“Many people there had never seen Buddhist rites before, and they were deeply moved. We felt it was extraordinary that the first Buddhist nun to reach South Africa was able to be in Port Elizabeth on the very day that the seaman needed help,” she added.
She continued on her whistle-stop tour, founding centers, giving talks, and meeting would-be Buddhists. She was particularly happy when she came across the Indian community, who took her into their homes. “‘They helped stanch my homesickness at being severed from the motherland. It’s a group of some thirty-five Indian families, who have kept the flag of Dharma flying here. I gave them the initiation of Jetsun Dolma in her form as the Perfection of Wisdom,” she said, indicating the zenith of the wisdom path, “Emptiness,” which is represented by the female form, out of which all things are made manifest.
Sheila Fugard, who met Freda in South Africa, was won over. She was the wife of the internationally renowned playwright Athol Fugard, as well as a poet and author in her own right, and was in a distressed state due to the constant harassment she and her husband were receiving from the police. Athol was courageously defying apartheid by writing and staging political plays, such as Blood Knot for a group of multiracial actors, and they were under perpetual surveillance as a result, with their house regularly being ransacked. It was a situation Freda understood only too well from her own experience of being harassed and pursued during her defiant fight for Indian independence. To Sheila, Freda, or Sister Palmo as she called her, was a veritable lifeline. Her devotion became absolute, as depicted in the book she wrote about her, Lady of Realisation.
“We were going through a very tough time. I was under enormous stress and was just coming out of a nervous breakdown. We had no money and yet were still trying to create a new theater for all races, but the government was forbidding us to go into the townships, where the blacks lived,” said Sheila, now living in California with her daughter.
There was also a lesser-known, religious component to apartheid. “The Dutch Reformed Church felt that blacks should have separate churches, and were fighting with the Catholics who wanted to open the churches to blacks. Sister Palmo was invited in order hopefully to help sow seeds of harmony through establishing Buddhism, and teaching meditation,” she explained before continuing with her own story:
“I knew nothing about Buddhism apart from reading Evans-Wentz (an early translator of Tibetan texts, including The Tibetan Book of the Dead). I was desperately seeking some means of achieving inner stillness, and had visited several teachers, including Sufis and Hindu swamis. They had offered advice and explanations as regards the nature of the mind, meditation, and the problems of living, but none really helped. The knots of personality remained unsolved.
“I went to a lecture Sister Palmo was giving in a private house. As I walked in, I was met by a sight I had never seen before—a middle-aged Englishwoman sitting in the lotus position, wearing maroon robes with a shaved head. There was no doubt she was beautiful, with a firm bone structure and skin, which, although aging, had a unique softness. She emanated a tranquility, an aura of profound compassion, and what could only be described as an elevated energy. There was an aspect of the yogi about her that fascinated me, and yet at the same time she was undisputedly the Western intellectual.
“What she said was interesting enough to draw me back to listen to her again. By the third time, I thought, ‘Forget everything else, this is it.’ I signed up for an initiation and a retreat. I was so glad I did. And I also took Refuge with her. The experience was unforgettably powerful,” she reminisced.
Freda also had secular words of wisdom to offer regarding apartheid, telling her audience that the intellectuals invariably suffered in any repressive regime. “Such situations toughen the moral fiber,” Freda told them. “Tenacity is at the root of sila, or morality, the very bedrock of Buddhism. And nonviolence is only understood through experience.”
It was in the personal arena, however, where Freda provided the most comfort to Sheila Fugard.
On hearing about her breakdown and the traumas she was going through Freda said, “Well, you know, what you are talking about is suffering. That was the Buddha’s main message, it was the foundation of what he taught. But if you think of the mind like a lake, while the surface may be ruffled and agitated by waves, in the depths it is very calm and still.
“Mind is radiantly pure. Emptiness, the primordial ground, underlies both samsara (the Wheel of Suffering) and nirvana. The world of meditation is of extraordinary beauty. In mastering concentration all concepts and confusion fall away. All is attainable by the pupil, but initiations by the guru, proper instruction, and firm endeavor are necessary.’
The effect of Freda’s words was immediate and electric. “With those words Sister Palmo changed my life,” said Sheila. “She made me realize that that was how it was. Suffering is there, clear and simple, and yet there is a way out. I understood that there was a deep reservoir of peace available to me beneath the fear and anxiety. From that moment I turned a corner and came out of my depression. Things slowly began to improve. She was an excellent teacher and had the clearest view of the Path of any Tibetan master I later met. She had a unique ability to cut through. She was also extremely articulate, the result of her education and talent as a writer and teacher.”
As with all truly effective teachers, however, it was the unspoken qualities that Freda embodied that made an equally powerful impression on Sheila. Qualities including compassion, empathy, kindness, and a sense of humor, gained from a deep understanding of the Path, and literally embodied.
“Aside from her words it was her manner itself that was healing. She reached me at a human level. Sister Palmo became a role model, not just for me but for many women, because of all that she had been through and because she was powerful. Her life was vast. She’d been a conservative Englishwoman, an intellectual who had fitted in with a Sikh family, who had got involved in Indian politics, who knew Indira Gandhi and who had had a family before her inner path took over. She was extraordinary. I was her student, and was devoted as well as highly respectful of her,” said Sheila.
