Swe Nunnery, Tibet: Living Together At The Top Of The World

CHINA | Tuesday, 8 January 2013 | Views [257] | View Smaller Image

Nuns carry bundles of sticks they’ve collected for kindling. Swe Nunnery continues to elude the steady encroachment of modern Chinese influences into Tibet: the nunnery operates with no electricity or running water, and provisions must be fetched from the nearest town - a 45 minute walk away.

Two nuns huddle together to study a Buddhist text. In Tibet and elsewhere, nuns are not typically afforded the same educational opportunities - including basic schooling - as their monk counterparts. Instead, they must study doubly hard on their own or with other nuns to learn the same material.

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Nuns gather joyfully outside of the du-khong, or main meditation hall, before mid-day prayer. Without access to the same funding as their male counterparts, the nuns were forced to build the meditation hall entirely by themselves over a period of three years. They recall it as one would a dream, still unsure of how they managed the incredible feat of carrying the wooden planks up the mountain, mixing the materials together, and constructing the building.

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Swe Nunnery, Tibet: Living Together At The Top Of The World

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