The Buddhist nun who fights to open a monastery to help Argentines

As if she was predestined from the beginning, Susana was born in La Paz, Mendoza province, in the ’60s.

He lived a happy childhood, with family trips that fueled her desire to one day leave alone to find her way.

“I was born in Mendoza, but I am not from Mendoza. I was born there for some reason. And I think that reason is that I had to help Argentina,” she says today, converted into the Venerable Thubten Kundrol, the first and only Buddhist nun in our countryin his house – temple of the porteño neighborhood of Belgrano.

Independent from the beginning, at the age of seventeen he traveled to Buenos Aires to study journalism. She worked for the Atlántida publishing house as an editor and for a rock magazine.

met Charlie Garcia, Pappo, Piazzolla, Oscar Moro and Leon Gieco. She was a friend of Hermeto Pascoal, of Vinicius de Moraes, of Gilberto Gil.

But he liked journalism “more or less” and the economic measures implemented by the military dictatorship made subsistence difficult.

He was hungry, so he decided to emigrate. First, to Brazil; later, to the United States, to work as a waitress; finally she came to Japan, where she taught English.

It was the year 1985 and that young woman with big eyes and calm gaze was still looking for something, but she didn’t know exactly what.

until one day he saw a tv show about a buddhist monastery. She asked and came to a spiritual retreat.

Ten days listening to the teachings of a master, meditating, eating what is just and necessaryawakening to a new way of conceiving existence.

“I realized that it was what I had been looking for all my life. As soon as the retreat ended, I asked how I had to do to become a nun.”, she says surrounded by plants, her cat Jinpa and images of the Dalai Lama on a small altar.

As soon as the retreat ended, I asked how I had to do to become a nun.

Thubten Kundrol

“The teacher told me that I had to go to Nepal. There the Venerable Kyabje Thubten Zopa Rinpoche accepted me as a disciple. We were seventeen applicants and only four were accepted. Four foreign nuns were ordained with the goal of founding a monastery. One wanted to restore the female monastic order in India, the other wanted there to be a monastery for foreign nuns in India, the third wanted found a monastery in the United States, and the fourth was me, who from the beginning had my clear objective: to build the first Buddhist monastery in Argentina”, he details.

A religion without God

Buddhism bases its principles on the teachings of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha.

Siddhartha was born in the 5th century BC. c. in an aristocratic familyin the former republic of Sakia, present-day Nepal.

According to legend, one day he left his residence and saw for the first time a poor man, an old man and a sick man.

Thereafter he relinquished his privileges, left the comfort of your home and dedicated himself to meditation, until one day he finally managed to reach a state of complete happiness where there is no pain, ego or suffering, known as “nirvana”.

His teachings multiplied throughout the Asian continentflourished between the 4th and 11th centuries and divided into different currents.

One of them, tibetan buddhismreached the West from the 19th century, where it became popular throughout the last century.

buddhism does not propose the existence of a supreme God. Nor does it preach the divinization of the Buddha.

It only teaches Gautama’s methods and beliefs as a path to that Enlightenment that he attained, according to legend, while meditating under a fig treewhich was actually a religious ficus.



Thubten Kundrol and his cat Jinpa. Photo: Andrés D’Elía.

According to Buddhist doctrine, humans are in a constant state of existential suffering whose origin is longing, desire or attachment.

That state of suffering is called “samsara” and it happens because the souls are trapped in the eternal wheel of reincarnations.

After physical death souls ascend to higher forms of existence or they descend into crude and basic forms, depending on their moral and spiritual behavior in life, which is known as “karma”.

The only way to interrupt this circuit of suffering is attain nirvana through spiritual enlightenment practices that allow the individual to leave suffering and desire behind, and escape from reincarnation to finally find infinite peace.

“The very fact of clinging to existence determines that when the time comes to die we cling to the self,” explains Ven Thubten Kundrol. and when we cling to the self we cling to anger, to envy, to pride, to love as attachment. There are three modes of action: mental (having misconceptions, exaggerating things), verbal (lying, saying mean things), and physical. All three are equally important.

It is the first step to be on the right path, which has to have a goal: to help others. When one thinks of others, it sublimates the self.

