The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi

by Vicki Mackenzie

  Dalhousie was a beautiful town, spread over five hills, covered in pine trees and inhabited by gangs of raucous monkeys and thousands of Tibetan refugees, who had been sent there by Nehru. Formerly, it had been established as a hill station by Lord Dalhousie, former viceroy of India in 1854, and by the time Freda and her young reincarnated pupils got there, it was full of decaying officers’ clubs, Anglican churches, and large English-styled houses with gardens full of roses and dahlias—all relics of the Raj. At seven thousand feet, it offered blessed relief from the searing sun of the plains below, as well as breathtaking views of the Himalayas. An added bonus was that another hill station, Dharamsala, a six-hour bus journey to the south, was where the Dalai Lama had established his base and government in exile.

  Freda promptly rented a bungalow for herself and a large, imposing, once-magnificent two-storied brick British house, complete with iron gates, for the new Young Lamas Home School. It had many rooms, a large garden, and was perched on the edge of a hill. Surrounded by the Tibetans and her tulkus, Freda felt contented and fulfilled. “Dalhousie air is crisp and fresh as new pine needles. To work for the lamas is blessing unlimited. I am happy here,” she wrote to Olive.

  If Freda was content, her family certainly was not. Over the years they had become accustomed to her frequent absences, and her children had developed a particularly strong sense of self-sufficiency and independence. Freda’s new decision to move to Dalhousie, however, had particularly radical consequences.

  “The problem was that by giving up her job she was giving up the family flat, as well as the small government salary that she was bringing in,” said Kabir. “Life was hard enough as it was. Mummy was the principal breadwinner (and even her salary was low). Prices were rising, and there were school fees to be paid. Ranga was married, but Guli was only fourteen and was losing the only home she had. Where would she go on the holidays? Also, who was going to pay for my education? I was sixteen and about to enter St. Stephen’s College, one of the best secondary schools in Delhi.”

  He complained bitterly, but Freda’s response was cool, and practical. “Mummy sat me down and said frankly, ‘I’m entering the religious path now and don’t know how to support you.’ She suggested I go and talk to the maharaja of Sikkim to ask if he could help. I went, was put up in a beautiful guesthouse, and addressed him politely: ‘Sir I need some help with college fees.’ ‘Of course, how much do you need,’ the maharaja replied. ‘Twenty thousand rupees,’ I said. He laughed. ‘Are you sure that’s enough?’ he said. I wished I’d asked for more. He’d met Mummy when she’d been at the Karmapa’s monastery in Sikkim and knew of her work—he respected her greatly.” Freda’s tireless work for others paid off in kind, if not in personal wealth.

  Freda also offered to transfer Guli to the Sacred Heart Convent High School in Dalhousie so that she could be near her mother, but the independent-minded Guli opted to stay where she was. In the end Ranga and his wife, Umi, opened their home in Assam to both Guli and Kabir whenever they wanted it.

  As for Freda’s husband, BPL was making his own arrangements. Their once-passionate love affair that had defied racial taboos had waned. The great goal that had united them in the very beginning and that glued them together during the dramatic early years of their marriage—the quest for Indian independence—had been achieved, and they both were now forging separate paths. In 1953, after her enlightenment experience in Burma, Freda had taken a vow of celibacy, the Brahmacharya Vow, whereas BPL had never been short of female admirers and had had many affairs.

  “My father loved my mother, but he was a rake,” said Guli. Women were drawn to him—he was a magnet, they would fawn all over him. He could not be monogamous. I remember him turning up at school with an Italian woman whom he introduced as a ‘friend’ but then drove off with her for a week, touring the mountains. I don’t ever remember there being any cross words about his affairs at home, but my mother was under a lot of stress.”

  One particular liaison, however, caused serious tension in the family. When BPL’s brother, the judge, died, he asked BPL to take care of his mistress, who was well known to Freda and the children as Auntie Raj. They would visit her from time to time and were on friendly terms. BPL took his brother’s request seriously—and moved in with Auntie Raj and her daughter (who, the family insist, was not BPL’s). “My mother never said it, but it broke her heart,” said Guli. “My father adored my mother and always declared she was the love of his life. But he needed more.”

