The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Three: 3 (4 page)

“Sacred Outlook: The Practice of Vajrayogini” was an article that I edited for inclusion in a catalog for the exhibit “The Silk Route and the Diamond Path: Esoteric Buddhist Art on the Trans-Himalayan Trade Routes.” This exhibit, which opened at the UCLA art gallery in November of 1982 and then traveled to Asia Society in New York and to the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., in 1983, was curated by one of Trungpa Rinpoche’s students, Deborah E. Klimburg-Salter. For the exhibit, Rinpoche supervised the design and construction of an actual shrine setup for the practice of the Vajrayogini Sadhana, displayed with all its attendant ritual objects. Some of the material in the article was dictated by Rinpoche; some of it was taken from earlier talks he had given. It is material that is not available in any of his other published writings.

The other articles in
The Heart of the Buddha
cover a wide range of topics, including “Relationship,” “Intellect and Intuition,” and “Dharma Poetics.” “Acknowledging Death,” another article included here, was originally edited as a contribution to a book on healing. A later version also appeared in the
Naropa Institute Journal of Psychology.
Although health professionals have found it extremely helpful, it is not just aimed at professional caretakers but speaks to anyone dealing with sickness—their own or that of others. “Alcohol as Medicine or Poison” is a penetrating discussion of the positive and negative aspects of relating to drink, written by a man well known to have been a serious drinker. While he acknowledges the problems that can arise with the use of alcohol, Rinpoche expresses not a moral but a spiritual viewpoint of the subject. Altogether
The Heart of the Buddha
brings together important and provocative articles by Trungpa Rinpoche on a broad range of topics.

The other articles in Volume Three of
The Collected Works
are gathered from many sources. “The Wisdom of Tibetan Teachings,” published in the
American Theosophist
in 1972, is a pithy piece on both the history of Buddhism in Tibet and the three yanas of Tibetan Buddhism. Part of the article is based on “The Meditative Tradition of Tibet,” which appeared in
Garuda I.
The next article, “Transcending Materialism,” is reprinted here directly from
Garuda I.
It describes the “three lords of materialism” in a unique context, relating their conquest to the communist takeover of Tibet, forcing many great Tibetan teachers to leave the country in order to preserve the wisdom of their culture. Out of these dire circumstances, some good sprang, Rinpoche tells us, for the Tibetan wisdom subsequently found its way to the West, where there was genuine interest in Eastern spirituality along with many misconceptions about its practice. “Cutting Through,” the next article in Volume Three, was originally published in 1972 in
Garuda II.
It looks at the early history of American interest in non-Western spirituality and some of its roots, including Theosophy, the influence of Anagarika Dharmapala on the translation of Pali texts into English and Gendün Chöphel’s
⁸
attempts to translate Pali sutras back into Tibetan, as well as Aleister Crowley’s fascination with the magic and mystery of Tibet and Egypt. Then Trungpa Rinpoche relates all of this to the modern fascinations with and sidetracks of spirituality. This article is like nothing else written by Chögyam Trungpa that I know of. It covers interesting territory that he rarely discussed.

The next article, “The Tibetan Buddhist Teachings and Their Application,” first appeared in the inaugural issue of
The Laughing Man
magazine. The version reproduced here is based mainly on a later version, which appeared in an in-house Vajradhatu periodical called
Buddhadharma.
The questions and answers are based on the earlier version published in
The Laughing Man.
Trungpa Rinpoche talks once again about the problems of spiritual materialism, overcoming self-deception through the practice of meditation, and meditation as making friends with oneself.

This is followed by a short piece, “The Three-Yana Principle in Tibetan Buddhism,” which was published in another in-house organ,
Sangha,
in 1974. It does, in fact, give a brief synopsis of the three major yanas, or stages of the Buddhist path: the hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana. Next there is the talk “Cynicism and Warmth,” which first appeared in
The Vajradhatu Sun
in 1989. Given by Rinpoche at Tail of the Tiger in 1971, it is about cynicism as a tool for recognizing and cutting through spiritual materialism, and warmth as a tool for cutting through the obstacles of doubt and skepticism produced by the cynical approach. It is practice-oriented and powerful teaching.

