Conditions at the various nunneries are primitive at best.  Yet the nuns ably maintain themselves even as they adhere to strict meditation schedules; they take turns caring for each other in three-year retreats in which they pray, study, and practice, sitting upright in a traditional wooden meditation box.  Their dedication and devotion is daunting by any contemplative standard, particularly contemporary ones.  

The difference between these yogini-practitioners and Western nuns is worth mentioning.  While the latter are often cloistered, there is usually an emphasis on doing good works, what would be called “karma yoga” in Buddhism.  

The Tibetan yoginis of Nangchen, while they are a strong positive factor in the local community, are primarily involved in practices that lead to enlightenment.  Their presence is said to have reduced crime, violence, even alcoholism in the surrounding areas, according to Tsoknyi Rinpoche.  

The nuns of Nangchen are renowned for their mastery of tummo, or inner heat meditation, but this ritual is not allowed to be filmed because of its highly sacred aspect.  (Tummo makes it possible for adepts to dry wet sheets on their bodies, outdoors, in the middle of a Himalayan winter, and is as much a proof of spiritual accomplishment as a handy way to stave off freezing to death in unheated buildings or caves.)

Though there is a long tradition of women practitioners in Tibet, they’ve had, not surprisingly, much more of a struggle than their male counterparts.  The word for woman in Tibetan means “lower-birth,” partly because they historically had little or no time for spiritual practice if they became wives and mothers.  

Western women Buddhists Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo and Tsultrim Allione speak movingly in the film about the determination of these women of Nangchen to become educated in Buddha-dharma -- and their ability to become awakened.  “Buddha-nature is the same for all sentient beings.”  Happily, patriarchal discrimination against women is becoming passé in all spheres, including the spiritual.  

The lineage of Tsoknyi Rinpoche III goes back to the first Tsoknyi Rinpoche, who instructed his disciple Tsang Yang Gyaltso to build nunneries in the late 19^th century.  When the nunneries were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, the nuns dispersed, but some continued practicing.  In recent times, a younger generation of yoginis has re-united at the far-flung nunneries to renew their vows and practices, often being taught by the few remaining older nuns who survived.