The Buddha said that hatred does not cease by hatred; hatred can only cease by non-hatred, meaning love. 'If these acts which were created through hatred are then responded to by more hatred, then clearly it's just going to escalate and the original perpetrators are simply going to feel justified in thinking they're right.'

According to Palmo, the United States' response to the atrocities must be skilful, without 'this kind of an-eye-for-an-eye-and-a-tooth-for-a-tooth type of mentality.' Of course those responsible for the attack must be dealt with, she adds, but not innocent bystanders.

'A child if you hit it will want to hit back. We're supposed to be adults, yet our reactions are like a three-year-old's.

'Because it's not going to solve anything, as we all know. You hit me, so I'll hit you, and then I'll hit you harder and then you'll hit me.

'The next thing you know there's a full-scale war, everybody taking sides. The world is governed by people who think like this. That's why we're in such a horrible state.'

One of the first Westerners to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun, Palmo captured the world's curiousity after spending 12 years meditating in a cave. She is currently in Hong Kong for a series of lectures and was speaking to the Zonta Club, an organisation of professional Chinese women involved in charity work.

Diane Perry, her original name, 59, wanted to be a nun from the age of 10. Raised in the tough working class district of Bethnal Green in London's East End during World War II, Perry's childhood was shaped from a young age; her father, a fishmonger, died when she was two. Her mother was a spiritualist who conducted weekly seances and, likewise, she began searching for answers. As an 18-year-old, she read Seven Years In Tibet, Henrich Harrer's account of his friendship with the Dalai Lama, which was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt in 1997. 'As soon as I read it I said: 'This is it. This is what I've been looking for'.' That year she joined London's well-established Buddhist society.

Two years later, in 1964, Palmo journeyed closer to the source and entered a monastery in India. The librarian assistant had spurned her boyfriend's marriage proposal, feeling that she never really belonged in England and that faith was her calling. She found resonance in the teachings of Buddhism, was ordained and went on to live in a Himalayan cave in northern India for 12 years in her quest for enlightenment.

It is this period in the cave that is her claim to fame. At 4,000 metres above sea-level, Palmo endured no running water, no toilet, extreme isolation, unimaginable cold - temperatures plunged to minus 35 degrees Celsius - and being snowed-in for nearly eight months each year. She slept in a traditional three-foot-square wooden 'meditation box', which allows aspirants only to sit cross-legged; she never lay down. In fact, the cave itself was no bigger than a king-sized bed.

In the course of 'taming her mind and shedding her ego', she survived on food grown by herself, especially lentils. She did not set any target date for her isolation to end and the years, she claims, raced by. 'It was just a nice, quiet place to stay. I couldn't think of anywhere nicer.'

Her final three years were spent in total seclusion, a time she used to recite 10 million mantras.

'People always ask me what I gained,' she says, cerulean eyes blazing.'But people have this idea about ambition and that we always have to achieve. It was more about letting go than grasping - letting go of false identities and seeing through the ego.'

Afterwards, an Australian journalist got hold of Palmo's story and wrote a book on her trials, A Cave In The Snow. Published in 1998, the book made the bestseller list in Australia shortly after it came out, and has since been translated into eight languages. It was translated into Chinese three months ago.

For Palmo, the endeavour she now faces is far more gruelling. She has spent three months of every year since 1993, lecturing around the world in order to raise money for her life's mission: raising HK$10 million to build a nunnery in northern India that will put Tibetan Buddhist teachings for women on par with those for men.

In her personal pursuit of self-knowledge, Palmo has battled against prejudice that had excluded women from enlightenment for thousands of years; in Tibet, it's a monk's world. In prying open the sacrosanct halls of Tibetan monasticism, Palmo, one of the first Westerners to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun, has become an icon for equality, a spiritual suffragette. It has been an uphill struggle.

'It [studying Buddhism] wasn't considered a thing a woman would want or need to do,' Palmo says. 'Just as 100 years ago women didn't go to university or enter professions and become doctors or lawyers. It wasn't suitable for them. This was the Tibetan feeling.'

In 1992, four years after leaving the cave, the lamas at her monastery at Tashi Jong asked her again if she was ready to start a nunnery. After declining several times in the past, Palmo felt that the time was now right for such a formidable task and accepted. Not that Buddhist convents don't already exist, but nuns remain a small percentage of career Buddhists. However, Palmo's project, the Dongyu Gatsal Ling nunnery, is for women of her distinct Drukpa Kargyu lineage, a long-forgotten female spiritual elite.

'We want to reintroduce the precious tradition of female yogis, or togdenmas, which is a Tibetan word for nuns who dedicate their whole lives to spiritual practice,' Palmo says. 'The training is long, rigorous and austere, with the trainee spending much of this training period in retreat, sometimes for many years.'

The convent already has 25 disciples but will not be open to Westerners, Palmo says. A less stringent international retreat centre is set to be built nearby and will accept all comers.

After eight years of collecting donations through the roadshows, Palmo says less than half the estimated $10 million has been raised. However, land has been purchased in Tashi Jong and construction is set to begin next month.

The project has the blessing of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who wrote: 'I am particularly happy that this project is being undertaken by Tenzin Palmo . . . I have believed for many years that it is important to set up nunneries of high standard where the dharma is emphasised . . . I wish and pray for success.'