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

Kunzang Gatsel, Delhi, New York

EDITOR’S NOTE

I
N PREPARING THE WRITINGS
of Chögyam Trungpa for publication in
The Collected Works
, some minor copyediting changes have been made to the texts: to correct stylistic or grammatical errors, to conform the spelling of English words to American usage, and to update the spellings of foreign words and make them consistent.

For the convenience of readers, it was decided that each volume should have a single glossary of selected terms at the end of the book. The glossaries from individual books in the volume were thus combined to create these unified glossaries. The glossaries of the individual books often contain expanded definitions that were composed under the guidance or with the approval of Chögyam Trungpa. Other, briefer definitions were added as needed.

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa
brings together in eight volumes the writings of one of the first and most influential Tibetan teachers to present Buddhism in the West. From his arrival in England in 1963 until his death in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Chögyam Trungpa (1939–1987)
¹
was the author of thirteen books. Of these, ten appear in full in this collection. His translations of major Buddhist texts (
The Tibetan Book of the Dead, The Rain of Wisdom
, and
The Life of Marpa
) have been omitted, but his introductions and other unique contributions to those publications are included.

Since his death, another thirteen books have been compiled from his lectures and poetry and published by Shambhala Publications. All of them appear in this compendium, although some illustrative material has of necessity been omitted. Vajradhatu Publications, the small press started by Chögyam Trungpa’s Buddhist organization, has published four books for a general audience, which will also be found in
The Collected Works
. (That press has also produced several dozen edited transcripts and a number of limited editions, which are not reprinted in this series.) Additionally, more than seventy articles from many sources are included, along with poetry published by two small Canadian presses, Trident Publications and Windhorse, as well as several published interviews and forewords, prefaces, and introductions to books by other authors.

This extensive body of work illustrates that Trungpa Rinpoche
²
was a remarkably prolific teacher whose writings continue to attract great interest. With plans being made for many more publications based on the recordings and transcripts of his many hundreds of seminars, as well as on his poetry and writings, it seems that his prodigious activity in bringing the buddhadharma, the teachings of the Buddha, to the West will continue to flourish for many years to come.

In arranging the material for the eight volumes of
The Collected Works
, a decision was made to arrange the volumes thematically rather than chronologically. In part, this was because of the diverse nature of Chögyam Trungpa’s literary endeavors. In addition to his books on the practice of meditation and the Buddhist path, five volumes and several broadsides of his poetry have been published, as well as three books on art and the artistic process. Two books on the Shambhala path of enlightened warriorship have also been produced. He also wrote a number of articles on Western psychology, along with short pieces on themes such as feminine energy and spiritual gardening. If all of these writings were organized in
The Collected Works
purely by year of publication, some rather strange juxtapositions would result. Moreover, the fecund connections among works on a similar theme would be much less apparent.

Another reason for the thematic organization is that Trungpa Rinpoche’s posthumous volumes contain material from both very early seminars in North America and much later lectures. So chronology of publication would be a misleading organizing principle.

That said, Volume One, which contains his early writings in Great Britain, is the exception to the rule. The style of those works differs radically from the voice that emerged when he began to teach, and to be published, in North America. It thus seemed both useful and appropriate to group together the writings from England.

Chögyam Trungpa’s first book,
Born in Tibet
, was published by George Allen & Unwin in 1966, approximately three years after he came from India to Oxford on a Spalding scholarship. There are no known writings of his from India, evidently because no writings were produced, saved, or passed on to Western students. He was twenty years old when he arrived in India in January of 1960, having traveled on foot and horseback over the Himalayas from eastern Tibet to escape the communist Chinese, a journey that lasted ten months. That odyssey is in part the subject matter of
Born in Tibet
.

