Well, it's actually quite simple. My name is Khandro Rinpoche.
Khandro Rinpoche: Introduction
I come from India. I am of the generation of people who were born as refugees in India.
I come from a family that doesn't really encourage the elder child to become a monk or a nun,
and so my becoming a nun, it was sort of a process.
So, I was born into a family of Nyingma masters, the Mindrolling family.
It is a family where the children carry on the lineage, and so being the elder child of the family,
there was a lot of discussion.
And when I was born and as a young child,
I was sort of recognized, what is called 'recognized' as one of the 'yangsis,'
or the incarnations of the previous Khandro Rinpoche.
And she came from the Kagyu tradition,
so a lot of nuns who were students of the previous Khandro Rinpoche
had expressed their wish to create a nunnery and build a strong community of women practitioners
within the Kagyu tradition.
So part of my younger childhood, I would spend with the nuns,
and it was always with that kind of an environment in which they did sometimes express the wish
for me to head the nunnery.
Which of course was always a cause of conversation in my family itself,
because of the Nyingma background and then the continuity of the family lineage and so forth.
So, part of my teenage life went on, in going to school and in receiving the monastic training as I grew up.
I was born and grew up in a monastery, and so there was a lot of discussions around me
on the Kagyu's way of expectation and then the Nyingma's way of expectation.
So it was quite fun actually, for a young child
I personally always relied on my teacher, His Holiness Minling Rinpoche's, my father's advice,
and Rinpoche would always say, "You do what you like."
You know, you have to study and then once you've studied and you have an understanding of some kind,
then your own mind will tell what you'd like to do.
So I grew up and probably because of the influence of growing up with monks and nuns throughout my life,
I really did have the wish to take on ordination.
But it was still quite not the easiest thing to do.
So a barber helped me.
With my family and the whole Tibetan tradition of having to keep hair and not shave and so forth,
one day the barber just helped me in slipping off with his scissors and a shaver,
and he clipped off part of my hair.
We told everyone it was accidental!
Ever since then I continued to shave my hair,
and slowly then on,
once everybody seemed to be in harmony with the idea,
then I went on to take on my nun's vows.
So it took me about two years to get there.