The banker who turned Buddhist nun in Bhutan

Emma Slade is an unlikely Buddhist monk in the Himalayas.
In red monastic robes, her tonsured head tilted forward and her face flashing an eager smile, the tall and fair British woman has been shadowing people around the corridors of the Royal University of Bhutan where booklovers have congregated for Mountain Echoes, Bhutan’s annual literary festival. “I’ve been stalking people to get them to buy the book I wrote,” she beams.
Slade, 51, is using the money she raises from the book in a charity that she founded in Bhutan two years ago.“I just built a hospital for specially abled Bhutanese children and I didn’t build it with bananas. Money is important but you also need to ask yourself, how much is enough,” deadpans the Buddhist nun. Her book, Set Free, narrates the tale of her own astonishing life and its changing course after Slade, a Cambridge-educated, highflying banking analyst was taken hostage during a business trip to Jakarta.
It was a violent September afternoon in 1997. In her black suit and sling-backs, Slade had click-clacked into her hotel room when a gun was pushed into her chest by a stranger. She remained curled up on the floor, pleading for her life until she was rescued by the police. Yet, afterwards when the armymen showed her a photograph of her attacker – a gambler looking for money – slumped and held down by cops, she had felt a strange sense of “compassion and care” for her assailant. Her ability to care for another human who had caused her pain and fear had surprised her.
She returned to her desk in Hong Kong but could not escape the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that had started to set in. “My Dad died when I was very young and to get over my grief I joined the financial market which offered glamour, power and success. I thought I would be safe and my heart would heal. Hilariously, seeking security in money I ended being held hostage. I discovered that money does not make you safe.” In November 1998, she resigned.
Her transition into a monk was not entirely surprising when she looks back today. “From a young age I wanted to meditate. I had my room painted saffron yellow, insisted on not wearing shoes and always talked about Bhutan.”
In 2011 she made her first trip to Bhutan and met her Lama. In 2012, she became the first Western woman to be ordained in Bhutan. Shaving her head was not a big deal for Slade who as a 22-year-old had cut off all her hair on an impulse. “I had liked the freedom it gave then and I still do.”
The Bhutanese call it having a ‘fresh head’ and that description suits Slade well. “When the Lama said it was time for me to change my clothes, an instruction that meant I was becoming a nun, I thought about the cycle of relationships in my life, particularly the feeling of lusting after someone. But how peaceful it’s been to take a vow of celibacy. It wasn’t the biggest challenge really,” she laughs.
The “fun nun” who believes that humour is essential to Buddhist practice is underneath a serious practitioner who has been studying texts in Tibetan. She continues to live in Whitstable, England -- the small seaside town once famous only for oysters is now recognised as the home of Ani (nun) who goes by the name of Pema Deki, which means “lotus blooms”. Here, she leads her “mix-and-match lifestyle” of a yoga teacher, Buddhist practitioner and mother to an 11-year-old son until it’s time for her to return to the stillness of Bhutan every three months.