Karma lekshe tsomo biography of mahatma

The title of this book The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi: British Feminist, Indian Nationalist, Buddhist Nun  encapsulates the highlights of an extraordinary life and there is far more to tell. Vicki Mackenzie sets out to show that Freda Bedi, better known to many as Bhiksuni Khechok Palmo or “Mummy,” may have been an embodiment of Tara, the enlightened figure in female form who is revered in Tibetan Buddhism as the rescuer of suffering beings. Indeed, Bedi cut an impressive figure throughout the many stages of her life and was responsible for rescuing some of the twentieth 20th century’s most famous Buddhist teachers as they fled Tibet to exile in India. Mackenzie takes readers on a journey through a fascinating life.

Born in Derby, England, in 1911,  Bedi suffered the death of her father in World War I when she was just seven years old and survived a serious bout of diphtheria at the age of eleven. Later, she reflected upon how these events may have propelled her understanding of the Buddha’s teachings on suffering, its causes, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. She won a scholarship to study French at Oxford University, where she became a fervent socialist and then switched to politics, philosophy, and economics. Bedi fell in love with a fellow Oxford student, Baba Phyare Lal Bedi, a Sikh from Punjab, who was an Indian hammer-throwing champion. Their interracial marriage in 1933 created considerable commotion, “a tsunami of outrage” (21) in British society that rippled all the way to Parliament. Bedi followed her husband to Berlin, where he intended to pursue a doctoral studies in political science, but when Hitler  came to power in 1934, they fled to India with their newborn baby. When their ship docked in Mumbai after a harrowing journey, the young couple was greeted with body searches due to their seditious support for Indian independence.

Bedi quickly adapted to life in India, wearing a sari and learn

by Karma Lekshe Tsomo

For years now, around the world, young people have been fleeing the villages and settling in cities in search of social freedom and opportunity. The results have been mixed. Like honey on the edge of a sword, these migrations have resulted in both happiness and pain, success for some and disaster for others. Now, disillusioned by the human fallout of corporate capitalism and facing the dangers of a global pandemic, some are returning to the villages and discovering the joys of nature and serenity. I am one of them.

As I was growing up near the ocean in California, surfing was my life. After college, I spent a year studying Buddhism in Japan and fifteen years studying Buddhism in Dharamsala, the Indian Himalayan village where His Holiness the Dalai Lama lives. In 1977 in France, I realized my dream of becoming a Buddhist nun and continued my studies in India. While searching the Himalayan foothills for land to build a study center for nuns, I got bitten by a poisonous viper and nearly died. Eight days later, my friends drove me to a hospital in Delhi, fourteen hours away, where we arrived in the midst of monstrous heat, humidity, and traffic. Thankfully, the doctors didn’t amputate my arm, because they didn’t expect me to live and weren’t sure who would pay the bills. I survived, but it was a close call and it took me a year to learn to use my reconstructed arm again.

After recovering from the snake bite, I spent ten years studying religion and philosophy at the University of Hawai’i, while living nearby in peaceful Manoa Valley. The next twenty years I spent teaching in San Diego, California and working for gender equity for Buddhist women. With friends from many different countries, I helped found Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women and Jamyang Foundation, nonprofits to support the empowerment and education of women around the wor

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