into prostitution following climate displacement. The documentary will be screened in UK parliament on May 22.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFizi7UTlPo


My favorite nuns in the world today...

[GeneChing]

I've been way overdue for making an indie thread for Kung Fu Nuns of the Drupka Order (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71436-Kung-Fu-Nuns-of-the-Drupka-Order) independant of the Kung Fu Nuns & Shaolin Nuns (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?47834-Kung-Fu-Nuns-amp-Shaolin-Nun) thread.


Kung Fu Nuns in Nepal Are Prepared to Fight (https://nerdist.com/article/kung-fu-nuns-in-nepal-are-prepared-to-fight/)
by Matthew Hart
Aug 15 2019 • 10:15 AM

https://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Kung-Fu-Nuns-Feature-Image-08142019-1200x676.jpg

Writer’s note: Yes, kung fu is a very broad term, but because the featured video doesn’t specify which type of kung fu these nuns are practicing, we’re going to stick with it.

Admit it: When you see the words “kung fu” you immediately hear Neo from The Matrix saying “I know kung fu” in your head. But while all Neo needed to do to learn kung fu was chill in a chair and have badass moves downloaded into his brain, learning the legendary martial art in real life takes an extraordinary amount of dedication. Just ask this group of hardcore Nepalese nuns who have been training in kung fu since 2008.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QL0v5wLxKM

The video above, created by the YouTube channel Great Big Story, gives a glimpse of the nuns belonging to the Buddhist Drukpa Order. Throughout the clip, we see them wielding sharp weapons and nunchucks, breaking bricks with their hands, and launching some seriously impressive flying kicks in the air. They also use fans sometimes, because why not learn to battle humidity along with vicious enemies? (Really though, they’re used to help master balance.)

And if you’re saying to yourself “well, that’s just a lot of fancy dancing that anybody could pull off,” trust that the training regimen that these nuns execute on is seriously brutal. The Drukpa Order nuns wake up at 3 a.m., meditate, bicycle, and then train by running, climbing stairs, and practicing their martial art for three hours.

https://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/kung-fu-nuns-GIF-08142019.gif

According to the nuns, practicing kung fu helps them to feel stronger, more confident, better coordinated, and sharper mentally. There are also real-world applications for the nuns, who teach self-defense classes for women, and publicly demonstrate that “[girls] can do anything a man can do.”

What do you think of these kung fu nuns? If you joined the Drukpa Order, how long do you think you’d last? Meditate on this topic in the comments!

Images: Great Big Story

[GeneChing]

Climate Change Forced Nepal Women Into Trafficking. Now, 'Kung Fu' Nuns are Cycling the Globe for Them (https://www.news18.com/news/india/climate-change-forced-nepal-women-into-trafficking-now-kung-fu-nuns-are-cycling-the-globe-for-them-2316231.html)
After facing the consequences of climate change first-hand in their own villages, the nuns decided to start walking with two strong messages: protect the environment, and empower women.
Adrija Bose | News18.com Updated:September 20, 2019, 4:38 PM IST

https://images.news18.com/optimize/KipCGorej_VzP-qgmJuuc1Pwj0Q=/290x192/images.news18.com/ibnlive/uploads/290x192/jpg/2019/09/Untitled-design-45.png
A bunch of nuns from a Buddhist nunnery in the western valley of Kathmandu decided to pick up their tools and start building homes and broken compound walls.

In 2015, when an earthquake hit Nepal, killing 9,000 people, women started to disappear. The survivors, who thought themselves lucky, soon found themselves without much choice, but to trust the promises of overseas work and education, turning many into victims of trafficking.

This is when a bunch of nuns from a Buddhist nunnery in the western valley of Kathmandu decided to pick up their tools and start building homes and broken compound walls. Amid the chaos that followed Nepal’s biggest earthquake, the nuns went door to door, educating families about trafficking and women empowerment.

"It was scary, but we had decided not to leave," said Dipam, a 'Kung Fu' nun. "No one ever imagined nuns could do martial arts. But we did. So when we saw homes being destroyed and women being taken away, we decided to educate the families on what a woman is capable of," she sai

Just 13-years-old when she left her home in Himachal Pradesh’s Kinnaur, Dipam said she had always wanted to be a nun, but never thought that she would end up helping thousands of women in Nepal.

