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 Indepen-dence 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 Kar-mapa—instrumental in his first visit to the United States—and was also the mentor of Chogyam 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.
IMISSED 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 med-itation, 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 English-woman. 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.
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