Alex Schaefer/ The Post Tibetan Buddhist nuns from the Khachoe Ghakyil Ling Nunnery Perform the traditional "Dance of the Bodhisattva Children" at Mitchell Auditorium Tuesday in front of a capacity audience. Many O.U. student organizations contributed to the fund which allowed the nuns, who have been traveling across the U.S. to raise money for their nunnery in Kathmandu, Nepal, to make a stop in Athens.

Last night, Jangsem Tinglee, a Tibetan Buddhist nun, did something that for half of her life she could not do - she prayed and danced.

Just five years ago, that was impossible for many nuns living in a culture where monastic arts like dancing and philosophy were the traditional domain of men.

But the role of women in Tibetan Buddhist refugee communities in Nepal and India has changed in the last decade, as a new generation of exiles, increasingly women, are recognized for their struggle to preserve a threatened culture.

Tinglee, has been traveling in the United States and Canada with a group of 11 nuns from Kathmandu, Nepal since April to earn money to expand their overcrowded nunnery. They came to Ohio University to perform dance and ritual at the Music Building. The five-year-old nunnery is one of only four in Nepal and India where woman can study the monastic arts.

The convent, which began with five nuns, is now home to 240 women, half of whom came from Chinese-occupied Tibet as refugees seeking religious freedom.

"In Tibet you are not allowed to become a nun," Tinglee said.

The reasons are both patriarchal and political. Tibetan Buddhists there must worship at night in secret to avoid persecution by Chinese soldiers.

"Buddhists are arrested, tortured and killed for saying, 'I am a follower of his holiness Dalai Lama,'" Fran Mohoupt, a nun said. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists.

Communist Chinese troops have occupied Tibet for nearly 50 years. In 1959, they crushed a Tibetan uprising, forcing the Dalai Lama to flee with more than 100,000 followers to India and Nepal. Since then, Beijing has sought to systematically wipe out Tibetan culture.

Many parents are now sending their children to Nepal and India to study and practice their religion freely. Increasingly, it is women who are crossing the border.

For seven days in 1982, Tinglee walked across the Himalayan Mountains from her homeland in Tibet to neighboring Nepal, risking arrest by Chinese and Nepalese border police. But the journey home, back across the 18,000 foot-high mountains into Chinese-occupied Tibet might take her much longer.

"I can't go back to Tibet. I only send letters to my family," she said.

It might be more than a lifetime for Tinglee and the other hundreds of thousands of exiled Tibetans who are still waiting for Tibetan independence.

Tinglee, one of the first women to cross the border seeking to become a nun, met two Lamas, or teachers, who brought her to study at a monastery in Kathmandu, Nepal, a very unusual invitation. Nuns were never before permitted to study at a monastery.

The Lamas helped found the nunnery in 1986 and Tinglee was helping to carry bricks up to the construction site in Nepal.

Temples, monasteries and holy sites in Tibet have largely been destroyed by Chinese troops. Since the 1950s, the Tibetans have suffered persecution and the loss of their culture.

According to a Human Rights Watch report released last week, Tibetans living outside of Tibet who oppose the occupation of their homeland have been jailed and tortured.

China has a strong interest in hanging onto the Himalayan land. The word for Tibet in Chinese means "treasure house." It is rich in uranium, and $1 billion in wood is exported every year. There also is thought to be undiscovered oil reserves.

"Tibet is dying," said Mara Giglio, a member of Students for a Free Tibet, an OU group that sponsored the nuns' visit. "This reality becomes more serious, more real, more profound, when we have these people in our midst."

Giglio remembers tearing out the pages from a book that was written by the Dalai Lama. She was studying in Tibet three years ago and had to hide evidence of her Tibetan studies from Chinese officials who accompanied her in Tibet.

"It is a really heavy place," she said. "It is stiff, stagnant, sad, depressing. This is really killing people. It is so necessary that we do something because we can. As an American I have so much political power. I should use it. It is an honor to serve Tibetans."

For the exiled Tibetans, it is their faith that frees them.

"It is lonely because we have not family in Nepal," said Lobsang Palmo, 26, who left Tibet when she was nine years old. "But, on the other side we are very fortunate; we are with the Dalai Lama."