Sign up to receive news and special offers from Shambhala Publications.
Or visit us online to sign up at shambhala.com/eshambhala.
(Courtesy John Hills)
THE REVOLUTIONARY LIFE OF
Freda Bedi
BRITISH FEMINIST, INDIAN NATIONALIST, BUDDHIST NUN
Vicki Mackenzie
Foreword by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
SHAMBHALA • BOULDER • 2017
Shambhala Publications, Inc.
4720 Walnut Street
Boulder, CO 80301
www.shambhala.com
© 2017 by Vicki Mackenzie
Cover art: Courtesy of the Bedi Family Archives
Cover design: Gopa & Ted2, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Mackenzie, Vicki, author.
Title: The revolutionary life of Freda Bedi: British Feminist, Indian Nationalist, Buddhist Nun / Vicki MacKenzie.
Description: First edition. | Boulder, co: Shambhala, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016028308 | eISBN 9780834840713 | ISBN 9781611804256 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Bedi, Freda, 1911–1977. | Buddhist women—Biography. | Buddhist nuns—Biography. | BISAC:RELIGION / Buddhism / Tibetan. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Religious. | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women.
Classification: LCC BQ942.E38 M33 2017 | DDC 294.3/923092 [B]—dc 3
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016028308
To all mothers everywhere, especially my own inexpressibly kind mother, Irene Mackenzie (1919–1998), in gratitude for her unfailing love and support.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Introduction: First Glimpse
1. Beginnings
2. Expanding World
3. Love
4. Transitions
5. Freedom Fighter
6. Prisoner
7. Kashmir
8. Aftermath
9. Turning Point
10. Meeting the Tibetans
11. The Tulkus
12. Dalhousie
13. The Nuns
14. Ordination
15. Spreading the Word
16. Forging the Bridge
17. Last Days
Epilogue
E-mail Sign-Up
FOREWORD
HERE AT LAST is the long-awaited biography of a remarkable woman named Freda Bedi or Sister Khechog Palmo, who was a pioneering figure in the early years of the Tibetan exile in India. A wife, mother, and former freedom fighter in the Indian Independence movement, Freda went on to become one of the first Western nuns in Tibetan Buddhism and was the founder of a school for young reincarnate lamas and also the founder of the first Tibetan nunnery in India. She was a close disciple of the Sixteenth Karmapa—instrumental in his first visit to the United States—and was also the mentor of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, along with many other lamas who brought Tibetan Buddhism to the West.
Her outreach and enlightened projects empowered so many others during the early days of the Tibetan exile and deserve to be remembered and appreciated. So I am indeed grateful to Vicki Mackenzie for her efforts to recover so much biographical material, before it is too late, in order to tell us the inspiring story of Sister Palmo’s extraordinary life and her contribution to the preservation of the Tibetan dharma during a time of precarious transition.
—Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
INTRODUCTION: FIRST GLIMPSE
I MISSED HER by a few short weeks, which in the light of what was to transpire many years later was a great pity. By the time I trekked up the washed-away dirt road to that magical hilltop monastery called Kopan, peering over the Kathmandu Valley, for my first-ever meditation course on a bright November morning in 1976, everyone was still talking about it. One afternoon, the senior lama—a round, charismatic character named Thubten Yeshe—had walked into the meditation tent, ushering before him a tall, beautiful, somewhat stout Western woman in her mid-sixties. She had fair skin, blue eyes, a perfectly round face, and a decidedly dignified bearing. She had the bald head of a Buddhist nun and was wearing maroon and yellow robes. Much to the onlookers’ bemusement, Lama Yeshe proceeded to lead her to the high brocaded throne, and when she was settled, stood before her, brought his hands together at his heart, and reverently threw himself on the floor in three full-length body prostrations.
The course participants, who had never seen (or indeed heard of) any female on a throne, let alone a Westerner in fancy robes, were taken aback. In this patriarchal religion, living women were never bowed to. But if Lama Yeshe held this woman in high regard, she had to be special, because over the weeks they had come to respect this kind, powerful man who had spoken out of his own wisdom and made them laugh.
The woman’s name was Freda Bedi, born in Derby, in England’s Midlands region, the daughter of a watchmaker, who had married a Sikh whose last name was Bedi.
I thought no more about it—then. Back in 1976, I was far more excited by the prospect of sampling the very radical business of meditation, delivered by “exotic” and mysterious lamas only recently emerged from their secret, forbidden land of Tibet. Here was high adventure. I had crept away from my job as a feature writer on one of Britain’s leading national newspapers in the heart of London’s Fleet Street without telling anyone what I was doing. In those days Buddhism was so unknown in the West, it was regarded virtually as a cult—foreign, full of heretical beliefs, and highly dangerous. I knew I would have lost all credibility as a responsible, serious journalist if I had revealed where I was going.
I was drawn there not just by curiosity to tread the unknown path (an essential quality for a journalist) but by some nonspecific, sincerely felt need to explore the deeper meaning of things that lay beyond the “getting and spending,” as Wordsworth put it. This quiet yearning had been with me since childhood, and over the years as my Christian background failed to deliver what I sought, I began to feel drawn to the East, intuitively suspecting their ancient wisdom might hold what I was looking for.