“Dome Darshan,” “Tower House Discussions I and II,” and “Report from Outside the Closet” are all reprinted from
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche at Lama Foundation,
published in 1974. This publication is a record of a dialogue between Rinpoche, the representative of the Buddhist tradition, and the students at Lama Foundation, the inhabitants of a hippie commune in northern New Mexico. In some ways the audience at Lama was not that different from an audience of Rinpoche’s own students at the time. In fact, soon after his visit to Lama, a number of residents from that community left to study with him. Lama was a melting pot for the new American spirituality, hosting seminars by teachers from many different traditions. For example, Ram Dass, a former Harvard psychology professor (born Richard Alpert) who had become a teacher of Hindu spirituality, helped to found Lama and was a resident teacher there in the 1970s. After making Trungpa Rinpoche’s acquaintance there, he came to Naropa Institute for the first summer session in 1974 as one of the main teachers.

Though the group at Lama may have been similar to Rinpoche’s students,
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche at Lama Foundation
is not like any of his books. Since these talks and discussions took place in the Lama Foundation environment, rather than in one of Rinpoche’s practice centers, and since the people from Lama were responsible for the editing and publishing of the material, there is a distinct flavor to the book they produced. After all, the people at Lama were the editors of Ram Dass’s best-selling
Be Here Now,
which presents quite a different approach from Rinpoche’s view of the spiritual path, to say the least. Nevertheless, the people at Lama produced
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche at Lama Foundation
with Trungpa Rinpoche’s blessing, and it does not mask his basic message: beware of spiritual materialism. At Lama, he was presenting meditation in what was a respectful but rather vague and eclectic spiritual environment. Rinpoche chose to talk about developing a cynical or critical attitude as an important part of the genuine spiritual path. Discussions of the Hindu experience of bhakti and the dialogue about Christianity and Teilhard de Chardin are interesting highlights in these articles. Readers will have to make what they will of “Report from Outside the Closet,” which is a sort of short story or parable, which Trungpa Rinpoche wrote for the Lama Foundation publication. Joshua Zim, one of the residents at Lama who became a close student of Chögyam Trungpa’s, was fond of writing rather cryptic short stories, a volume of which were later published as
Empty Heart.
“Report from Outside the Closet” may have been Rinpoche’s way of communicating, or playing, with Zim.

“Freedom Is a Kind of Gyp” is an interview conducted and published by
East West Journal
(now
Natural Health
) in 1975. The interview was done during the Nalanda Festival in Boston, which was a kind of mini–Naropa Institute on the road, featuring poetry readings, Buddhist talks, music, and other cultural activities, including the opening of an exhibit of Tibetan art at the Hayden Gallery at M.I.T., for which Rinpoche wrote the catalog (see “Visual Dharma” in Volume Seven of
The Collected Works)
.
⁹
In 1974, a Dharma Festival organized by Rinpoche’s students in the Bay Area in California had created the model for the festival that took place in Boston. The interview itself covers a wide range of topics, including Rinpoche’s thoughts on EST and ecology. He is critical of Erhard Sensitivity Training, yet points out that Werner Erhard, its founder, is a “friend of ours.” Participants in Erhard’s training program attended specially EST-sponsored Vajra Crown ceremonies conducted by His Holiness Karmapa in 1976, so there was some genuine interest there in Kagyü spirituality. Trungpa Rinpoche was suspicious of Erhard’s approach but also, typically for him, saw the potential of what Erhard was doing with EST.

Next there is an interview with Chögyam Trungpa conducted by Karl Ray on behalf of
Codex Shambhala.
The
Codex
was a small journal started by Shambhala Publications in 1971 as a forum for discussion of its books and as a showcase for its authors. The interview reprinted in Volume Three, “The Myth of Don Juan,” appeared in 1975. Karl Ray, then a longtime Shambhala employee, had just assumed the editorship of the magazine, a position that he held throughout the remaining years of its publication. Later in 1975, the
Codex
became
The Shambhala Review of Books and Ideas.
It ceased publication altogether in 1976.
¹⁰
There were interesting reviews and excerpts from Shambhala’s new books in the magazine; but to my mind, the best of the
Codex/Review
were the original interviews.

