Home > About Bedales > Alumni Profiles > Tom Lodge

Tom Lodge, Old Bedalian and Zen Master

When did you leave Bedales, and how did you continue your education?

1953; I have no higher education from an educational institution. But I have had a ton of higher education from the world, from life, from people and from going directly and fully into all that I have done. All this has been because I have never had any hesitation, and so with no negative or cautious thoughts about what is happening or what could happen, I have been open and available to all possibilities. Then from this acceptance, the rewards have been that life has welcomed me with an abundance of a gilded, unique and the ultimate in higher education.

What is your current role?

Zen Master at Stillpoint, Santa Cruz, California, USA

In what way did your time at Bedales influence your education and career progression?

My time at Bedales allowed me to discover the deep generally unrecognizable source of creativity, through direct experience, without the interference of the academic mind.Poetry, music, running, falling in love, serving at meal times, eating custard, were just as important as Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History, neither was more or less important, they were all a delight.

This gave me the courage to immigrate to Canada, to be a cowboy; to ice fish on Great Slave Lake and to face near death out there, to write a book about this experience; to be at home on a ship in the North Sea, broadcasting from Radio Caroline, to have no fear when we were in a hurricane and being
shipwrecked, to write a book about this experience; to teach at Fanshawe College in Canada when I did not even have ‘O’ level, where I created the first training for recording engineers and record producers; to travel to India and surrender to an Enlightened Master, until all the ego had dissolved away to Enlightenment. And then to the present moment of swimming, dancing and playing with a group of people who are also on the quest for Enlightenment and to write many books about these experiences.

What is your fondest memory of Bedales?

Sitting with my English teacher Joyce Cager-Smith and discovering that writing was colours and that being a poor speller was no handicap. She accepted my ways, and that there was this inner voice that was worth expressing.

What is your favourite pastime?

Playing the clarinet, dissolving into its sounds, riding high and low with the notes and then melting into the subsequent silence.

What is your proudest achievement?

Having lived to the fullest, where no challenge was ever too much. But above all, being able to feel the wonder of sound and the miracle that poetry can bring. 

© Bedales Schools   Digital Marketing Agency - Wickedweb