When she flew out of South Africa, Freda left behind the Karma Rigdol centers she had established in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Port Elizabeth, all under the auspices of H. H. Karmapa, and a small but enthusiastic group of people committed to following the Buddhist path. Many, like Sheila Fugard, had taken Refuge with Freda, and had been given Tibetan names. Others, like Andre de Wet, became ordained taking a monk’s name—in his case, Karma Samten.
She left her new converts with texts of prayers and rituals in English that she had translated herself from the Tibetan. This in itself was an innovative step forward in the bringing of Buddhism to the West, as for many years after the Tibetan diaspora newly engaged Buddhists were obliged to read prayers and chants in the original, without knowing what they were reading and saying.
Over the ensuing years she remained in constant contact with them through her usual stream of letters, guiding their newly formed centers in precise detail: suggesting candidates for the roles of president, secretary, or treasurer according to each person’s personality and ability, which she had witnessed and assessed. As with her own children, she was liberal with advice: “Youth are the breath of any new movement, but we need the older students to give stability, those who have seen something of the sorrows of the world. They have more staying power and more understanding of continuity, which is important.” Multitasking, also as usual, she set up journals, sent articles, and tried tirelessly (in vain) to get visas for eminent lamas such as Ayang Rinpoche to visit the centers to inspire them anew. When that did not work, she encouraged her students to come to India so that they could experience for themselves what it was like to be in the presence of the freshly emerged meditation masters from Tibet, and get their blessing that way.
Personally on several occasions Freda tried to return to South Africa herself, battling for months to get another visa, but to no avail. Th
e authorities would not let her in. Unbeknownst to her, time was running out. And she still had much to do and bigger territories to conquer.
16
Forging the Bridge
RETURNING TO RUMTEK after her South African tour, Freda resumed her duties as secretary and adviser on worldly affairs to the Sixteenth Karmapa, as well as her translation work and vast correspondence, which she actively enjoyed, finding letter writing relaxing. Her faithful attendant, the nun Pema Zangmo, constantly by her side, actually witnessed the seminal moment when Freda persuaded the Karmapa to journey to the West to introduce the Buddha’s teachings to the United States and Europe.
“I heard Mummy-la beg His Holiness Karmapa, ‘Please, please go to the USA and Europe. There is no Dharma there, but the West is now truly ready. The young people especially are crying out for the wisdom of the Buddha. In the future, Buddhism will grow in the West—and there will be many centers. Go, go and see with your own eyes,’” she said from her own nunnery.
The Karmapa had been repeatedly asked to visit North America and Europe, but had always declined, probably on the same grounds that deterred most high-ranking lamas—the belief that Westerners were simply too spiritually unevolved to appreciate, let alone grasp, the sophisticated and profound doctrines contained within Tibetan Buddhism. They were right. Until then Buddhism was generally so unknown beyond the East that it was commonly regarded as nothing more than idol worship. Few realized that the core of Buddhism was an advanced understanding of the human mind from the grossest to the subtlest levels of consciousness. The vastness of mind, they maintained, equaled the limitless boundaries of the universe, accessed only through the exploration of inner space, called meditation.
In Rumtek the Karmapa listened to Freda’s heartfelt plea. “Fetch the calendar,” he said. Leafing through it, he stopped on a page. “September fifteenth,” he announced. The year was 1974. What seemed like a random date, whimsically chosen was, according to Freda, in fact the display of a vast mind scanning the universe to settle on the most auspicious intersection of time and space to help usher in the historic event of Tibetan Buddhism’s entrance to the West. The decision may have been the Karmapa’s, but the catalyst was indisputably Freda, who had the extraordinary foresight to see what lay in store.
The time was definitely ripe. By the early 1970s other lamas had also heard the call. In 1974, Lama Thubten Yeshe and his heart disciple, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, from the Gelugpa School, taught their first meditation course to a group of Australians, at Diamond Valley, Queensland. Courses in England, America, and Europe followed, beginning with small front-room gatherings and rapidly mushrooming into a vast international organization, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), comprising not only centers of learning but social and publishing enterprises as well. From the Kagyu School came Kalu Rinpoche, who set up centers in the United States and Europe. H. H. Sixteenth Karmapa, however, bearing a longer lineage than that of the Dalai Lama, was the senior-most lama to set foot on Western soil. It was an enormous coup on Freda’s part.
Other forms of Buddhism were also appearing at this time. A small but powerfully enthusiastic group of young Jewish Americans—Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, and Joseph Goldstein—were transporting Therevada Buddhism in the form of Vipassana, or Insight Meditation, which they had learned in Burma and Thailand. The result was Spirit Rock, in California, and the Insight Meditation Center in Massachusetts, both of which now see thousands of people passing through their doors yearly. Zen Buddhism was also becoming firmly rooted. The Japanese master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi had established the San Francisco Zen Center as early as 1959, popularizing his message through renowned works such as Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind.
