The Venerable Adrienne Howley was ordained in 1982 by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In 1993 she took the highest ordination vows possible from a Vietnamese Buddhist master, becoming one of the very few Western women in the world to have done so. Now in her early seventies, she lives in a small rural town north of Sydney, Australia, where she devotes her time to Buddhist practice and teaching, as well as doing volunteer work in a local hospice.