In India he began his study of the English language, learning a great deal from Freda Bedi, an Englishwoman who later became a Buddhist nun under the name Sister Kenchog Palmo. Mrs. Bedi was very active in helping the Tibetan refugees and had started the Young Lamas Home School in Delhi, assisted by Trungpa Rinpoche, who was appointed spiritual adviser to the school. While in India, he was also tutored in English by John Driver, who later was of great assistance in his studies of Western literature, religion, and philosophy at Oxford. Trungpa Rinpoche had been first exposed to Western poetry in India, initially through a chance encounter with a Japanese haiku translated in a magazine he was reading to improve his English, and later by hearing the work of T. S. Eliot and other English poets at a reading sponsored by an American women’s club in New Delhi.
³
Rinpoche had also made the acquaintance of the American poets Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky in India when they visited the Young Lamas Home School.
⁴

Although he was an avid student of the language, Chögyam Trungpa’s English was still rudimentary when he sailed for England. More than that, his understanding of Western thought and culture was limited. He went to England because he wanted to teach Buddhism in the West, but in order to do so, he first needed to educate himself in Western ways.

The earliest published writing included in Volume One of
The Collected Works
is a brief article entitled “Om Mani Padme Hum Hrih,” which appeared in the August 1963 issue of
The Middle Way
, the journal of the Buddhist Society in England.
⁵
That was followed by “Taking Refuge” in the November 1963 issue. In that issue of the magazine, there is also a photograph of Trungpa Rinpoche with the Western Buddhist scholar Marco Pallis (who wrote the foreword to
Born in Tibet
) and the Parsi author and scholar of religion Phiroz Mehta, as well as two other Tibetan lamas, Akong Rinpoche and Rechung Rinpoche. The caption says that the photo was taken at the Buddhist Society Summer School in 1963. This must have been only months after Chögyam Trungpa’s arrival in England. Both of these early articles are well written, but the language and the style in which they present the Buddhist teachings are dramatically different from the way Trungpa Rinpoche expressed himself even a few years later. It’s very likely that Trungpa Rinpoche had extensive help with the editing and wording of these pieces, since his fluency in English was quite limited at this point. Although the articles show flashes of his brilliant intellect, in general the depth and luminous quality of his teachings are quite veiled in these earliest pieces from
The Middle Way
. It’s clear that he didn’t yet have the grasp of the language to convey the subtle and unique understanding that distinguished his teachings. In contrasting these articles with the pieces published by
The Middle Way
five years later, in 1968, one sees just how much Trungpa Rinpoche had immersed himself in Western thought in the intervening time. In the later articles he makes references to concepts from Western philosophy and literature, and his grasp of the language has clearly grown exponentially.

However, it was not just knowledge of the English language or of Western thought that Chögyam Trungpa needed in order to teach in the West. He was not interested purely in presenting an overview of Buddhism to Westerners, nor did he simply want to give basic instruction in meditation or provide some outward affinity with tantric practices such as visualization and mantra repetition. He was heir to a spiritual heritage of extraordinary depth and power, and it was the innermost teachings of his lineage that he wanted to transmit to his students in the West. To do this, he had to get inside the minds and hearts of Westerners; he had to know us from the inside out if he was to speak to us from that dimension. In the process, he faced many obstacles.

Even among the most realized Tibetan teachers, there were few—particularly at that time—who trusted Western students completely or thought them capable of understanding and putting into practice the deepest, most essential truths of the buddhadharma. Trungpa Rinpoche did have this faith, this trust in the Western mind. One sees this trust emerge from the very early days, in his first book published in England,
Born in Tibet
, an autobiography recounting his early life and training in Tibet and the dramatic story of his arduous escape. One can read this book on a simple level, skimming the surface of outer events; but a deeper reading reveals the author’s desire, even this early on, to share intimate details of his inner experience. For example, he describes his relationship with his main teacher, Jamgön Kongtrül of Sechen, and the significance of their meetings, in a way that goes far beyond a superficial telling. It is as if he invites the reader into the room with him when he is with his teacher and also, throughout the book, allows the reader to know his thoughts and emotions, including pain and doubt. He thus seems to have displayed a remarkable openness, considering how guarded most of his Tibetan colleagues were with their Western students. At the same time, he was not oblivious to a strong tendency among some Westerners, especially during this era in England, to view Eastern “gurus” with a mixture of awe and paternalism, treating them almost like spiritually advanced children who were unable to cope with the complexities of modern life. Yet he was able to steer confidently between the dualistic extremes of naive trustfulness and excessive reserve.