  No one truly knows why Freda made the serious decision to physically abandon her family and move to Dalhousie, but BPL’s affairs may have made her choice easier. She certainly never expressed any ill feeling toward her husband, and in time stated she was even grateful to Auntie Raj for looking after BPL in his old age, when he was suffering from gout and a bad back. Freda and BPL remained on excellent terms throughout the rest of their separate lives, visiting each other when possible, keeping in constant touch about family matters and their respective activities. Freda’s letters from all over the world invariably took on a respectful, even loving tone, addressing her husband as “My Dear Respected Babaji” (the title of the guru that he had become).

  Freda was now free to concentrate on reestablishing the Young Lamas Home School in Dalhousie. With the Dalai Lama’s permission, she put her spiritual son, Chögyam Trungpa, in charge of Spiritual Studies, and when he left, another eminent tulku, Ato Rinpoche (Dilgo Khyentse’s nephew), took over. The school had about thirty pupils at any one time.

  Freda, who was utterly nonsectarian in all religious paths, encouraged her pupils to stay true to their respective traditions, but she did want to introduce them to the formal studies of Geography, History, and the English language, through which, she envisioned, they would transmit the Buddha’s message to the outside world. Certainly most of the young tulkus were not particularly interested in taking on such foreign subjects, and they approached their lessons in a somewhat desultory fashion. But Freda persisted.

  In Dalhousie a colorful band of Westerners also encountered Freda (including the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg) as they made their way to the Young Lamas Home School to volunteer their services. Their impressions of the middle-aged Englishwoman provided unbiased, fresh insights into Freda the woman, because they were not dazzled by her fame, status, or supposed spiritual reputation.

  When Diane Perry, a twenty-year-old from the East End of London, wanted to find a Tibetan guru, she wrote to Freda for help and was immediately summoned to the Young Lamas Home School. She was later ordained as Tenzin Palmo, and became well known for spending twelve years in retreat in the Himalayas, as told in my book Cave in the Snow.

  Tenzin Palmo recalls, “It was March 1963 when I arrived in Dalhousie, having trudged the last two hours through snow. I found Mrs. Bedi in the kitchen standing over a stove that was gushing out smoke with no heat coming from it all. She was cooking porridge made with some Tibetan cheese. It was disgusting. She was a tall, plump woman in her midfifties, with blue eyes, an aquiline nose, and gray hair pulled back in a bun. I remember she was wearing a long maroon sari made of heavy woollen cloth, which made her look enormous. I was almost twenty-one and she was in her fifties, so there was a big age gap.

  “She was a strong character—a strange mixture of Indian and English country. She never completely shed her roots. She was used to giving orders, and would not kowtow to anyone. She was great fun, full of confidence, and I admired and loved her very much.

  “The thing was, she was very good at initiating ideas and getting money. At that time Tibetans were not yet organized, did not know English nor anything about aid agencies or how to find help. Freda Bedi, on the other hand, was extremely organized and excellent at presenting her case. Although she was superb at organizing others, Mummy wasn’t very organized herself. Her room was always in a muddle—she could never find anything. She didn’t have much money sense either. Quite a lot of money came in, and it all disappeared on small things, like shee
ts and towels. She could have bought property, which was very cheap then, and got herself established.

  “The Tibetans were in awe of her, and were always going to her for help. She’d help everyone. She didn’t care if they were lay, monastic, high, low, male, female, or what school of Buddhism they belonged to. Tibetans are generally quite narrow, keeping to their own sect, and Mummy, who treated them all the same, was an eye-opener to them. They were helpless and she was there. She saw herself as a mother, a universal mother, nurturing and wanting to reach out to help everyone. She saw a situation that was fraught and traumatic and in she stepped.”

  Another woman who experienced Freda’s ability to break down barriers to get what she wanted was Joanna Macy, renowned American environmentalist, teacher, and author. She was living in Delhi with her husband, who was working for the Peace Corps, when Freda came to visit.