In the rural mountain communities of Nepal, the impact of climate change is more keenly felt since much of the agriculture — a mainstay of the economy — continues to be rain-fed. With the area becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate hazards, resource degradation and food scarcity, the past decade has seen communities becoming poorer, with women and girls at particular risk. Although climate change has been the push factor in human trafficking in the area for a while, the earthquake destroyed already vulnerable livelihoods, creating a situation that traffickers actively exploited.

In the three months after the earthquake, Nepal’s National Human Rights Commission reported a 15 per cent increase in the number of interceptions of people “vulnerable” to human traffickers. On the Indian side, the cases of trafficking being registered along the Indo-Nepal border also saw a sharp surge after the earthquake, from just eight cases being lodged by the Union Home Ministry's Shastra Seema Bal (SSB) in 2014 to 147 in 2017.

https://images.news18.com/ibnlive/uploads/2019/09/Untitled-design-38.png
Photo: Live to Love International

In Nepal, the combination of delays in rebuilding homes, the loss of livelihoods that pushed people to the brink of desperation for money and established criminal networks resulted in an epidemic of human trafficking. According to reports, following the quake, many women were and are still are being sold into a global network that includes brothels and massage parlours in India, dance bars in Kenya, home-cleaning services in the Middle East, and slave labour in South Asia.

The 26-year-old nunnery in the village of Ramkot is where the 800-odd nuns, between the ages of nine and 90, learn Kung Fu, fix electrical appliances and do plumbing, besides praying. And, they often cycle for miles across the Himalayas to let people know that "women are capable of everything". There were many who implored the nuns to evacuate the nunnery after it had collapsed, but they decided to stay and help.

"The building had started breaking when we realised that the earthquake was strong. But we didn't shriek or cry, we decided to be brave and do our job," Dipam said. The job she refers to is 'community duty', which the nuns consider a 'spiritual exercise'.

For days following the earthquake, the nuns would trek to nearby villages to help remove the rubble from people’s homes, salvage and return buried objects and clear pathways. They made night shelters for the affected and went around distributing rice and lentils. Back in their home, the nunnery, which was also completely destroyed, the nuns repaired solar panels, laid new tiles in the front yard and rebuilt their broken compound wall. At night, the older nuns patrolled in the streets outside the nunnery, while the younger nuns slept in tents on the lawn.

"There were only dead bodies for days after the earthquake. Then we found out girls from poor families were being sold because their parents could not afford to keep them anymore," said Rupa, another Kung Fu nun from Lahol Spiti in Himachal Pradesh.

With many of the nuns, hailing from Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Nepal, it is personal. After facing the consequences of climate change first-hand in their own villages, the nuns decided to start walking with two strong messages: protect the environment, and empower women. They have since travelled the world, learning about climate change, partnering with global non-profits and also participated in the 2014 United Nations, Conference of the Parties (COP 20).

https://images.news18.com/ibnlive/uploads/2019/09/Untitled-design-514.png
Photo: Live to Love International

The nuns believe that when in 2008, the leader of the 1,000-year-old Drukpa lineage, His Holiness The Gyalwang Drukpa changed the order of gender stereotypes and got the nuns to learn Kung Fu, things became different for them. "It taught me to be confident, I realised I am not less than anybody," said Dipam.

In 2014, Dipam walked a distance of 800 km from Varanasi to Lumbini. Every day, the nuns would walk for 8 to 10 km and clean up villages along their route. In 2011, she went to Sri Lanka to spread the message of ill effects of plastic waste. "They think we are boys when they see us on our bike. We stop and tell them that not only are we women, but we are also Buddhist nuns," Rupa said, not being able to hide her glee.

In 2016, led by His Holiness himself, the nuns, clad in black sweatpants, red jackets and white helmets, cycled 2,200km from Kathmandu to Delhi to spread the message of environmental awareness and encourage people to use bicycles instead of cars. "We talked about women trafficking on our journey because they are interconnected," said Rupa. “It was to show these villages that women are strong and capable enough to cycle,” the group’s communications coordinator Carrie Lee said.

"We were not asking the women to run away from their families, we were educating them and helping build back their lives so they can continue to stay and feel empowered," said Rupa. The nuns’ motto is: ‘No one’s coming to rescue you’ and they couldn't be more spot on.

This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

Respect. So much respect.

[GeneChing]

Kung fu nuns of Drukpa Lineage get global award (https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/kung-fu-nuns-of-drukpa-lineage-get-global-award-1.1572356210172)
Nuns defied a centuries-old ban on exercise for nuns and adopted the martial arts
Published: October 29, 2019 17:31
IANS

https://imagevars.gulfnews.com/2019/10/29/Untitled-1_16e17b9b8c6_medium.jpg
Image Credit: Supplied

Leh: Kung fu nuns of the Drukpa lineage based here have been awarded the prestigious Asia Game Changers Award by the Asia Society in New York for inspiring and applying their unique talent to make the world a better place.

