Lama Zopa Rinpoche

very crowded. That’s how we lived in Buxa. I was based there for eight years while moving
to different places from time to time.
An Englishwoman called Freda Bedi, who was married to an Indian man she met at Oxford
University, found me an English pen friend and benefactor. Mrs. Bedi had been a Christian
before but became a Buddhist in Burma. Because her son and daughter were best friends
with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s son and daughter at university, Nehru gave her the job of
looking after the Tibetan refugee monks who had been sent to Missamari, in Assam.
Everybody said she had strong karma to become a Buddhist. She became a disciple of His
Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa and one of the first Western Tibetan Buddhist nuns,
Gelongma Karma Kechog Palmo.
In looking after the monks, Sister Palmo became close friends with them. She came to Buxa
three times, looking for all the young incarnate lamas and the old ones as well. The pen
friend she found for me, Rachel Levy, was a member of the Buddhist Society in London. I
never met her.
During my time at Buxa, many monks died of tuberculosis. There was no cancer at that
time, and TB was the main illness. TB became very famous! Looking out from my bed I
often saw dead monks being carried to the cemetery by a group of monks from that
khangtsen, who would pray for them there. It was like that every week. So many monks got
sick and died.
We also heard that food sent by the United Nations was exchanged by the camp’s officials
for poor quality food. Maybe they did that to give the monks the chance to practice the
Dharma well!
The head of the lama camp was a Punjabi Sikh, a soldier from the Second World War. He
was a very pompous, arrogant man. My pen friend sent me a book about London, about the
weather and the story of London, but the head of the camp wanted to read it and I don’t
think he gave it back. I don’t know what happened to it.
So, anyway, I learned about London weather at that time—how it is always drizzly and
always cloudy. I remember that from Buxa all those many years ago. In the past, when I
would come to the UK and travel to Cumbria, 45 as we passed Manchester I would see from
the train that it was foggy and rainy, just as the book had explained it always was.
About Dolgyal
When the Mongolian monks asked me to write the foreword for His Holiness’s book I told
them it would take many pages. And it did! I have told His Holiness that I am also thinking
of writing a book, not about me but about Khadro-la’s special experiences, what she sees
from her side. It should be very interesting. There is evidently a young lama also working on
something similar, so His Holiness said he wanted to see my book before I publish it.
Several years ago, when a new monastery was built at Drepung, His Holiness consecrated it
and gave teachings at Sera. At that time, four thousand monks gathered at Sera Je and each
monk had to come in front of all the others and swear into the microphone that he would
never practice Dolgyal or make any connection with people who were practicing, either with
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