  “I remember I opened the door and she stood there in her maroon clothes, greeting me as if somehow I and not she were the guest. I loved the way that touch of the Raj blended so paradoxically and superbly with the monk’s garb she wore. She had come because she wanted my husband to release a particular person in the Peace Corps to work for her in Dalhousie. ‘I shall speak to my friend Mr. B in the Cabinet,’ Mummy said with a smile. ‘When do you think we can expect him?’ It was the marriage of serenity and sheer nerve. She was English in the way only the English can be. She had implicit authority,” Macy said.

  Later, Macy went to Dalhousie to help settle Khamtrul Rinpoche, a high lama who had escaped from Tibet with a huge number of followers, including monks and a large community of accomplished artists and craftspeople. She took the opportunity to take teachings from Freda at a small class for Westerners she had organized in Dalhousie. Macy also undertook a silent retreat under Freda’s direction, and today acknowledges Freda’s influence on her spiritual life.

  “What she had to say had a lucidity and simplicity about it. I can’t accept any teachings if there is a false note—if it is not coming from a person’s wholeness and integrity, if what they are saying merely comes from what has been heard or read. With Freda I was able to drink it in. It was coming from beyond.

  “I don’t know how realized she was. I didn’t go into those areas. She told me something about her mystical experience in Burma. She said she came out onto the street and saw everything in the world lit up as though from within. She did not go into a featureless expanse—but the ordinary world was transformed for her.

  “She also taught me from her actions. I never heard her say a mean thing about anyone. She was always thinking of others, writing to people all the time, trying to get others what they needed. And it was done with such affection. She constantly had a folder in her lap, and whenever she had a minute, she’d write a note to someone.

  “Mummy was wonderful for me to a very high degree,” Macy continued. “First of all, she was important because she was a woman. I am grateful to someone who understood the teachings and practice, and that it was a woman in a tradition that is quite male dominated. That was not by choice—it was sheer good luck. I was not consciously being a feminist, but I knew and I trusted her. She had a love of the Dharma and used it in a bold, brave way. When I first approached her for teachings, she replied, ‘Yes of course, my dear. I will be delighted. That is just the thing.’ I sensed she had just been waiting for me to ask.

  “Although she had reverence for the tradition, she did not present me with any overlay of doctrine or view. Nor did she start me off as the lamas would have done, with the Vajrayana (the Buddhism exclusive to Tibet). Instead, she wanted me to recapitulate her own journey, starting with the Theravada Buddhism she had learned in Rangoon. For me this was quite marvelous. It acquainted me with the early teachings of the Buddha and disciplined my mind in a way of following empirically my own experience in the immediate arising of mental and physical phenomena in my own body and mind. ‘Bare attention—just watch the thoughts. Know you are thinking, thinking. Get the “I” out of it,’ Mummy instructed. This allowed me later on in graduate school to approach the early teachings without any filter, with tremendous respect and curiosity for what the Buddha was saying. During my retreat I was in torment yet fascinated watching my own mind.

  “She was trying to bring me right up to Tibetan practice. She kept talking about Trungpa, whom she loved very much. ‘Wait till you meet him,’ she said. When Trungpa came to the States, I thought, ‘Now I’ll graduate to a Tibetan practice,’ but I stayed with the Vipassana I’d learned from Mummy.

  “What Mummy did not do for me, however, was to model the social significance of the Buddha’s teachings for our times, which is what I had become very focused on. ‘Engaged Buddhism,’ as it’s called. To me Buddhism frees us to act for social and ecological survival, what needs to be done for a just and sustainable society. This wasn’t of interest to Mummy.”

  Another volunteer was Faith Grahame, a wisp of a girl from Brighton, England, who ended up as Freda’s secretary and then became a nun. Like Tenzin Palmo she had discovered an inexplicable calling to Tibetan Buddhism and found Freda Bedi through the Tibet Society, in Eccleston Square, London.

  “I wrote to her. She said, ‘Come! Come!’ I was ready to board the ship for Mumbai, when all these boxes arrived on my doorstep. They were full of books and food that Freda had procured from her many contacts in England, and she expected me to carry them along with my own luggage. There was no warning, no note saying, ‘Do you mind?’ That was Freda.