The Asia Society is a leading educational organization dedicated to promoting mutual understanding and strengthening partnerships among people, leaders and institutions of Asia and the US in a global context.

The kung fu nuns have devoted their lives to helping their community -- advocating for girls, protecting the environment, and serving as first responders during disasters like the 2015 Nepal earthquake.

Originally honing their kung fu skills as a means of self-defence and meditation, the nuns draw awestruck crowds whenever they hold a demonstration, says a post on the website of the Asia Society.

The Asia Game Changers Award, launched by the Asia Society in 2014, was presented on October 24.

During the award-giving ceremony, soaring across the stage with gravity-defying kicks, they stunned with their acrobatic feats, drawing 'oohs and ahs' from the Cipriani crowd.

"We do not believe in empowering women as the term means giving power or passing down power; we believe in awakening the power every woman has in them. May more women and girls around the world realize that power is ours and it's not something given by others. It is ours to own," said a representative of the nuns, upon receiving the award.

"We believe no one is coming to save us, we will be our own heroes."

Kung fu nuns, who defied a centuries-old ban on exercise for nuns and adopted the martial art as a way to spread awareness on gender equality, human trafficking and environment.

They are from the Kathmandu-based Druk Amitabha Mountain nunnery, established by the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa, the spiritual head of the 1,000-year-old Drukpa Order based in Leh in Ladakh.

The Druk Amitabha Mountain nunnery is a unique instance of gender reversal. Here the nuns run the administration, historically reserved for the monks.

The Gyalwang Drukpa is propagating gender neutrality.

The kung fu nuns, who are receiving modern education and the spiritual training, are gaining worldwide recognition.

In celebration of their achievement and to honour the awardees, Live to Love International is holding the homecoming reception for the nuns in New Delhi on November 7 at the India Habitat Centre.

This is their first trip to the USA. Their publicity reached out. I tasked one of our reporters to respond. Hopefully we'll get an interview out of it.

[GeneChing]

Same story, alternate pix


Kung Fu Nuns gets Asia’s Game Changer Award (https://www.dailyexcelsior.com/kung-fu-nuns-gets-asias-game-changer-award/)
By Daily Excelsior -26/10/2019

https://www.dailyexcelsior.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/k-1-5.jpg
Kung-Fu Nuns receiving awards in New york. —Excelsior/Morup Stanzin

Excelsior Sports Correspondent

Leh, Oct, 25: The Kung Fu Nuns of Drukpa order, some of the Himalayan’s most prominent rights advocates are received the Asia Society’s prestigious game Changer awards in New York for their path breaking work to empower women and dismantle gender stereotype in the Himalayas.
The Kung Fu Nuns represent a new generation of Buddhists who use their teachings to take real action and effect meaningful change in the world by promoting gender equality and environmentalism. With this recognition, the Kung Fu Nuns join the likes of iconic Indian leaders Indra Nooyi, Mukesh Ambani, and Dev Patel, who have also been honoured by the Asia Society in the previous years for breaking the glass ceiling with their courage and inspiring their fellow citizens. A fair portion of the Kungfu Nuns hails from Ladakh making the newly granted UT Ladakh proud and this award came as a gift to the region.
These nuns exemplify kindness in its fiercest form: empowering themselves and others to truly serve the world. They are known for their epic acts of service-from their recent 5,200-mile “Bicycle Yatra for Peace” from Nepal to Ladakh, India to speak out against human trafficking to their refusal to evacuate after the 2015 Nepal earthquake in order to deliver critical aid to neglected regions.
Founded in 1956, the Asia Society is nonpartisan, non-profit educational Institution with offices in Hong Kong, Houston, Los Angeles, Manila, Melbourne, Mumbai, New York, San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai, Tokyo, Washington, DC and Zurich.

This one has a vid

Kung Fu Nuns of the Drukpa Lineage Accept Asia Game Changer Award (https://asiasociety.org/video/kung-fu-nuns-drukpa-lineage-accept-asia-game-changer-award)
NEW YORK, October 24, 2019 — The Kung Fu Nuns of the Drukpa Lineage, whose martial arts skills and good works have attracted a wide following in India and Nepal, accept an Asia Game Changer award. (2 min., 33 sec.)

