The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi

by Vicki Mackenzie

  With the help of donors and friends I have been able to build for the use of the Kagyu nuns of this and succeeding generations a complex of buildings dedicated to H. H. Gyalwa Karmapa:

  1. A big stone shrine, 20 x 30 feet with polished cement floor.

  2. An L-shaped building. Two stories with separate apartment units that can house the nuns, plus two small cell rooms. Communal kitchen, store, bathing-and-toilet units.

  3. Three big rooms attached to the shrine for head nun and Protector Shrine chapel. A small building containing a room and kitchen store for myself. A dormitory plus kitchen for Tibeto-Frontier nuns.

  4. Guest rooms, each with kitchen and veranda as a self-support scheme to help the nuns earn. Income comes from offerings, sponsors and friends. They are therefore settled and HAVE NO NEED TO BEG [sic].

  5. I have plans to provide more bathrooms. (We have a miraculous spring that appeared on our land near the shrine after prayers to H. H. Karmapa.) I also envision a study course in Tibetan Medicine, medical care of aged and seriously sick nuns, and a Hermitage for retreat, along with its own land.

  There is no reason, therefore, why any nun should be persuaded to settle in the South.

  Faced with the force and fluency of Freda’s words, the Dalai Lama recanted. The nuns were allowed to stay where they were.

  Other problems, much closer to home, were bubbling not far below the surface—portents of a pending schism that surfaced after Freda died. Sad though it was, such conflicts were not unknown within the annals of Tibetan history, which abounded with tales of fierce rivalries between monasteries, where power, politics, and spirituality collided. Freda was well aware of what was going on in her nunnery.

  “There have been some rather ugly undercurrents at the nunnery and I think there are outside political (Tibetan) influences brought to bear,” she confessed to a friend, without elaborating on the specifics. “The nuns are not solely to blame. There are, in any case, two ‘troublemakers’ among them, and the young nuns are becoming increasingly conscious of the way they are being misled. I won’t go into the whole sad story, as it doesn’t help TFG (Tibetan Friendship Group) or the nuns, and we are only concerned with that, so we must bear all the misunderstandings and untruth and pray (for the younger group) that things clear up.”

  As Freda feared, a schism eventually happened. A second nunnery, called Drupten Pedme Gatsal Ling, was built on the plains below the original nunnery. An impressive building situated on three acres of land and boasting a large temple, solar heating, and other modern conveniences, it now houses forty-four nuns, with more expected. Whatever bad feeling exists between the two nunneries, the abbess, Karma Tsultrim, an imposing sixty-year-old with a no-nonsense manner, holds Freda in the highest esteem, and often carries her picture. “When I think of Mummy, I see her in meditation. She was always in the meditative state, even when she was not sitting on the cushion. We Tibetans think she was Tara, because she was so kind. Mummy-la was always soft, never angry. If the younger ones were naughty, her face would go strict but she would never shout,” said Karma Tsultrim.

  She justified her founding the rival nunnery this way: “I think Mummy would like there to be two nunneries. Why not? She supported the nuns’ cause very much.”

  There were troubles on other fronts as well. Freda’s health was beginning to falter. In 1970, she wrote to Olive of the recurrence of bronchial trouble, the illness that was to kill her seven years later, admitting how seriously ill she had been and speaking touchingly of the care her nuns and others had showed her. “You will hardly believe it, but I am convalescent after twenty-eight days’ continuous fevers and bronchial flu. I was so ill, and I cannot tell you with what devotion the nuns have nursed me—and in fact how kind all the villagers have been. I am distinctly thinner and still weaker than my usual hearty self, but I’m so much better.” Of all her nuns, no one was more devoted than Pema Zangmo, a former cowherd from Kinnaur (on the Tibetan-Indian border) who became Freda’s close, utterly dedicated personal assistant. She had met Freda in 1965 in Dalhousie when she was just twelve years old, having escaped from Kinnaur with her parents. All her life she had harbored a deep spiritual longing, and when Freda helped her take novice vows (with her parents’ permission), Pema Zangmo’s gratitude knew no bounds. Until Freda died, Pema Zangmo served and protected her with a rigor that bordered on the ferocious. A short, feisty, outspoken woman, she could boss everyone around, including Freda if she thought it were in her mentor’s best interests. Freda called her a “jewel,” but acknowledged that jewel could be a “rough diamond.”

