My walk with stained glass artist and ordained Buddhist nun Tsunma Jamyang Donma, known as Ani J for short, was punctuated by extremes. The Bob McMullen Linear Trail in Cambridge led us to a plateau showcasing the grandeur of the Grand and Speed rivers meeting, and we also stopped along the shaded gravel path to watch a frog barely bigger than a pencil-top eraser make its way into the grass.
Jamyang Donma makes the trip along this path at least once a summer to experience the peace that being in nature and by water brings.
“I’m a meditator, so it’s a wonderful place to come and sit and get away from whatever hectic is going on,” Jamyang Donma said. “It’s a place I like to come to recalibrate.”
Born in Chatham, Ontario, Jamyang Donma spent her early days in New York City with her mother who was involved in the radical counter-culture movement of the time. Jamyang Donma was exposed to violence in their rough neighbourhood, but she also spent time reading and collecting various pets.
It was Jamyang Donma’s aunt, Sylvia Tyson of the iconic Canadian folk duo Ian & Sylvia, who, on a trip to New York, suggested that Jamyang Donma and her mother relocate to Toronto.
“When we first came to Toronto, we didn’t know anybody,” Jamyang Donma said. “[St. Stephen-in-the-Fields Church] was a nice way to get community fast.”
The stained-glass windows in the church had a profound effect on Jamyang Donma. She studied stained-glass painting while in high school and applied to the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD), but was rejected after members of the admission committee took issue with a recommendation letter written by a fellow professor. At that time, OCAD did not teach stained-glass, the medium Jamyang Donma wanted to pursue.
While seeking peace and contemplation in St. Stephen-in-the-Fields church after not getting into OCAD, Jamyang Donma had a life-changing experience.
“In [my] experience of prayer, the Christ window actually came to life, literally, for me,” Jamyang Donma said.
“When you get that direct a response, you can’t ignore it.”
She apprenticed with Robert McCausland Ltd., the oldest stained-glass company in the Western hemisphere. The environment was challenging to work in, and Jamyang Donma was told she was unlikely to last, but she apprenticed for seven years, learning all the different levels and skills of the art form.
In the early 1980s, Jamyang Donma opened her first art studio in Toronto. She was putting in extremely long days, working on restoration pieces and running the studio. After seven years in business, she had to close the shop due to the financial implications of the recession in the 1980s.
“I was pretty exhausted by the time the recession hit,” Jamyang said. “You could call it a breakdown, but I call it a breakthrough…the shell of the egg cracked.”
Jamyang Donma had her Kundalini awakening and was drawn to meditation, spiritual discovery and, ultimately, the study of Buddhism.
“It was a period of intense suffering and intense growth and intense beauty and intense struggle all at the same time,” Jamyang Donma said.
The practice of Buddhism felt like a homecoming to Jamyang Donma. She was drawn to the study of the Tibetan Buddhist goddess Tara and found a community of Buddhists and other new age thinkers, including a teacher, to join her on her spiritual journey.
“I think I’ve always been Buddhist, I just didn’t have a name for it,” Jamyang Donma said. “I was always very spiritual, and I had very strong beliefs as a child that were irrevocable.”
Her Buddhist awakening and study led Jamyang Donma to use the art of stained glass to explore Himalayan iconography. She was commissioned to create windows for a nunnery in Himachal Pradesh, India, among other works.
In 2014, Jamyang Donma relocated her artistic practice to Cambridge and opened Yulokod Studios, a retail space for spiritual care items as well as her stained-glass creations. She splits her time between Toronto and Cambridge and cites the access to water and nature as a big draw for opening her studio in Galt.
Buddhism also set Jamyang Donma along the path of becoming a registered psychotherapist and clinical chaplain, where she provides spiritual care to terminal hospital patients.
“[Buddhists] don’t approach death as something bad, we approach it as something natural,” Jamyang Donma said. “Being at the bedside of someone that’s leaving this world is one of the most profoundly sacred moments that any human can experience. Literally the gates of heaven open up, and you get a whiff.”
Jamyang Donma has approached religion and art as subjects of lifelong study, and possesses an impressive recall of the names, tenets and philosophies that she has learned. Whether through her stained-glass art that tells transformational stories or through the spiritual guidance and mindfulness she provides, Jamyang Donma continues to impact the lives of those around her.
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