TRANSCRIPT
Backstage at a convent in Nepal, several nuns are stretching and chatting.
They're preparing to put on a kung fu display at the hill-top Druk Amitabha Monastery, five years after it closed its doors to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Outside hundreds of visitors, other nuns and monks are waiting patiently.
Then the music starts.
The nuns perform a display of hand chops and high kicks, with some wielding swords.
In a dramatic finish, one nun places her arm below a pile of five bricks, keeping it there as the pile is smashed with a sledgehammer.
Aged from 17 to 30, the nuns are members of the 1000 year-old Drukpa lineage, which gives nuns equal status as monks.
Theirs is the only female order in the patriarchal Buddhist monastic system.
The nuns come from Bhutan, India and Nepal and are all trained in kung fu, the Chinese martial art for self-defence and strength.
30 year-old Jigme Konchok Lhamo, from India, is one of them.
"So when I was very little, when I was 12, I was a very rebellious kid. Rebellious I was, when people used to tell me, 'you shouldn’t do this because you're a girl'. I used to get very angry when I was little. I was always on that side of... my personality was that way. So when people, when His Holiness Gyalwang Drukpa Guru came to our place and he talked about women empowerment and gender equality, how girls are important, how giving equal chances is important. I was very inspired and I followed him to be a nun."
Usually, nuns are expected to cook and clean and are not allowed to practise any form of martial art.
But His Holiness Gyalwang Drukpa, a monk who ranks only slightly below the Dalai Lama, decided to train women in kung fu to improve their health and spiritual well-being.
He opened the convent in 2009.
It now has 300 members aged between six and 54.
Jigme Yangchen Gamo joined the nunnery when she was young.
"I really wanted to become a nun. I have seen that nuns are doing lots of different works and they also perform the kung fu. And you know I am very happy. I am really attached with them and I really wanted become a nun, to help others like they are helping lots of people all the time also."
While the group is progressive, the convent says its combination of gender equality, physical strength and respect for all living things represents the order's return to its true spiritual roots.
In the past, the nuns have completed lengthy expeditions on foot and by bike in the Himalayas to raise money for disaster relief, as well as to promote environmentally-friendly living.
Jigme Lhamo says her main goal is to achieve enlightenment.
"As a perspective from a Buddhist side, I think our main goal is to attain enlightenment like Buddha, but for now as I am a normal person, I think I would be focusing more on helping others. Like we always say that helping others is our religion, whatever is more beneficial for other people, I would like to do that. Like we do a lot of self-defence workshops, and we do a lot for the environment."