  Today Pema Zangmo can be found tilling the soil and planting vegetables in a large, empty complex of buildings on the plain below the nunnery, which she hopes to fill with incumbents eager to begin Freda’s vision of higher learning. With that in mind she teaches regularly in France, gathering support and finances. Still strong and remarkably feisty, her devotion to Freda and her admiration for who she was and what she accomplished has not waned at all. Pema Zangmo has no doubts that Freda was and remains an embodiment of Tara, the female Buddha of Compassion in Action.

  “Mummy-la is a bodhisattva. She knew many things and everybody loved her. She and the Karmapa (her guru) were very close. Whatever he asked her to do, she obeyed. The Karmapa told me to look after her. He told me directly, ‘She is an emanation of White Tara.’ He also said that he and Mummy-la were of the same essence.”

  It was a remarkable statement. Pema Zangmo, as an eyewitness, was offering confirmation of the loudly whispered rumor, that Freda, an English family woman from Derby, was regarded by the eminent Sixteenth Karmapa as a manifestation of a female Buddhist deity, and hinted that she bore the same spiritual evolution as himself. Whether Freda herself accepted such an eminent status is not known, but she was certainly aware of the importance of White Tara (or Jetsun Dolkar, her Tibetan name) within the Buddhist faith, as she wrote to her Australian friend Joan Wilson, an avid Tibetan Friendship Group supporter.

  “Jetsun Dolkar is the white form of our Divine Mother Bodhisattva. We think there is a Heavenly Mother to whom we can appeal when life’s problems get too much. The White Tara makes us wise: That is the meaning of the four extra eyes on the palms of her hands and the one in the middle of her forehead. She is always peaceful, always pleasant and welcoming—see her open hand. We need mothers.”

  For the Tibetans, trained to see all beings as carrying the seed of potential buddhahood within, the leap to regard Freda’s qualities as divine was not implausible. She had appeared at the hour of their need, was impartial about whom she helped, was kind and exceptionally able at getting things done. To them Freda, or Mummy-la, looked like Tara. For skeptical Westerners, however, the jump was not as easy. Not one of her European, American, or Australian friends and colleagues saw her as divine.

  Nevertheless, amid the administration of both the Young Lamas Home School and the nunnery, the constant letter writing seeking funds, the organizing of papers for the ceaseless stream of refugees, and the finding of volunteers, Freda’s own spiritual vocation was far from forgotten. It had begun in her childhood, blossomed in Burma, and brought her to this point of working for the Tibetans. It was, in fact, calling ever louder, beckoning her, in her late middle age, to an entirely new, infinitely larger, and more ambitious way of life.

  14

  Ordination

  FREDA NOW FELT that she had bided her time long enough. For years she had been wearing long maroon dresses in the style of a Tibetan Buddhist nun, and ever since her enlightenment experience in Burma she had espoused celibacy as a way of life. “Celibacy heightens compassion, and the energy to transmit teachings. Sublimated sexuality is the means of this transmission,” she said. She was already halfway there. Several times she had asked the Karmapa if she could be ordained. He had replied that she already had the ordination in spirit and that she needed to wait until he could confer it officially. In Freda’s mind the only obstacle were her children. When she reached the age of fi
fty-five, she deemed the time was finally right. Kabir was twenty and Guli almost eighteen—old enough, Freda thought, for them to withstand the possible psychological blow taking robes might entail suggesting a possible severance from her family, deeper and stronger than the merely physical.

  Conventionally, Freda’s decision to remove herself emotionally, mentally, and physically from worldly concerns in order to commit herself totally to the religious life could be regarded as selfish and irresponsible. But Freda had always followed her heart, her deepest aspirations, and her destiny, regardless of what anyone thought. At another level her decision was merely the natural progression of the trajectory she had followed since childhood. Throughout her life, her spiritual calling was never far below the surface; it had informed both her political and her social work.

