ABSTRACT
This chapter telling the story of Tenzin Sangmo, abbess of Ani Tsangkhung (Nuns’ Cave), offers an example of the religious and political challenges faced by Tibetan Buddhist nuns in the second half of the twentieth century. Entering a Tibetan nunnery in the mid-1930s as an illiterate teenager, Tenzin Sangmo abided by a centuries-old Buddhist tradition whereby nuns could never be fully ordained so that to all intents and purposes, they remained under the supervision of monks. As the nunnery’s eventual leader decades later, she oversaw controversial changes that saw Tibetan Buddhism attempt to survive the new reality of China–Tibet relations pertaining to religion that began in the 1950s.