  “I made my way up to Dalhousie and was met by this large woman with big, staring eyes, and a very loud voice that was bellowing orders at Indians. I was twenty, innocent and terrified! Over the next few years I got to know her better.

  “She was a mixture of kindness, warm-heartedness, fearlessness, bossiness, and sensitivity. For example, I remember there was a nun whose left hand was going numb. Freda wrote a letter for her to take to the doctor, which I typed, wording the problem in technical language so that the nun would not be alarmed. In fact she had leprosy.

  “She combined idealism, absolutely impracticality, and naïveté. For instance, she had this agent, a Sikh, who dealt with all the school’s finances, whom she listened to like mad. Everyone knew he was swindling her, siphoning off funds to his family. He took a lot of money. But she would never believe it, both because he was a Sikh and because she only wanted to see the good in everybody.”

  One of Freda’s ill-fated enterprises that Faith recalled concerned a buffalo that Freda decided to buy for some monks she was supporting at Andretta, a delightful artists’ colony in the lush, picturesque Kangra Valley, Himachal Pradesh, where Freda had also built a small mud-brick house. “The trouble was the monks really didn’t want this animal. They had to learn how to milk it, and looking after it took up a lot of time. One of the monks was very old. Nobody could understand what Mummy was thinking of,” said Faith. In the end Ranga once again saved the day by taking the buffalo off the monks’ hands.

  While most of the young volunteers were frankly terrified of Freda’s sometime-bossy, imperious manner, Alethea Ato was not. A bishop’s daughter and fellow Oxford graduate, she was more than capable of holding her ground, even though she was thirty years younger than Freda. In 1965, Alethea had gone to India to help the Tibetan refugees. “I heard about Freda through a friend of a friend in Delhi. ‘Freda has gone potty about Tibetans, but if you want to teach, she’s the person to help you. Freda Bedi knows everybody.’ It was true,” recounted Alethea from her Cambridge, England, home where she lives with her daughter and husband, Ato Rinpoche, the handsome tulku she met and fell in love with at the Young Lamas Home School.

  “She was a great ‘caretaker of souls’ and wanted to be mother to all the world. It didn’t work with me. Freda was not my mother. Freda longed to instruct and was instrumental in getting certain texts translated into English. She was also big on faith and devotion, but I hadn’t arrived in India to change my religion. Nevertheless she was an excellent teache
r and I’m indebted to her for the lessons she taught me in Buddhism, which I’ve never forgotten.

  “I admired her for her enterprise, no doubt about it. She had excellent contacts within the higher echelons of the Indian government. Once, when someone needed a visa, she swept into the consulate saying, ‘I wish to see the high commissioner,’ whom she knew personally. It was soon taken care of. She was also a marvel on Indian railways and commandeering cycle rickshaws.

  “She could also do disastrous things. I remember she got a school in Yorkshire to raise money for a buffalo, and when they did, she wrote and said she was spending the money on hot-water bottles instead, because it was so cold. The school was horrified, replying they felt they’d raised the money under false pretenses.”

  Freda was definitely not pleased when Alethea, her valuable young English teacher, became romantically involved with Ato Rinpoche, who was an eminent lama, a nephew of the renowned Dilgo Khyenste Rinpoche, and recognized as the eighth incarnation of the Tenzin Tulkus. The liaison caused a huge scandal and a major disruption for the Young Lamas Home School.

  “It meant him disrobing—a serious loss of a useful young lama. By then the Karmapa had lost Trungpa and as well, and it was beginning to be thought that it was a bad idea for rinpoches to learn English! Freda had a dewy, romantic view of tulkus; she thought them pure spirits. Although she may not have liked my relationship with Ato, she was not vituperative in any way. When I told her, she asked if I really meant it. I said yes. There were no rows, but I am sure it was a shock and disappointment to her. Once she knew I was sincere, she totally accepted it. We got married soon after in Delhi in February 1967. I was twenty-six.