This interview is just one of the many that took place for “A New Generation of Buddhist Young Practitioners,” the cover feature of Mandala July-August 1998:

What was your first contact with the Dharma?

I was 13 and had been living up near Cairns, north Queensland. My dad had been to Chenrezig Institute once before and he enjoyed it. We were going to move down towards the Brisbane area, and when we stopped over here at Chenrezig, I really liked it. He asked if we should move to Brisbane or Chenrezig – we decided on Chenrezig, of course!

Was your father Buddhist?

Not really, but I have had a really spiritual upbringing. I was brought up Catholic, but my dad has studied Sufism and he had read Buddhist books before, but he had never really been a Dharma practitioner.

Did he become one after you moved to Chenrezig?

Yes, we took refuge together in 1995 I think it was.

With whom?

Geshe Tashi Tsering, who is still here now.

Did you have a personal interest in spiritual paths since a young age?

Where I was living there was no Dharma, really, but there was information about Sai Baba, Meher Baba, and I had a Christian upbringing, so I did have spiritual interest. But when I met the Dharma I was like a duck to water. It was so easy – I mean, it was easy at first and then became harder!

What aspects of Buddhism made you feel so at home with it?

It felt really wholesome and natural. It didn’t feel like it was trying to change anything in my life. I didn’t like killing animals, I didn’t like stealing – it’s like it wasn’t anything new, in a way. I didn’t feel like I had to change myself but more like I had to work on what was already there. We’ve all got buddhanature anyhow, so it is working with the good parts of ourselves.

The first thing I saw was the sutra path, then a couple of years later the tantric path started to emerge, and that was very inviting for me.

Many young people have misconceptions about tantra, so could you summarize why you do it, or how it works?

The way I have interpreted it is that sutra is a bit like confining myself, in that I have to eliminate some things in my life and my thought patterns, but with tantra I see it that everything I do is my Dharma practice. Whether I am at the secondary college studying and having a really horrible day, or whether I have sneaked into the pub with my friends, or whether I am in the gompa doing Guru Puja, it is all my Dharma practice. It’s all integrated into the same thing.

What advantage do you have by knowing about Buddhism at this age?

Being a teenager is very hard, so if I am in class and can see someone is having a really hard time, it helps me help them. I find some teenagers aren’t willing to hear much Dharma, but others are really willing and want to hear more – they just soak it up.

I don’t go out much and preach Dharma because I find that turns most young people off, but if I can, not using Tibetan Buddhist jargon, I can talk with them in my Australian language. It’s still Dharma whether it’s using Tibetan jargon or not, so if I can help them in that way it’s good.

What makes it hard being a teenager?

I don’t consider myself a normal teenager, and because I live in a Dharma center I don’t have the same problems a normal teenager would. I might in some ways. But I think one of the main things teenagers feel is that they’re not being heard.

Dharma has really helped me take a huge jumping leap over a lot of obstacles that teenagers have. A lot of my problems are more to do with my Dharma practice.

Another way I can answer your question is that I quit school last year. I really wasn’t going anywhere and I felt myself getting stuck. I decided, no – I can’t do this anymore.

At the time there was a ten-week Preliminary Study of the Mind course and I really wanted to do it. I asked Geshe-la if I could do it and he said, “No, you have to go back to school immediately. Education is so important.” I told him, “Geshe-la, I can’t go back to school!  It was really hard not having a mum to look after me when I was in school, too. I told Geshe-la I had already missed enough of school not to be able to pass my exams, and he said, “Hmmm. You like this sort of Tibetan study?” I told him I really wanted to do it and that I would be going back to school the next year. He decided there was no problem, and after doing that school wasn’t so much of a problem

What is the social scene like?

There are a lot of drugs and alcohol and partying. In the school I went to there were a lot of kids who grew up at Chenrezig, and probably the hardest thing for me is seeing these kids I know who had a Dharma upbringing get lost in drugs. To see their hearts not really in it is the hardest thing for me.

Are you interested in getting a job, getting married, having a family?

On a conventional level, what I would like to do is teach English to Tibetan kids in Tibet. One of my teachers, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, set up a program in Tibet called ASIA that’s building schools and hospitals in Tibet, and they work with the Tibetan government to get human rights. He was telling me about this and sort of suggested that when I finish school I could teach English. I would like to help out in Third World countries.

But on an ultimate level, I want to be the best yogini ever! That’s one of my dreams.

If you had a choice, would you choose the yogini path over anything conventional?

I think I can do both. To some extent I think the ultimate will come, but you have to wait for it a bit. You can’t push it. It’s in the future, but you also have to work on it now, inside yourself – you have to prepare yourself before you take that leap. I think doing conventional things can strengthen you to do the ultimate. That’s my theory.

Do you have a wish to do retreat?

Yes. On my last school holiday I did retreat, and I’m hoping that in five weeks when my holidays come up I will be able to do two weeks’ retreat. There are also eight nyung-näs coming up, and I go to school two days a week, so I hope to do nyung-näs on the other days.

What do you get out of doing retreat?

Bliss! When I am out of retreat, I find I get so caught up in all these tangents, and will just recite my Dharma practice before I go to sleep because I am so tired – it’s really easy to make excuses to not practice hard. But when I’m in retreat I know I’ve got this many sessions to do, and they’re meant to be this long and I’ve got to recite this many mantras, so I’m just going to do it and enjoy it.

From your experience, have you seen qualities emerge as a result of doing this kind of meditation?

Oh, definitely. It’s hard to say what they are, because it’s hard to put it into words. When I look at myself when I was 12 or 13 and I look at myself now, and it is just not the same person at all!

Because I have always figured how young I am I will back myself and say, “Marie-Clare, you haven’t got that much time left, work harder!” Then someone will come along and say, “Wow, you’re only 17 – you’re so fortunate,” and they might be 50, having only just met the Dharma. That brings me back to earth and I see how fortunate I am.

Do you often get this sense of there not being much time?

Believing in impermanence and how every moment is so precious, no one really has time to waste. And being a practitioner, you don’t really have an excuse for not practicing. For myself I think I have to practice very hard. And I think if you can become familiar with everything when you’re young, it is so great, and you can keep and maintain that when you get older. Life is so short anyway.

If you could introduce one element of Dharma to a group that had none, what would you pick?

For me, one would be compassion and wisdom. It’s hard if you just introduce one part of it, because there is so much. If you introduced some impermanence in with that at the same time, I think it’s really important.

I see a lot of Westerners divided their time into, “This is my Dharma practice and this is my non-Dharma practice – I’m practicing Dharma when I am in the gompa meditating, I am not practicing Dharma when I drive my car to work in the morning.” I would probably say, “Look at wisdom, look at compassion,” and I would stress that you practice this every moment of your life – this is when you are fighting with your sister or you get a bad grade from the college that makes you really angry, or whatever. It’s every moment.