[Oso]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/20/health/kung-fu-nuns-wellness/index.html

[GeneChing]

Real Heroes. READ The Kung Fu Nuns – Warrior Women of the Druk Amitabha Mountain Nunnery (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1577) by Gene Ching

http://www.kungfumagazine.com//admin/site_images/KungfuMagazine/images/ezine/6386_Kung-Fu-Nuns_Lead.jpg

Threads
Kung-Fu-Nuns-of-the-Drupka-Order (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71436-Kung-Fu-Nuns-of-the-Drupka-Order)
Kung-Fu-Nuns-amp-Shaolin-Nuns (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?47834-Kung-Fu-Nuns-amp-Shaolin-Nuns)
covid (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71666-Coronavirus-(COVID-19)-Wuhan-Pneumonia)

[GeneChing]

Read my latest article for UNESCO ICM: The Kung Fu Nuns (http://unescoicm.org/eng/notice/qna.php?ptype=view&idx=7453&page=1&code=qna_eng)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E_YFK56UYAMpXHV?format=jpg&name=900x900

For the latest issue, see ICM News. September 2021. Volume 14 (https://stibee.com/api/v1.0/emails/share/VJxVdVnlv7NyLct-jyxsQcHLY32fTA==).

Kung-Fu-Nuns-of-the-Drupka-Order (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71436-Kung-Fu-Nuns-of-the-Drupka-Order)
Kung-Fu-Nuns-amp-Shaolin-Nuns (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?47834-Kung-Fu-Nuns-amp-Shaolin-Nuns)
covid (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71666-Coronavirus-(COVID-19)-Wuhan-Pneumonia)
UNESCO-International-Centre-of-Martial-Arts-for-Youth-Development-and-Engagement (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?72011-UNESCO-International-Centre-of-Martial-Arts-for-Youth-Development-and-Engagement)

[GeneChing]

http://unescoicm.org/_data/summernote/2110/8OnCuJtAoMm6z9.PNG

ICM is pleased to announce the following Prize Winner for the 『UNESCO-ICM 2021 Martial Arts Education Prize』. (http://unescoicm.org/eng/notice/notice.php?ptype=view&idx=7974&code=notice_eng)

○ Prize Winner: The Kung Fu Nuns of Drukpa, from India.
○ Activities
The Kung Fu Nuns have:
- trained and practiced Kung Fu, to build strength and nurture self-defense skills breaking an old decree of Drukpa lineage of banning nuns from exercising;
- harnessed their martial arts skills and strengths to serve the world and actively participated in solving community issues (e.g. Search & rescue missions after Nepal Earthquakes of 2015 etc.);
- taught Kung Fu and organized workshops for young girls and women in Himalayan region to empower and protect them from extreme sexism, violence against women which are prevalent in the region; and
- contributed to harmonizing diverse religions.

We would like to convey our sincere gratitude to all of participants who applied for the Prize this year, and appreciate your dedication in sustainable development and peace using martial arts education.

We hope for your continued support and participation next year as well.

Kung-Fu-Nuns-of-the-Drupka-Order (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71436-Kung-Fu-Nuns-of-the-Drupka-Order)
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[GeneChing]

RECOGNITION
UNESCO prize for world-acclaimed Kung Fu Nuns (https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/schools/unesco-prize-for-world-acclaimed-kung-fu-nuns-327079)

Updated At: Oct 20, 2021 04:50 PM (IST)

763
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Pic for representational purpose only. iStock

New Delhi, Oct 20

The world-renowned Kung Fu Nuns of the Drukpa order of Buddhism has won the prestigious Martial Arts Education Prize 2021 from the UNESCO International Centre for Martial Arts for their brave acts of service.

The prize recognises the Kung Fu Nuns' heroic acts of service and championing of gender equality across the Himalayas.

Through martial arts, the Drukpa nuns empower young girls to defend themselves, build confidence, and take on leadership roles in their communities.

This award from UNESCO ICM also recognises the Kung Fu Nuns' work in Indian and Nepali communities hit especially hard by the pandemic, leaving many marginalised groups in need of supplies and education.

The Kung Fu Nuns hail from the Drukpa Lineage of Indian Buddhism and began learning Kung Fu to build strength and confidence.

They now use those skills to serve others through unimaginable acts of bravery -- from their recent 2,500 km "Bicycle Yatra for Peace" from Kathmandu, Nepal, to Ladakh, India, to speak out against human trafficking, to their refusal to evacuate after the 2015 Nepal earthquake in order to deliver critical aid to neglected regions.

