Honouring Freda Bedi (Sister Palmo) who played a pivotal role bringing the Dharma and our Tibetan masters to countries in the West and Africa. Where would we all be, without her? (Photos shared by others, Chime Rinpoche and Jon Norris.) As Jon Norris says, please would someone write her story?. Many of us feel close to her and are immensely grateful to her. Jon Norris writes: People often lament how Tibetan Buddhism is still dominated by men. Sister Palmo (Freda Bedi) is yet another example of a woman who played a major role, but is little remembered. She had studied at the Sarbonne and married into a wealthy Sikh family. So, she happened to end up in the thick of the Tibetan exodus into India in 1958. “In 1959 Christopher Hills lobbied Nehru to approve a government in exile for the Dalai Lama fleeing persecution in Tibet and to grant full refugee status to exiled Tibetans. He had become connected to the Tibetans through his study of Buddhism and in 1960 provided funding for his English friend Freda Bedi to start the Young Lamas Home School in Dalhousie, Himachal Pradesh.” ~Wiki It was at this school that she taught English to (Chogyam) Trungpa (Rinpoche), Akong (Rinpoche), Chime (Rinpoche), and many others. Then she somehow engineered their admittance to Oxford! It is extraordinary that in the midst of the Tibetans trying to establish refugee camps and learn Indian languages, Sister Palmo was preparing them to go on to the West. To some extent, you could say that Christopher Hills and Sister Palmo were the progenitors of Vajrayana in the West. I met her in March of 1974 in New York City while I was taking the Refuge Vow with Chogyam Trungpa. It was rather comical actually, because while we western kids were all starry-eyed over Trungpa, she still related to him like her little refugee adopted son – and she was a very strong-willed woman! While she was there she gave talks at the Theosophical Society and gave us Green Tara and Chenrezi Initiations. She seemed to be genuinely concerned that Tibetan Buddhism get off to a good start in America. Four years later, I attended Trungpa Rinpoche’s Vajradhatu Seminary. At the conclusion we received transmission and were provided with some instruction manuals. Among those manuals was a Mahamudra text. It was a copy of the 9th Karmapa’s famous text ‘Eliminating the Darkness of Ignorance’ (Chagchen marig munsel). Lo and behold, this was a hand-typed manuscript that had been translated by Sister Palmo herself! She had translated it at Rumtek in 1971 with the help of Khenchen Thrangu. Sadly, she passed away in 1977. By different accounts she was either the first or second western woman to take ordination in Tibetan Buddhism, and she really deserves more recognition. She sure gets mine!
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 15:43:46 +0000
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