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When I work with groups and individuals, whether leading meditation, Buddhism classes, women's retreats or private and group Mindful Life Guidance, I strive for a balance between traditional story-bringing and a philosophic detachment. We seek an internal honoring of the combined personal, archetypal and collective heritages taking each participant to the current moment, and delve by layers into deeper quiet as two key methods toward loosening the stronghold of undesired ingrained tendencies. Similarly, we honor each person's strengths, aspirations and inspirations.

My own life has taught me that true spiritual development is impossible without addressing every aspect of the psyche. In order to come into the beauty of wholeness, we must at times face painful aspects of darkness, a natural fertilizer for transformation. No one escapes suffering, and whether or not our motivation also includes helping others find happiness, those of us who enter a spiritual path often do so out of a need or longing to find peace and joyousness amongst the trials of earthly life.

To schedule a workshop, reading, or for general questions, contact: nancirr@rochester.rr.com

Wordless Teachings: Ani Tashi Sangmo Shop doors pulled shut. I first saw her on a stoop -- ah, this is India -- at the foot of McLeod Ganj. Wrapped in claret nun's robes, bronzed bare arm thin but sinewy strong, eighty years or more. Still in my tourist mode, I snapped her picture. Smiling Tibetans; she gazed frankly at me. In the Nyingma temple, praying to heal obstructions in others, she easily sat among the men, rotating a sizeable drum suspended from the gnarled tips of small fingers. Inebriated by repeated melodious chant, she blew with shaky fervor on a sacred trumpet of donated human thigh bone, Days later I saw her again, tan plastic sandals on dry feet. She was an apparition, enigma. She could be seen everywhere now, walking mostly, slowly, steadily, always on inner pilgrimage, pressing an elegant tree-limb, her walking stick, into red-orange earth. Strapped to her back, a maroon pack laden, I imagined, with implements of prayer -- plus always during monsoon she carried a black umbrella snapped tight, tied across her pack hovering like a crane bobbing and daring the rains to come. Willful stooped, toothless, unconscious of her compelling appeal. My leaden walking feet turned clumsily under when she with floating sweetness smiled upon passersby; past sorrows gone, lids half up.

Ven. Tashi Sangmo, an independent nun, stands near her mud-floored home above Nyingma temple. Excerpt from Living Tibet:The Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. Text by Nanci Rose; Photographs by Bill Warren. Snow Lion, 1997.

Hansel-and-Gretel style she invited me into her tiny hut. A door four short feet flimsy, hinged with coat-hanger wire hung squalid on the haphazard structure, homemade hidden on a cliffside. A clay stove, made when the kerosene ran out, sat on a depression in the earth, to cook or create gentle nights of smoky solitude. Wooden planks pocked with holes met the tin roofline. Patches of black garbage-bag squares, torn, ineffectively covered drafts; rains made traces below in uneven dirt-floor rivulets. A platform held a thin pad, her bed the meditation cushion, a place I would sit many times. Cups, a misshapen spoon and handleless knife sat on a warped board. 8,000 feet into the Himalayas, so alone she thrived. Time nonexistent, I her voluntary captive. The altar, distinctive, dominating, dusty, held a framed print of Padmasambhava and a recent photo of the Dalai Lama, personal teachers and offering bowls ever secretly refilled. Above, somehow crookedly held to the decaying wall, an incongruous plastic flag, national Tibetan, poster-sized, bright red, yellow, blue, banned in Tibet, smiled with Ani-la's own defiance. Sublime subtle consciousness pervaded her clear being each moment: whole genderless peace. Feminine. She had no needs and she had, expected, nothing. Where I first looked for signs of senility, even madness, we later sat on the bed gazing at that altar, cross-legged like Buddhas holding cups of forgotten tea tilted precariously, in union. Words could not pass. She overlooked my ego and pointed it out -- and never in words agreed to be my teacher. Insisting I take the last bite of her last banana, Ani-la was yet not always generous with me. But often this Tibetan leisurely prepared and offered matter-of-factly steaming sweet Indian tea. Ani Tashi Sangmo brought to near boil water enveloped by a handful of precious powdered milk. And as in sacred ritual the nun stirred, added sugar -- a handful -- then tossed loose black tea with a sense of determined witchery into her battered saucepan. Now stirring up rather than around, with most miraculous effect, like taffy being pulled, the thick brown lost its liquidity and poised itself like glass in the air as she raised ladleful, again ladleful three or more feet above that tiny pan, the mesmerizing stream swooshing mantra. For months I brought little offerings and for days I stayed away. Sometimes when I arrived panting from the hard hike against whipping downpours or fierce heatrays, my nun just gazed head tiled as though we'd never met -- images of friendship shattered. I brought her a blanket on that last day; she hugged it with a vulnerable child's passion (So! She needed it). And she took me into silence a final time, a long time, where calm and sadness and poignant melancholy hovered in her hut as we soared above. When at last Ani-la reached and pressed both my hands into her ancient grasp, earth clasp, her gaze embraced me -- "we will not meet again" -- and I sobbed unreservedly. Until she, mother benevolent, Ani Tashi Sangmo patted my hands with hers and motioned in modest pantomime -- Look! I am not crying...Go catch your plane -- Copyright by Nanci Rose. Written after leaving Dharamsala in 1990. We did meet again in Dharamsala in 1996.

Author of Living Tibet, with foreword by the Dalai Lama and photos by Bill Warren, Nanci Rose has been studying world philosophies, meditation and Buddhism for over 30 years. Her research on the symbolism of sacred dances of Tibet has been recognized widely. She travels to India for spiritual study with Tibetan master Khamtrul Rinpoche and nun Ani Tashi Sangmo.

Nanci Rose holds a BA in Therapeutic Dance and a Trauma Counseling Certificate from the University of Buffalo's Graduate School of Social Work

Nanci is a founding member of Wisdom's Goldenrod Center for Philosophic Studies, over looking Seneca Lake
in upstate New York, and first met her spiritual teacher of 15 years, his eminence Khamtrul Rinpoche, in Dharamsala, India.

About Nanci

"Bill [Warren] and I constructed our own makeshift black backdrop for photo shoots in the courtyard of the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts."

Paper mache masks from the traditional opera Pema Woebar, created by the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts.



Excerpts from Living Tibet:The Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. Text by Nanci Rose; Photographs by Bill Warren. Snow Lion, 1997.