Kopan and the lamas didn’t disappoint. What I discovered on my clandestine journey was fascinating and fulfilling enough to keep me engrossed for forty years. During that time Freda Bedi’s name continued to crop up, dropped into the conversation by people who had met her in the very early days of Tibetan Buddhism’s appearance in the outside world. Everyone spoke of her with affection and a little awe. I heard that she had had a stellar career, was a household name in India, as well as being the mother of three children—one of whom was a handsome Bollywood star and a James Bond villain.
Something radical had happened to Freda Bedi in her middle age, because she turned her back on her fame, her work, and her family and had become the first Western Tibetan Buddhist nun. I learned that she had started a school for the young reincarnated lamas when they were refugees newly arrived in India, to teach them English and the ways of the world. One of her pupils was Zopa Rinpoche, Lama Yeshe’s heart disciple, who had taught me first in Kopan and subsequently in other venues around the world. Freda had plucked him out of a terrible disease-ridden refugee camp, a skinny kid wracked with tuberculosis, provided him with medicines, new robes, a sponsor, and the beginnings of a Western education.
Maybe that was why Lama Yeshe, always full of gratitude, had bowed before her.
Other tidbits about Freda came my way. Strangely, this subtle amassing of information gathered momentum as time went by
, as though something I was not conscious of was building up. I discovered that she had been a freedom fighter for the cause of Indian independence, joining Gandhi’s powerful movement in defiance of her own people, the British. And she had gone to jail for her trouble, the first Englishwoman to do so. My journalist’s antennae began to twitch. Maybe there was a story here. Freda was becoming increasingly interesting.
As my experience with the Tibetan Buddhist world grew, I heard something about Freda that surprised me. Among the Tibetans it was whispered that Freda was regarded as an emanation of Tara, the female Buddha of Compassion in Action. Tara, (beloved of all Tibetans, religious or not) was hailed as the Divine Mother, to whom they all prayed when in need. It was Tara, rather than the historical male Shakyamuni Buddha, whom they called upon whenever they were in danger, sad, frightened, or sick, because they knew Tara did not merely sit and listen compassionately to their pleas; she got up and did something. This ability to act and act quickly was regarded as a quintessential female quality.
Over the years I had seen plenty of paintings and statues of Tara. She certainly looked nothing like a fair-skinned, blue-eyed Englishwoman. Usually she was painted green (although sometimes white and other colors), with a round, moon-shaped face, a benign expression, and one leg stretched out ready to spring into action. Could Freda Bedi possibly be a divine being? It seemed ludicrous—heretical even. Why and how had she earned this accolade? Freda, apparently, had appeared in the darkest time of Tibet’s history, when the Dalai Lama and thousands of his fellow countrymen, women, and children had fled over the Himalayas in a terrifying trek to freedom. They had poured into exile, sick and traumatized by the persecution and torture they had experienced and by their highly dangerous escape. Freda has been there to comfort them, bathe their wounds, soothe their fears, and help put them back on their feet.
As one, they began to call her “Mummy”—and then “Mummy-la,” the suffix denoting an honorific attributed to anyone held in high esteem. Freda had become so identified with this title that even Westerners began to call her that.
Curiously, at the beginning of the new millennium I was approached by various people asking that I write a book about Freda Bedi. One of the most insistent was the English nun Tenzin Palmo, who had met Freda when she was just twenty years old before disappearing into a Himalayan cave for twelve years to meditate, and then emerging as a brilliant, globally recognized teacher. I had recently finished writing Tenzin Palmo’s biography, Cave in the Snow. “Freda is an inspirational woman, a role model for women everywhere. We need real-life examples of powerful women, especially nuns. Besides, Freda’s life was enormous. She was a pioneer in so many fields,” she had said.
Then Freda’s children approached me, asking me to chronicle their mother’s life. I was honored, but demurred. My strongest resource, Freda herself, was not around. Sadly, she had died just a few months after she had appeared in Kopan in 1976. She was sixty-six years old. And I had missed her. Had I known then that I would write her book, I would have sought her out, requesting access to her time, memories, and detailed accounts of her life. As a journalist that was my preferred way of working. How else could I accurately assess her character, her motives, the minutiae of her daily life, her conflicts—the necessary components for creating a vivid, accurate portrait of a human being?
It was when I heard that the Dalai Lama himself was asking why a book on her had never been written that I capitulated. If the Dalai Lama thought Freda Bedi’s life was worth recording, who was I to argue? I set to work. There were so many questions. What had brought her to rebel against her own people in the struggle for Indian independence? How had she managed to endure an Indian jail? What had caused the sea change from wife and mother to Buddhist nun? How and why had she left her children? What drove her? What, if anything, had she sacrificed? What and where were her shadows—those parts of her that may have been hidden behind the glittering, virtuous exterior she presented, and how could I learn about them? And why, exactly, had Lama Yeshe been bowing to her?
