BENGALURU: From the outside, the world of fashion, full of glitz and glam, can seem like a dream come true. For Lama Aria Drolma, who walked at Milan, Paris and New York Fashion Weeks, and modelled for luxury fashion brands like Chanel, Giorgio Armani, and Ralph Lauren, this dream was just another day.
“I was living in New York and my life was a whirlwind of photo shoots, runway shows, glamorous events, restaurant openings, and meeting beautiful people. I had access to luxury, the latest fashion, and a really amazing lifestyle,” she says, adding, “But after some time, you feel that these possessions really don’t make you happy.”
Now a nun and teacher, Drolma’s mindfulness meditation classes were held over the weekend which is what brought her back to Bengaluru. The turning point came in 2008 around the time she came to feel a deep emptiness in her life, a yearning for meaning despite appearing to have it all.
The excitement that once filled her began to feel very meaningless and the goals she pursued so relentlessly no longer held that depth of purpose. “I really found myself searching for something more, something real and substantial that would provide an answer to the bigger question – what is the purpose of my life?”
She decided to go all in to find answers, signing up for a three-year-long retreat at a New York Monastery to become an ordained Buddhist nun in 2011. At this intense cloistered practice, she went from a life of materialism to living a minimalist life, cut off from the outside world except through letters written to family and friends. “It was, of course, very difficult.
I was leading such a glamorous life. And here, our rooms were very minimalistic, it was very disciplined, all of us ate the same food – it was a deep contrast. But when I embark on a journey, I am the sort of person who takes it head on,” she recalls. Now, her life looks drastically different. “I wake up with prayers, with living intentionally, living with a purpose, living with my heart filled with compassion, knowing we are all interconnected, and my thoughts are on how we can benefit the world, even in little ways,” she says.
Thirteen years after her ordination, Drolma is back in the city she grew up in to share her knowledge of mindfulness meditation, a technique practised at the monastery. Having taught classes to young people at Harvard Business School, Oxford University, Google headquarters and other prestigious institutions, she’s noticed some things that plague all her students. “Many youngsters I teach find their lives to be overwhelming – with stress, anxiety, depression and other things.
All of this comes from the mind. Most of us get up in the morning, look through our social media and there itself – it’s too much information, people can’t process it. I train the mind to live intentionally – to stop, and step back. You don’t have to pray if you’re not a very spiritual person, but you can set your day intentionally by thinking thoughts of gratitude, creating a positive energy in your mind, and getting up and saying, ‘This is going to be the plan for my day’.”