  “Although I was engaged in political activity, I was never interested in politics. I’m interested in freedom. Freedom of the mind. And when I took up social work, as well as writing and teaching, the deep feeling was for freedom, integrity, and human dignity, which was accomplished by Mahatma Gandhi, who taught us the way of love. This is the Christian way too. When somebody wants to knock your head with a stick in a demonstration, you offer your head to be hit. You sit down. You don’t run away. And you don’t feel a minute’s resentment against your adversary. Many of the Indian police were decent people who just wanted to make a living to care for their wives and kids.

  “Of course, I was a political and social activist, but inwardly there was always meditation. I don’t think I could have borne those years, with all the difficulties, all the strain if I had not done so. I think meditation should be integrated with home life from an early age. The earlier the better. I don’t think the strains of the modern world can be borne unless you have an inner, meditative life. It leads to saner people, who don’t crack up or have to go to mental hospitals or take sleeping tablets. These are all due to excessive strain,” she said.

  “The basis of a spiritual life, whether you are ordained or lay, is nonviolence. Not to harm others, otherwise you yourself will be harmed. The law of karma comes in. It’s like throwing a pebble in a pool—the ripples of harming go far.”

  Freda’s mind was made up. She had reached the point of no return.

  She elaborated this feeling in a letter to her South African friend and disciple Sheila Fugard: “Transient pleasure had already fallen away—it was an urge to leave the Wheel of Existence. Enough of suffering. The facts of being born, bearing illness, growing old, and dying are painful. Even Prince Siddhartha (the Buddha) was forced to leave wealth and a wife and infant son. One must resolve the knot of existence—cut the roots of desire, examine one’s life and see how one is bound to samsara.

  “The warmth of love and compassion remained, however, but in a wider context. All sentient beings are deserving of compassion. All compounded things wear out. These problems require deep meditation. The path is never an easy one.”

  In her eyes the whole world had now become her family.

  She completely misjudged, however, her family’s reaction to her news. BPL reportedly wept. Kabir, who was still at college, was horrified.

  “We had no money—I mean no money. And my mother was becoming a nun. I was devastated, and extremely angry. She was not going to be there for me, she had given herself to the Buddha. I felt utterly abandoned. I no longer had a mother. ‘Why now?’ I asked her. ‘When does the apple fall from the tree?’ she replied.”

  It was not just for himself that Kabir was worried. Always his little sister’s champion, he was anxious about who would guide and protect Guli in the future, especially in the matter of choosing a husband. He wrote his fears to Freda. Her response was immediate, heartfelt, eloquent, and some would say naive. In her mind the trust she was about to put in the Buddha by becoming a nun would automatically safeguard her children by throwing a blanket of holy protection around them. Karma would guide the way, and her love for them was undying.

  “Your letter of the twenty-ninth reached me yesterday. I am sending off a telegram today and this letter. Since yesterday I have been in a maze of pain, feeling yours and Guli’s. I thought that, with the special understanding we all have for one another, the birth could be painless. But I had not realized the cutting of the birth cord must cause pain. It heals. The link between the baby and the mother does not cease. It continues. Nothing ceases. In a way this time I am the baby. And I need you all, your love and protection.

  “Basically it’s Guli that you are thinking of. The feeling for a daughter is more protective. . . . Guli is deep inside me, in an inner way. She knows it. In her childhood I gave her all the protection I could; now I am giving it to her in a higher way. But she is always with me. The question of her marriage has been in my mind. This winter in Calcutta I asked for H. H. Karmapa’s prediction (infallible). He said, ‘After finishing her studies, she will find a good home.’ That reassured me on the physical plane.

  “Kabir, I don’t think Guli need worry for a good three or four years more about this. Let her study peacefully. These days the old ‘arranged’ marriages are not so usual in families like ours. Ranga and Binder ‘arranged’ their own, and dowries were not the question. Karma plays a big part. Possibly Guli will meet someone in our circle of friends who likes Papa and me anyway.

  “You know—I have shown it in so many ways and it is invisibly always there, that there is a special link between us. A trust. Here, too, there has been complete trust. You all knew one day this step would be taken; we even joked about my losing my hair! Somehow, now had to be the time. The inner renunciation was complete long ago. . . .

