This is the incredible story of how an Englishwoman, the daughter of a fishmonger from London's East End, has become a Buddhist legend and a champion for the rights of women to attain spiritual enlightenment.
In 1976 Diane Perry, by then known by her Tibetan name, Tenzin Palmo, secluded herself in a remote cave, 13,200 feet up in the Himalayas, cut off from the world by the mountains and snow. There she engaged in twelve years of intense Buddhist meditation. She faced unimaginable cold, wild animals, near-starvation and avalanches; she grew her own food and slept in a traditional wooden meditation box, three-feet square - she never lay down. Her goal was to attain enlightenment as a woman.
In 1988 she emerged from the cave with a determination to build a convent in northern India to revive the Togdenma lineage, a long-forgotten female spiritual elite. Since then she has become a globe-travelling fundraiser, giving lecture tours and meeting with spiritual leaders from the Pope to Desmond Tutu. Tenzin Palmo agreed to tell her story only to journalist Vicki Mackenzie and a proportion of the royalties from the sale of this book will help towards the completion of her convent.