In the absence of her physical presence on earth I set out on a journey of discovery, tracing her life through the places she had lived and the people who had known her, to get the answers I sought. It was unusually easy. Everyone I approached was only too willing to tell me their stories and recollections and to give me photographs. That is hardly ever the case, as every writer will tell you. It was as though this book wanted to be written—in spite of myself! Over many months I made several trips to India and talked to nuns, Tibetan government officials, lamas, and laypeople. I met her niece in Bath, England. I traveled to Samye Ling, in Scotland, the first Tibetan monastery in the West to talk to Akong Rinpoche, the lama she had rescued from the refugee camp and brought to live with her in Delhi, who had helped establish the monastery. I had long telephone conversations with people in the United States and Australia.
The most valuable contributors of all, however, were her children. I traveled to Mumbai to meet her second son, Kabir Bedi, the handsome film star. I went to Bangalore to talk to her firstborn, Ranga Bedi, and his wife, Umi. And I flew to the United States to stay with her daughter, Guli, in her lovely lakeside home outside Boston. All were tall, impressive characters—like their mother—with strong personalities, a love of food, and a highly developed sense of humor. Their living memories of their mother, who they unanimously agreed was indeed remarkable, helped bring Freda to life. They also generously handed over her writings, letters, and tape recordings, containing firsthand accounts of her life and thoughts. Precious material indeed. In particular, hearing her voice—clear, firm, measured, full of authority, and highly articulate—was the next best thing to meeting Freda herself.
By the end of my journey, Freda had revealed herself as infinitely bigger, more exciting, and complex than I ever imagined when I set out. The scope of her achievements across a staggering array of different fields was nothing short of extraordinary. Freda’s footprint is still very visible in the map of modern India, in the feminist movement, and in the historical march of Buddhism from East to West. Freda was, and is, an icon. I had to concede; the Dalai Lama was right. Freda’s story needed to be told.
1
Beginnings
AT FIRST GLANCE, there was little in Freda’s beginnings to suggest the exotic life she was to lead, although, as Freda liked to point out, if you looked closely enough, the portents were there from the start. She was born above a small watchmaker’s shop in the aptly named Monk Street (hinting at a future life in robes) around the corner from Friary Lane in the heart of old Derby on February 5, 1911. This was England’s Midlands—home of Florence Nightingale, Rolls-Royce, and the starkly beautiful Peak District. Snow was falling heavily when Freda came into the world and although she was the firstborn child, her mother birthed her with very little effort. The midwife commented, “Ohhh, Mrs. Houlston, you should be the one to have all the babies, you do it so easily.” Freda was a fair-skinned baby, with a perfectly round face, a high forehead, fine wispy hair, and bright blue-gray eyes, inherited from her father who had Norwegian blood coursing through his veins. She was christened Freda Marie Houlston.
Home life for Freda during her first few years was decidedly Dickensian. A photograph of the jeweler’s shop shows Freda’s father as a small boy, standing outside 28 Monk Street, a typical poor brick, terraced house with a front door opening directly onto the street, with rows of watches hanging in the window like so many baubles. “Houlston” is written large above the lintel. In the doorway is George, Freda’s paternal grandfather, in an apron and cloth cap.
Freda, who harbored a romantic streak, remembered it with fondness:
“It was tiny, as attractive to me as the Old Curiosity Shop. I remember my grandmother fussing around in the live-in kitchen, the jewels and the watches in the cabinets. We’d bake bread and cook casseroles in the coal-fired oven, make toast on a toasting fork, wash clothes in a gigantic copper and keep our meat and cheese cold on a stone slab in the
larder.”
When life inside the tiny shop began to get a little cramped, the family moved to Littleover, a suburb of Derby, on the edge of the countryside, close to Freda’s maternal grandmother.
From all accounts hers was a happy, modest, reserved, and decidedly upright family. Her father, Francis (“Frank”), was a tall, strikingly handsome man with an open, honest gaze who cut a dashing figure in his tweed suit and boater. He came from a long line of watchmakers and jewelers, who had all worked in the same tiny shop before him. Francis was deeply religious, a staunch Methodist who favored the teetotalers, and had actually signed the Pledge, the certificate bordered by little homilies: “Look not upon wine, for at last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.” It stated that Francis Houlston, “with Divine Assistance,” would abstain from all alcohol that caused “practices of intemperance.” He meant it. Freda recalled him saying that he would never let strong spirits pass his lips even if he were dying and his life depended on it.
Her mother, Nellie, was a stoic woman—tall and straight-backed, with a long face, and her dark hair worn up. She was a stylish woman, and an excellent seamstress who made all of her children’s clothes. Nellie had met Frank in the Methodist Chapel of St. Anne’s (where her grandparents also worshipped) and was married at age twenty. There was also an element of the adventurer about her, a trait her daughter inherited. Nellie liked to ride around the countryside on a motorbike, play bridge, and at one point was appointed captain of the Mickleover Golf Club, an unusual post for a woman in those days.
The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi Page 1