Thubten Kundrol

And he adds: “The sum of our actions leads us to a new incarnation. It depends on how many of those actions have been positive and how many negative, one life or another will touch us.. If we accumulate many good deeds and have positive karma, we are reborn as a human being; if not, we can be born as an animal, but even so we can have a better or worse reincarnation: being the dog of the queen of England is not the same as being an abandoned dog”.

-How is good karma generated?

-The first thing is to become aware, talk to yourself. One’s best friend has to be oneself. It is the first step to be on the right path, which has to have a goal: to help others. When one thinks of others, it sublimates the self, the consciousness expands and is all light. The self is selfish, it is closed, but when the conscience is opened to others, that self is forgotten and one stops being a slave to his ego. That does not mean that we do not continue to act based on what we are, but in a balanced way.

The key is balance…

-People live an illusory life, as if they were in a movie. People worry about what cell phone they are going to buy, what job they are going to have to pay for that cell phone, then they get it but they want something else. So you never get out of it. Wisdom must be accumulated. You don’t have to become religious, or even be a Buddhist. Just be aware.

The Illumination of Argentina

Ven Thubten Kundrol chose Buddhism as a way to achieve his own state of peace, but also to multiply it in our country and help us to better navigate our way through this life, both on a personal level and as a function of the society that we build together.

“Japan is the power that is because of how it works as a community,” he says.. What Argentina needs is to delve deeper into the enigmas of existence. The Argentine lives as if he were never going to die and that is a mistakebecause you live without thinking about the limit and when you don’t have limits you’re wrong”.

He argues that this is due to “ignorance”, but not intellectual ignorance: “It is ignoring the reason for our existence. If we don’t delve into that, you can’t understand why things happen. When something good happens to us we immerse ourselves in the good and when something bad happens to us we immerse ourselves in the bad. Then we are always captive of our emotions. When the time comes to leave, we don’t achieve anything, because we didn’t understand anything.”

Thubten Kundrol was a journalist.  He today he practices Buddhism and meditation.  Photo: Andres D'Elía.


Thubten Kundrol was a journalist. He today he practices Buddhism and meditation. Photo: Andres D’Elía.

– Being Argentine defines something at a karmic level?

-Of course. If you are born into a certain family, it is because something unites you with them. Same with countries. If you were born in Argentina it is because you have something in common with other Argentines. There is a basic coincidence and it is the collective karma that people have to experience.

-How is our “base”?

-In Argentina the base is very good, we have good karma because in this country there are no wars. Although we may seem violent, we are actually peaceful when compared to other countries, for example the United States. But we need to know more why we are here, the incidence of our daily actions, where it leads us. Be aware. The great problem of Argentina is that we do not work according to the other. In Japan, everything is done based on the other, as a community; but not here. Everyone thinks of himself and nothing else. We lack much wisdom.

-Eating so much meat plays against us?

-Of course. As long as other beings are made to suffer, there will be no peace in the world. People do not realize the suffering of animals. They are treated as objects. That is indeed a problem for our country, because we are carnivores. Eating meat always generates negative karma. The fear, the anger, the pain of an animal that is sacrificed generates an energy that people then eat. Animals are victims of genocide and the responsibility lies with the human being.

Eating meat always generates negative karma.

Thubten Kundrol

– Would a monastery help to be more aware?

What I want is to help Argentina by cultivating people in spirituality. But it’s not about being devoted, it is about opening your mind, understanding reality in depth and being able to balance things. When you have your mind awake, the negative does not affect you so much and you know how to handle the positive without getting on the horse. There is always a balance. A monastery would help train more monks and nuns who would multiply these teachings so that we all, as a society, move forward once and for all.

Jinpa cat jumps on her lap. Ven Thubten Kundrol receives him with the calm with which he moves, speaks, recounts the years of his formation, his dreams, the time he spent fighting to build a monastery in Argentina.

A robbery, internal, unkept promises of politicians, everything came together so that the monastery never finished being built.

“My teacher in Nepal many times told me to go there, to come back, that here corruption makes everything very difficult, but I’m not going to give up,” says Thubten as the sun falls on the plants on his terrace. Twenty years passed. Of the four nuns that we started together, three achieved their monastery. I still do not. I know it’s hard but Argentina is slowly waking up to a new consciousness. Buddhism can do a lot to accompany her on the journey, and there should be a place for it.”

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The Buddhist nun who fights to open a monastery to help Argentines