You’d miss the unassuming entrance to the nunnery on the side of a hill just north of Thimphu unless you were looking for it. But if you do pass through its stone gates, you’ll see red-robed Buddhist nuns of all shapes and ages moving about the complex of buildings of Thangthong Dewachen Drupthop nunnery also known as Zilukha Anim Dratshang. You’ll also immediately feel calm and serene. You might even hear their energetic harmonies as they chant prayers, blow ceremonial horns, and beat drums. Spare and neat, the nunnery is home to more than 100 nuns who pray daily for the health and well-being of all sentient beings. Their prayers are for you.
We live in a house just below the nunnery. I occasionally walk there and sometimes I sit and listen to the nuns’ chanting, or talk with them as they go about their day. They always want to give me tea. Several years ago, a friend, a Canadian woman was consulting with the World Bank in Thimphu for a few weeks. She’d walk to the nunnery every morning from the Druk Hotel where she stayed in town, and she’d sit in the temple and meditate for an hour or so while the rest of Thimphu was waking up. She told me that each morning on her walk an old dog would appear, seemingly out of nowhere, and would follow her to the nunnery. She told the nuns she didn’t know the dog but that he was always waiting outside her hotel in the mornings and was her silent companion on her walk to the nunnery.
One morning, as the dog sat waiting by the steps of the temple for her to finish her quiet time and walk back to the hotel, he suddenly stood up and started howling. He kept it up for a good five minutes. Finally, the head abbess came out of the temple and stood beside him. “Listen to me,” she said in Dzongkha, the Bhutanese language. “Your friend is not coming just now. She will come when she is finished. You must be patient and wait. Now sit down.” He did quit howling and he did sit down. He waited patiently for his friend to reappear. And when she did, he trotted behind her as she set off down the road. My friend told me this story and it sounded so typical of interactions in Bhutan. Unassuming and full of equanimity.
My husband Namgay and I were lucky enough to spend time in another nunnery in Zhemgang, Karma Drubdey Palmo Choskyi Dingkhang. I was writing an article for UNICEF about a program to educate and counsel villagers on HIV/AIDS. UNICEF had trained monks, lamas, and nuns all over Bhutan to talk about the disease and make people aware of the dangers of unprotected sex. It was a wildly successful program because nuns especially are very much looked up to here. What they say and do carries weight.
We were greeted in the road by the abbess, who escorted us up a steep hill to a beautiful reception room in her nunnery, with a large window that gave a breathtaking view of a lush, green valley and the palace of Bhutan’s second king at Kuenga Rabten. We’d only been there long enough to settle ourselves in a reception room when the tea and biscuits arrived. About 30 minutes later, lovely young nuns in red robes began an extraordinary procession of food. It was a spectacle as platter after platter of beautiful, steaming rice and bowls of vegetables were carried in by the smiling nuns. There were so many different containers, filled with food, most certainly picked from the nunnery’s garden and made into delicious curries. There was absolutely no correlation between the amount of food, which looked like it would easily feed 30 people, and our own party of two.
And then the most amazing thing happened: as the last bowl of steamed asparagus was placed onto the table, the wooden table leg suddenly buckled under the sheer weight of all of the food. One deft nun and Namgay both jumped up and caught the edge of the table just in time. They saved all but the asparagus.
Before or since, I’ve never enjoyed a meal more, and I still can’t get my head around it. Nuns in Bhutan are the poorest of the poor. They have so little, yet how gracious and generous it was of them to offer so much food that it broke the table! I wonder if I could ever learn to be that generous.
In November, Bhutan witnessed a historic moment: for the second time in its history, the country conferred full monastic ordination on a large number of women. The ordination happened under the auspices of the Bhutan Nuns Foundation (BNF) along with Bhutan’s central monastic body.
Of course, Buddhist nuns have been fully ordained since the Buddha’s time, but not continuously in all regions. What is happening now in Bhutan is part of a global restoration of a lineage that once flourished, then vanished, but is now returning.
Buddhistdoor Global did a brilliant job of reporting this auspicious occasion. It was only the second time full ordination in the Vajrayana tradition has taken place in Bhutan or the rest of the world, for that matter. The first time was in June 2022, when 144 nuns received gelongma vows at the request of His Majesty the King of Bhutan, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. In fact, the Bhutanese royal family’s support has clearly been influential in making full ordination in a Vajrayana context, happen, which is groundbreaking.
At the BNF’s Training and Resource Centre in Tshalumaphey, not far from Thimphu, around 265 women from 14 countries, including Bhutan, received full gelongma vows from 15–19 November. Among them were Bhutanese nuns and foreign practitioners from as far away as Australia, the United States, Europe, and elsewhere.
What moves me most about this moment in Bhutan isn’t the ceremony or the headlines, but what it means for the women—these gentle, determined souls who have spent their lives praying for and taking care of others. Many of them grew up in remote villages, walked into nunneries as girls, and dedicated themselves quietly to a path that never gave them the same recognition or opportunities as monks. Yet they carried on with such remarkable grace. To have full ordination at last—to be seen, spiritually and formally, as equal bearers of wisdom and compassion—feels like the world is finally catching up to a truth they have already lived every day. It honors the years of chanting in freezing temples, the hours of study under dim lighting, the kindness they have offered every visitor, howling dog, and lost soul who wandered up their paths.
I keep thinking of that table in Zhemgang collapsing under the weight of the food they insisted on giving us; food they could scarcely afford to share. Their generosity was so abundant it literally broke furniture. That same spirit is what they now carry into this new chapter: open-handed, unselfconscious, overflowing. Full ordination doesn’t change who they are, but it changes what is possible for them. It gives them a place at the center of the monastic world rather than at its edges. It gives them the authority to teach, to lead, to shape the Dharma for future generations. And if their vows were already strong enough to break a table, imagine what they’ll do with doors flung open.
Addendum
Because of unstable topography and steep terrain the nuns of Karma Drubdey nunnery in Zhemgang must relocate. They are raising funds for a new nunnery about eight kilometers away. Have a look here at the plans for their project and you can also see some scary cracks in some of their buildings. If you’re able, please consider donating to this very worthy cause. Let’s break a table!
Related features from BDG
Buddhistdoor View: The Global Peace Prayer Festival in the Bigger Picture of Bhutan’s National Agenda
Gelongma Dompa (dgeslongma’i sdom pa): The Blessing of Bhikshuni Ordination in Bhutan
Ten Years of Empowering Female Monastics: Bhutan Nuns Foundation Extends Reach with New Training Center
An Agent of Change: Empowering Bhutanese Nuns
Related news reports from BDG
Buddhist Women: His Holiness the Je Khenpo Ordains 265 Buddhist Nuns from 14 Countries During Bhutan’s Global Peace Prayer Festival
Bhutan Plans Historic Bhikshuni Ordination as Global Peace Prayer Festival Begins
Government of Bhutan to Host Landmark Global Peace Prayer Festival in November
BBC Names Dr. Tashi Zangmo of the Bhutan Nuns Foundation among 100 Most Influential Women of 2018
