Alexandra David-Néel (vegetarian): Courageous Explorer in Search of Truth, Part 2 of 3

After going to Sikkim, India, Madame David-Néel’s friend, His Holiness Sidkéong Tulku Namgyal, helped her receive an audience with His Holiness the 13th Dalai Lama, who was staying in Darjeeling at the time. On April 15, 1912, in Kalimpong, she became the first noted Western woman to converse with the Dalai Lama about spiritual enlightenment, during which His Holiness advised her to learn the Tibetan language.

Later the same year, she met the person who had the greatest impact on her life, the Gomchen of Lachen Monastery, in northern Sikkim. Two years after meeting her Master, Madame David-Néel moved to his summer retreat, where she began her now-famous hermitage in a cave in the mountains of northern Sikkim, close to the border with Tibet, braving both the cold and isolation. “I lived as a hermit on the last slope of the Himalayas. I resided in a cave at an altitude of 3,900 meters.” Madame David-Néelendured many physical hardships. She explained: “As a stoic, I must despise injury or, rather, I must not feel it, must not be affected by it so that it cannot violate the freedom of my soul.”

Madame Alexandra David-Néel was initiated to the “short path” meditation technique that she was told liberates the soul from the eternal cycle of birth and death in one lifetime. In her book, “Tibetan Journey,” she wrote: “All things are aggregations of atoms that dance and, by their movement, produce sound. When the rhythm of the dance changes, the sound it produces also changes…” One may conclude that the “short path” doctrine is a meditation method on the inner Heavenly Light and Sound of God, the oldest form of meditation taught by all the Great Masters. Thus, during this hermitage, she finally found the inner peace she had been longing for since childhood.

Following her extensive training, Madame David-Néel’s Master gave her the religious name of Yéshé Tömé, or “Lamp of Wisdom,” which earned her recognition by Buddhist authorities wherever she subsequently went in Asia. In 1914, she met a14-year-old Tibetan boy called Aphur Yongden (vegetarian), who became her servant and later adopted son, as well as a lifelong close friend.