  “I can’t write about things so deep inside they are beyond words. Speaking is a little easier (I told Papa), but paper does not really convey the necessity—not just for me but for all of you too. But I did feel—still feel—that you would understand.

  “Something has happened inside me. To take an ordination in direct line from the Buddha is an inexpressibly sacred thing. In a way an ordination is not only a renunciation: It is a protection, a way. Again, don’t ask me to put into words what cannot be put into words. There is an inner time, a ripeness, a realization of the impermanence of life, of suffering, of others, not only of oneself. A reflection of the great compassion of the Buddha. At that time the knowledge of the approaching birth comes.

  “Things are the same, at least outwardly, except for my dress. We will meet and spend holidays together as usual. Mother love doesn’t just dry up. I can still see your little face as it was when you drank my milk, and Guli on her first birthday with that full-moon face of hers. You needed me then; you need me now. I am still there. If Papa at anytime needs me in advancing age I am also still there. There’s so much more I want to say, but I can’t write more. Except to say you are both near, like the blood in my veins. With love, Mummy.”

  Freda never told Guli what she was planning. Just as she had deposited her in boarding school at age five without any prior warning, astonishingly she never discussed with her teenage daughter her intention to become a nun. Once again, Guli was presented with a fait accompli. Freda’s behavior was baffling. Was it guilt? Fear of Guli’s reaction? Whatever Freda’s reason, Guli was emotionally winded.

  “I remember exactly how I found out,” Guli said. “Kabir was renting a place in Delhi and I went to see him. He casually dropped into the conversation that our mother had become a nun. ‘We won’t ever have to buy her a comb again,’ he joked, trying to make light of the situation. I was not happy. Somewhere inside me I felt sad. I thought she wouldn’t be there for me and that she could have waited until I was settled with a husband and home of my own. At another level I wasn’t surprised at what she had done—she had been wearing maroon saris for ages. But I felt she should have told me herself.

  “Admittedly, I was a difficult teenager! I used to get really mad at her. Once, when she wouldn’t allow me to go to a dance, I refused to go home in the holidays and went to stay with Ranga and Umi inst
ead. I think Mummy felt there would be less turmoil about being ordained if she told me after the fact,” she said.

  On August 1, 1966, Freda was ordained as a Buddhist nun by the Karmapa in his newly built monastery at Rumtek Monastery, in Sikkim. It was a huge, magnificent building, constructed in traditional Tibetan style, rising in tiers up the mountainside. In its elaborately decorated temple, resplendent with intricate wood carvings, gold and scarlet paint, exquisite cloth paintings of deities, and vast statues of the Buddha, the Karmapa bestowed on Freda the new name of Karma Tsultrim Kechog Palmo, shortened to Sister Palmo.1 Known as “The Going Forth,” the ordination formalized entering into homelessness, the traditional state of the Buddhist monk or nun—ironically, a condition that Freda had already known for a several years.

  As a novice nun (the only ordination allowed to Tibetan nuns), Freda’s vows outnumbered those required of monks. At the basic level they included not to kill any living thing, steal, tell lies, or take intoxicants. She promised to remain chaste, eat moderately, and have no bank account. Finally, she donned the proper robes and shaved her head.

  “Losing your hair is an acid test. For a woman, whatever the age, it’s very difficult to give up your hair unless it doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s what keeps thousands from taking the vow,” she admitted. Freda emerged bald, transformed, and extremely happy. “It’s a tremendous step. It provides great strength because a whole stream of blessings of the lineage from Buddha to pupil to pupil down the ages comes like a vast stream, washing away the bad karmas and murky things that have been there,” she explained.

  Following her ordination Freda moved her base to Rumtek Monastery to be near the Karmapa. She was the only woman in the entire establishment, an extraordinary privilege. Her status was further enhanced by being given a room just below that of the Karmapa, who was installed at the highest point of the vast monastery complex, in keeping with Tibetan tradition. It was a great honor, indicative of the high esteem in which she was held. In contrast to the bright splendor of Rumtek’s exterior, however, Freda’s room was small and modest, containing a bed, which coupled as a meditation seat; a small table; and a chair for visitors.