Tenzin Palmo: Reflections on a Mountain Lake

By JADE REIDY

Tenzin Palmo comes across as a lucid and sane human being. Reflections on a Mountain Lake: A Western Nun Talks on Practical Buddhism is the reflection of that clear mind.

It's a bridge for westerners to the often paradoxical and confounding nature of Buddhist teachings. Her book joins a growing volume of edited talks by Western Buddhist women who have become leaders in various traditions, bringing the teachings into the context of everyday life and making them relevant to people who could not do what Palmo has done: survive psychologically and physically alone in a Himalayan cave for 12 years.

Palmo, like most authentic spiritual teachers, is a reluctant one and the talks were edited by friends and supporters. Books based on talks can often be little more than a hotchpotch of frequently asked questions, but the editing here is skilful, the questions posed are well-chosen and intelligent. The book still has a random quality - it can be picked up and dipped into, and you have to highlight your favourite passages because they're hard to find again.

Buddhism took root in Tibet only late in the 12th century, amalgamating and adapting the richness of 1700 years of Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean Buddhist practice and philosophy. It became distinctively Tibet's own. Palmo draws on her almost 40 years of training in Tibetan Buddhism and peppers the text with stories from Christianity as well as Zen.

The book opens with a short summary of biographical details covered in greater depth in her best-selling biography, Vicki Mackenzie's Cave in the Snow, and moves into Buddhist ethics, awareness, the nature of mind, the role of a spiritual master and the paucity of biographies on enlightened female practitioners throughout history.

Readers flooded publishers Bloomsbury with letters, curious to know what Palmo gained from that cave experience. This book gives it to us straight. It's a book for people who don't want to spend their whole lives "thinking only about food, comfort, sex and having a nice time". It offers a more meaningful, more loving and simple existence. How to achieve this? As one of her succinct examples goes, "riding the waves of life, be mindful, be happy". Simple.

Allen & Unwin

$36.95

* Jade Reidy is a Zen nun, freelance writer and editor.