Why the flame of Buddhism should leap from East to West at this particular moment in time is a mystery. Throughout its long history, Buddhism, like a candle flame, had leaped from country to country when the time was right, taking on the color and shape of the culture in which it landed. Consequently, while the core of the Buddha’s doctrine, the Four Noble Truths, remained constant, the faces of Japanese, Chinese, Sri Lankan, Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, Cambodian, Laotian, and Tibetan Buddhism looked very different. Such was the malleability of the Buddha’s message, which eschewed dogma and blind faith. “Treat my teachings like gold. Test them and shape them into an ornament to suit each particular wearer,” he said. Now Western Buddhism was about to be born, mingling successfully with the discoveries in science, especially quantum physics, neuroscience, and psychotherapy. As such, it was peculiarly “modern,” even though it was historically older than both Christianity and Islam.
Whatever the cause of Buddhism’s appearance in the West, the timing was perfect. By the early 1970s the youthquake started in the 1960s of free love, miniskirts, drugs, and rock and roll was in full swing. The postwar baby boomers had grown up and were overthrowing the old conservative order, looking for love, peace, and an alternative to their materialistic society. They headed East to find spirituality and gurus, and a new way of living. At the same time the great flood of Tibetan refugees was converging on India. The two rivers met. Like Freda, the young, open, well-educated Westerners were bowled over by the sheer quality of the powerfully charismatic, scholarly lamas who were living out the teachings of wisdom and compassion.
With her plan for the Karmapa’s first visit approved, Freda immediately wrote to Chögyam Trungpa, who was already in America, to tell him the good news and ask him to help make arrangements for the tour.
In the end Freda was to make two journeys, in 1974 and 1975–76, traveling through California, Vermont, New York, Colorado, Montreal, Toronto, and then Scotland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Holland, France, and Italy. At times she went ahead, rousing the people to the Karmapa’s coming with speeches as eloquent and persuasive as any she delivered to the masses in the bygone days of Indian independence.
“It is really wonderful how His Holiness Karmapa and other great lamas with their actions remind you of the Buddha. You can see the Buddha walking—the gestures of their bearing, their dignity. I’m saying this from my own heart, not just mouthing what is said in the texts. I am sure when His Holiness comes, you will have an amazing experience of seeing a buddha, an Awakened One, walking before you. He will explain the Dharma in a peaceful voice, and tell us how to meditate. All men [sic] who have faith can see it. If you have no faith, you can’t see it,” she said to a gathering in New York.
“When we see it, a great longing arises in us, to be always near him, to listen to him, to understand,” she continued. “Through this great wish our hearts are inspired and we attain the lands of our heart’s desire. When we see the Buddha acting in this way without premeditation, we realize he acts not just for any one person or with any bias but for the sake of all, the greater good of all. When your mind sees things in this way, the well-being of all is accomplished, stage by stage.
“Going back to my own experience with His Holiness Karmapa, if he is coming at this time to the United States, it must be that certain people and pupils, young and old, are in their hearts needing his arrival, otherwise he would not come. The lama never comes unless there is a great tide that draws him, because his activity is truly spontaneous and unceasing,” she said.
At other times she traveled with the Karmapa, explaining Western culture to him and doing what she did better than anyone else—organizing timetables, meetings, and spiritual engagements, including the highly esoteric Black Crown ceremony, which he performed on a number of occasions to small groups of ten to fifteen people. The recipients may not have realized it, but it was an exceptionally powerful introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, one that the Karmapa hoped would leave a strong, lasting impression. Only the Karmapa could confer it.
It was said that the original Black Crown was woven from the hair of dakinis, high female spiritual beings who helped genuine practitioners on their path to awakening. The Crown hovered over the head of each successive Karmapa, granting insta
nt enlightenment to those whose vision was pure enough to see it. A visible replica was made in the fifth century, which the Karmapa was now carrying to the United States and Europe to show to Westerners for the first time in history. During the ritual he would hold it high, trusting that he was making a direct, intuitive connection to his new acolytes, rendering them open to receive the Buddha’s blessings.
Freda conceded that traveling with and looking after the Karmapa was an exhausting and sometimes eccentric business. An avid animal lover, His Holiness had chosen to bring along on his grand tour not just the precious Black Crown but a veritable menagerie. It was not easy, as Freda explained in a letter to her family:
“The Karmapa travels with hundreds of birds. We have eight huge birdcages, three dogs, including a white Pekingese puppy. His Holiness’s idea of relaxing is to go into a local bird store. He can’t leave without buying something—first it was finches and canaries, now he’s into parakeets. He’s planning to take them around Europe with him, which in winter will be no mean thing. I’m going to have to find ways of heating and feeding them.”
A crowd of dignitaries and celebrities made their way to the Karmapa’s door, including the Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Michael McClure. Ginsberg had met the Karmapa previously in Rumtek and was already a devotee. Now, in America, he wanted to know if taking LSD was a valid gateway into the spiritual path. The Karmapa replied that meditation was the only valid way of reaching authentic higher states of consciousness and that taking drugs was merely ersatz ecstasy. Ginsberg’s response is not known.
The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi Page 17