Adept in both weaponry and hand-to-hand combat, they have begun a self-defence training initiative for young girls in the Himalayas, where violence against women is rarely reported.

With over 700 Drukpa nuns in the ranks, there is a long waiting list of women and girls who want to join them.

The Kung Fu Nuns have transformed the way the Himalayans view not only nuns, but women. Their Kung Fu demonstrations draw audiences in the tens of thousands, inspiring a new generational mindset that women can do anything.

Through their acts of service, and by setting an example of empowerment for the marginalised, the young Kung Fu Nuns have become heroes in their own right.

Their efforts were honoured with several prestigious international awards. The nuns are recipient of the Atlantic Council's prestigious Unsung Heroes Award 2020 and the Asia Society's Game Changer Award 2019. They were also finalists for the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize for their humanitarianism in the Himalayas. IANS


Kung-Fu-Nuns-of-the-Drupka-Order (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71436-Kung-Fu-Nuns-of-the-Drupka-Order)
UNESCO-International-Centre-of-Martial-Arts-for-Youth-Development-and-Engagement (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?72011-UNESCO-International-Centre-of-Martial-Arts-for-Youth-Development-and-Engagement)

[GeneChing]

I'm so proud of this.


World-renowned Kung Fu nuns win UNESCO prize for Martial Arts education (https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/world-renowned-kung-fu-nuns-win-unesco-prize-for-martial-arts-education/ar-AAPJKs9)
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© Provided by The Statesman World-renowned Kung Fu nuns win UNESCO prize for Martial Arts education
The world-renowned Kung Fu Nuns of the Drukpa order of Buddhism have won the prestigious Martial Arts Education Prize 2021 from the UNESCO International Centre for Martial Arts for their brave acts of service.


The prize recognizes the Kung Fu Nuns’ heroic acts of service and championing gender equality across the Himalayas.

Through martial arts, the Drukpa nuns empower young girls to defend themselves, build confidence, and take on leadership roles in their communities.

This award from UNESCO ICM also recognizes the Kung Fu Nuns’ work in Indian and Nepali communities hit especially hard by the pandemic, leaving many marginalized groups in need of supplies and education.

The Kung Fu Nuns hail from the Drukpa Lineage of Indian Buddhism and began learning Kung Fu to build strength and confidence.

They now use those skills to serve others through unimaginable acts of bravery — from their recent 2,500 km “Bicycle Yatra for Peace” from Kathmandu, Nepal, to Ladakh, India, to speak out against human trafficking, to their refusal to evacuate after the 2015 Nepal earthquake in order to deliver critical aid to neglected regions.

Adept in both weaponry and hand-to-hand combat, they have begun a self-defence training initiative for young girls in the Himalayas, where violence against women is rarely reported.

With over 700 Drukpa nuns in the ranks, there is a long waiting list of women and girls who want to join them.

The Kung Fu Nuns have transformed the way the Himalayans view not only nuns but women. Their Kung Fu demonstrations draw audiences in the tens of thousands, inspiring a new generational mindset that women can do anything.

Through their acts of service, and by setting an example of empowerment for the marginalized, the young Kung Fu Nuns have become heroes in their own right.

Their efforts were honoured with several prestigious international awards. The nuns are recipients of the Atlantic Council’s prestigious Unsung Heroes Award 2020 and the Asia Society’s Game Changer Award 2019. They were also finalists for the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize for their humanitarianism in the Himalayas.

(With IANS inputs)


threads
Kung-Fu-Nuns-of-the-Drupka-Order (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71436-Kung-Fu-Nuns-of-the-Drupka-Order)
UNESCO-International-Centre-of-Martial-Arts-for-Youth-Development-and-Engagement (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?72011-UNESCO-International-Centre-of-Martial-Arts-for-Youth-Development-and-Engagement)

[GeneChing]

UNESCO prize for world-acclaimed Kung Fu Nuns The world-renowned Kung Fu Nuns of the Drukpa order of Buddhism has won the prestigious Martial Arts Education Prize 2021 from the UNESCO International Centre for Martial Arts for their brave acts of service. (https://www.sentinelassam.com/topheadlines/unesco-prize-for-world-acclaimed-kung-fu-nuns-559678)

https://assets.sentinelassam.com/h-upload/2021/10/21/262020-unesco-prize-for-world-acclaimed-kung-fu-nuns.jpg?w=940&dpr=1.0
By : Sentinel Digital Desk | 20 Oct 2021 6:54 PM
NEW DELHI: The world-renowned Kung Fu Nuns of the Drukpa order of Buddhism has won the prestigious Martial Arts Education Prize 2021 from the UNESCO International Centre for Martial Arts for their brave acts of service. The prize recognises the Kung Fu Nuns' heroic acts of service and championing of gender equality across the Himalayas. Through martial arts, the Drukpa nuns empower young girls to defend themselves, build confidence, and take on leadership roles in their communities. This award from UNESCO ICM also recognises the Kung Fu Nuns' work in Indian and Nepali communities hit especially hard by the pandemic, leaving many marginalized groups in need of supplies and education.