In “The Myth of Don Juan,” Trungpa Rinpoche criticizes Carlos Castaneda for making something of a personality cult out of the figure of Don Juan, rather than emphasizing the teachings themselves—although Rinpoche remains unconvinced that Don Juan actually exists. There is a discussion of the problems with trying to use drugs to shortcut genuine spiritual discipline. Finally, Trungpa Rinpoche contrasts shamanistic teachings—as well as other religious traditions that are based on identifying with the magic contained in particular physical locations—with the approach of both Christianity and Buddhism, which he suggests are both fundamentally based on a mendicant or homeless approach. This, he suggests, is part of their universal appeal.

Volume Three concludes with a group of forewords written by Chögyam Trungpa over the years. They are arranged here chronologically. Two are forewords to translations of important Tibetan Buddhist texts. The first,
The Jewel Ornament of Liberation,
is Gampopa’s great work on the stages of the Buddhist path, which was translated by Herbert V. Guenther and published originally in 1959. Rinpoche wrote a foreword to the edition that Shambhala Publications brought out in 1971, and through this made the acquaintance of Dr. Guenther.
¹¹
Trungpa Rinpoche greatly admired this classic text and had studied it thoroughly as part of his own education. One of the first seminars he taught in America was a series of seventeen lectures on the
Jewel Ornament,
which regrettably has not yet been edited for publication. The other text for which he wrote the foreword,
Mahamudra: The Quintessence of Mind and Meditation
by Takpo Tashi Namgyal, was published in 1986, the year before Rinpoche died. He was very happy that this book was being published in translation; his foreword was one of the last things he ever dictated, just a few months before he became quite ill. He used this text as his own study material—in Tibetan, of course—for many of his talks on the Shambhala tradition of warriorship. This may be startling to some readers, since one does not popularly think of his Shambhala teachings as having a direct correlation to the advanced tantric teachings of mahamudra. Rinpoche also used this text in the preparation of many of his Buddhist lectures and seminars. This translation, by Lobsang P. Lhalungpa, was a valiant effort. It is quite a difficult work, and the translation is not easygoing. The book is now out of print, and one hopes that this text will once again be available in English in the not too distant future.

There are also three forewords included here that Trungpa Rinpoche contributed to books about other Buddhist teachers. The first is Jack Kornfield’s
Living Dharma: Teachings of Twelve Buddhist Masters,
published in 1975. Next is
The History of the Sixteen Karmapas of Tibet,
which was published in 1980 by Prajñā Press. The third is Tsultrim Allione’s
Women of Wisdom,
first published in 1984 by Routledge & Kegan Paul. Undoubtedly Trungpa Rinpoche was delighted to introduce these books, which would broaden the public’s knowledge of the history and lineages of Buddhism. It was probably his personal connection to the authors that led them to ask him to contribute a foreword and that led him to comply. Karma Thinley, the author of the book on the Karmapas, was a Tibetan Buddhist teacher in Toronto whom Rinpoche met when Karma Thinley visited Samye Ling in Scotland. Trungpa Rinpoche was very grateful for the hospitality Karma Thinley extended to him and his wife, and also respected him very much as a dharma teacher. As well, several of Trungpa Rinpoche’s close students had originally studied with Karma Thinley. Tsultrim Allione was also a student of Rinpoche’s in the early 1970s, and he had tremendous fondness for her. Jack Kornfield had been a colleague of Rinpoche’s at Naropa Institute; both he and his fellow teacher of insight meditation Joseph Goldstein taught at Naropa in 1974, when they were largely unknown. Rinpoche respected them both for their dedication to the Buddhist teachings. Also included in Volume Three is the brief foreword that Trungpa Rinpoche contributed to José and Miriam Argüelles’s ’70s classic
Mandala.
Both José and Miriam were early students of Rinpoche’s in California. (See John Baker’s comments earlier in this introduction.) The Argüelleses extended much personal hospitality to Rinpoche and Diana Mukpo in the early years, and he was grateful for both their friendship and their commitment to the Buddhist path.