His ability to see all sides of Westerners’ reaction to their early encounters with Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhists is beautifully reflected in the first epilogue to
Born in Tibet
, which Chögyam Trungpa added to the Penguin paperback edition published in 1971, a year after he had left England for America. Of his experience in England, he wrote, “It was also the first time I had been the object of that fascination which is noncommunicative and nonrelating, of being seen as an example of a species rather than as an individual: ‘Let’s go see the lamas at Oxford.’ . . . [On the other hand] one particularly beautiful thing to hear in England was Western Buddhists giving talks on the dharma. It was so refreshing to see that the teachings could be presented in the local language. . . . At the same time it was an uplifting experience to see such interest in the actual practice of meditation. . . .”
⁶

To be sure, there were many of his Tibetan colleagues, his English friends, and his Western students who were nothing like the negative descriptions above. Or in many cases they were simply manifesting natural reticence, an inclination to be shy and reserved with people one doesn’t know well. In this case, the reticence involved whole cultures that had no intimacy with one another. So one hesitates to mention these tendencies, because they can be narrow and misleading characterizations. Yet it seems necessary to point to exactly these sorts of difficulties that he encountered in England, in order to understand the depth of his compassion, the breadth of his transformation, and his courage in leaving behind many of the trappings of his culture and many aspects of the monastic lifestyle that he dearly loved.

Indeed, no amount of formal education or study of the English language was going to make him an insider. He might get a front-row seat by working hard at his studies, but he was never going to be one of the players on the stage. More and more he came to realize this, and more and more he stepped outside the polite bounds of both Tibetan and English proper society in order to have real contact with the hearts and minds of the people he encountered. In many of his early talks, both in England and in the first few years in America, he spoke about the value and meaning of communication. It was not an abstract topic for him. He spent much of his effort during his early years in the West finding a genuine way to open to others and to invite them to open up to him. At the same time that he was working to overcome their tendencies to hold back, he had to work against his own.

He spoke a number of times about the crisis that he reached in this endeavor. In Volume One of
The Collected Works
, this discussion is found in
Born in Tibet
in both the 1971 epilogue to the Penguin edition and the 1977 epilogue, “Planting Dharma in the West,” which Trungpa Rinpoche composed for the Shambhala Publications edition of the book, which appeared ten years after its first publication. This spiritual crisis came to a head over several years. Rinpoche describes a kind of mental “breakthrough” that occurred in 1968 when he undertook a retreat at Taktsang in Bhutan, a cave where Padmasambhava, the great teacher who helped to bring the buddhadharma to Tibet, had manifested in a powerful, wrathful form. During his retreat, Chögyam Trungpa composed—or, more accurately, received—
The Sadhana of Mahamudra
, a text concerned with overcoming the obstacles of physical, psychological, and spiritual materialism that plague the modern world. This text is considered “mind terma,” a “treasure” text planted by Padmasambhava in the realm of space, from which it could be awakened or retrieved as a kind of revelation or vision many generations later, and thus passed on directly to practitioners in the future dark age. The text is concerned with how individuals can free themselves from the knots of materialism to connect with the power of genuine wisdom. It is a guide to individual liberation, which can then be harnessed to help a greater world. For its author, or its “discoverer,” it was certainly a personal awakening. As he writes in the 1977 epilogue, “The message that I had received from my supplication was that one must try to expose spiritual materialism and all its trappings, otherwise true spirituality could not develop. I began to realize that I would have to take daring steps in my life.”