The Kung Fu Nuns hail from the Drukpa Lineage of Indian Buddhism and began learning Kung Fu to build strength and confidence. They now use those skills to serve others through unimaginable acts of bravery – from their recent 2,500 km "Bicycle Yatra for Peace" from Kathmandu, Nepal, to Ladakh, India, to speak out against human trafficking, to their refusal to evacuate after the 2015 Nepal earthquake in order to deliver critical aid to neglected regions. Adept in both weaponry and hand-to-hand combat, they have begun a self-defence training initiative for young girls in the Himalayas, where violence against women is rarely reported.

With over 700 Drukpa nuns in the ranks, there is a long waiting list of women and girls who want to join them. The Kung Fu Nuns have transformed the way the Himalayans view not only nuns, but women. Their Kung Fu demonstrations draw audiences in the tens of thousands, inspiring a new generational mindset that women can do anything. Through their acts of service, and by setting an example of empowerment for the marginalized, the young Kung Fu Nuns have become heroes in their own right.

Their efforts were honoured with several prestigious international awards. The nuns are recipient of the Atlantic Council's prestigious Unsung Heroes Award 2020 and the Asia Society's Game Changer Award 2019. They were also finalists for the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize for their humanitarianism in the Himalayas. (IANS)

https://www.sentinelassam.com/topheadlines/unesco-prize-for-world-acclaimed-kung-fu-nuns-559678

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[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNiiqDHv0U8

[GeneChing]

UNESCO prize for Kung Fu Nuns for martial arts education (https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/schools/unesco-prize-for-kung-fu-nuns-for-martial-arts-education-349896)

Updated At: Dec 13, 2021 08:15 PM (IST)
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Credit: www.kungfununs.org
New Delhi, December 13

The world-renowned Kung Fu Nuns of the Drukpa order of Buddhism has won the prestigious Martial Arts Education Prize 2021 from the Unesco International Centre for Martial Arts.

The prize recognized the Kung Fu Nuns' heroic acts of service and championing of gender equality across the Himalayas.

Through martial arts, the Drukpa nuns empower young girls to defend themselves, build confidence, and take on leadership roles in their communities.

This award from UNESCO ICM also recognises the Kung Fu Nuns' work in Indian and Nepali communities hit, especially hard by the pandemic, leaving many marginalised groups in need of supplies and education.

The Kung Fu Nuns hail from the Drukpa Lineage of Indian Buddhism, and began learning Kung Fu to build strength and confidence.

They now use those skills to serve others through unimaginable acts of bravery -- from their recent 2,500 kilometres; bicycle yatra for peace from Kathmandu in Nepal to Ladakh, India, to speak out against human trafficking, to their refusal to evacuate after the 2015 Nepal earthquake in order to deliver critical aid to the neglected regions.

Adept in both weaponry and hand-to-hand combat, they have begun a self-defence training initiative for young girls in the Himalayas, where violence against women is rarely reported.

With over 700 Drukpa nuns in the ranks, there is a long waiting list of women and girls who want to join them.

The Kung Fu Nuns have transformed the way the Himalayans view not only nuns, but women. Their Kung Fu demonstrations draw audiences in the tens of thousands, inspiring a new generational mindset that women can do anything.

Their efforts were honoured with several prestigious international awards. The nuns are recipients of the Atlantic Council's prestigious Unsung Heroes Award 2020 and the Asia Society's Game Changer Award 2019.

They were also finalists for the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize for their humanitarianism in the Himalayas. IANS




threads
Kung-Fu-Nuns-of-the-Drupka-Order (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71436-Kung-Fu-Nuns-of-the-Drupka-Order)
UNESCO-International-Centre-of-Martial-Arts-for-Youth-Development-and-Engagement (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?72011-UNESCO-International-Centre-of-Martial-Arts-for-Youth-Development-and-Engagement)