Chögyam Trungpa: His Life and Vision by Fabrice Midal (Shambhala) Master of meditation, artist, poet, social visionary—Chögyam Trungpa was all these and more. Yet "Who was Chögyam Trungpa?" is a slippery question, for how can we can nail down the personality of a man who seemed to be a different person to different people at different times and on different occasions? Fabrice Midal, by steering his way be­tween conventional Western biography and traditional Tibetan hagiography, has succeeded in painting a detailed portrait of this unconventional Tibetan lama, who is regarded as one of the most influential forces in spreading Buddhism in the West.

From his first years of teaching in Britain and the United States, Trungpa began making friends with his students in a com­pletely free style, with few Buddhist references, adapting his teaching to the language and understanding of young Westerners. Yet his radical emphasis was on the traditional source of Buddhism: the root practice of sitting meditation.

In his oral teachings, Trungpa surprised his audiences by making no concession to their expectations, speaking directly from his heart to their hearts, without alluding to techniques and philosophy.

His work was unique in its emphasis on a secular rather than religious approach to spirituality. Among the practices that he encouraged his students to undertake were calligraphy, flower arranging, Japanese archery, tea ceremony, dance, theater, health care, psychotherapy, poetry, elo­cution, and translation. His establishment

of centers, communities, and innovative educational institutions was also part of the flowering of a new culture of Bud­dhism in the West. He founded Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado; Sham­bhala Training; and Vajradhatu, an inter-national association of meditation centers (now called Shambhala International).

This biography presents a wealth of an­ecdotes from Trungpa's life, excerpts from unpublished talks, reminiscences by those closest to him, and facts from the archive that preserves his legacy—all making the book a treasure chest of insights not found in any other book published so far.

Fabrice Midal is a professor of philosophy at the University of Paris. A practicing Buddhist in the tradition of Chögyam Trungpa, he is well known in Buddhist circles in France and has pub­lished books on religious topics with major French publishers, among them sev­eral titles on Tibetan Buddhism.

Chögyam Trungpa was a Buddhist teacher who was born in Tibet in 1940 and died in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1987. He was one of the first to teach Westerners, even living with them and sharing their lives.

Excerpt: There are numerous gurus who are known to be true heirs of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. But there is something unique about Chögyam Trungpa. It is difficult to define what is so singular about him, but this book offers an approach.

It is important to note that no other Tibetan guru has so distanced himself from his original culture. A commonly held belief is that spiritual practice is inseparable from its cultural context.

For many years, Zen masters considered that it was impossible to teach Buddhism to Westerners. So their first European disciples took up a Japanese lifestyle.

Chögyam Trungpa never wanted his students to become Tibetan. He believed that when Buddhism is transmitted to the West, it should give rise to a Western Buddhism, and this could only occur after profound reflection about the language and the culture in which the dharma could be established. Such was the huge task that Chögyam Trungpa undertook by immersing himself in the Western world. As he himself explained, be-coming a Buddhist is not a matter of trying to live up to what you would like to be, but an attempt to be what you are: "This possibility is con­nected with seeing our confusion, or misery and pain, but not making these discoveries into an answer. Instead we explore further and further and further without looking for an answer. It is a process of working with ourselves, with our lives, with our psychology, without looking for an an­swer but seeing things as they are—seeing what goes on in our heads di­rectly and simply, absolutely literally. If we can undertake a process like that, then there is a tremendous possibility that our confusion—the chaos and neurosis that goes on in our minds—might become a further basis for investigation:"

With this in mind, Chögyam Trungpa paid constant attention to edu­cation. He set up several schools and a university; he organized interreli­gious meetings at a time when they were scarce (while showing a profound interest in Christianity and Judaism, as well as other schools of Buddhism that were little known in Tibet); he was extremely sensitive to the role played by artists, poets, painters, and musicians with whom he regularly worked. He met numerous members of the avant-garde of the time; he analyzed the West's economic situation and how he could make a significant contribution to it; he gave thought to medicine and how to assuage the ills of the body as well as the mind; he became passionate about politics as a means of living in community and thought deeply about ecology and our relationship with our environment.

In many ways, Chögyam Trungpa is reminiscent of those stained-glass windows, made of a large number of facets, that decorate Gothic cathe­drals. Like them, he dazzles you. The only inappropriate aspect of this 1 analogy is that while such prolific richness can seem dazzling, such bril­liance can also provoke the greatest terror when it exposes the depth of our own imbecility.

The word imbecile comes from the Latin imbecillus, which means "not having a stick." An imbecile is someone with no leaning post. Caught in the web of thought's changing fashions and habits, he has been lost in obscurity. This is just what Buddhism means by samsara, an endless circle spun by our beliefs and opinions, without the slightest attention to what really is.

The basis of Buddhism, like all authentic practices, is the affirmation that it is possible to find a genuine stick to lean on, that a real world does exist beyond the one we build for ourselves and try to adhere to, come what may.

In a period marked by cynicism, there is a good deal of provocation in the idea that there is a path that can reveal the possibility of living other­wise—in other words, that the aim of life is not to become a good con­sumer or producer.

In reality, such an idea is often downplayed. Most of the press, books, and seminars devoted to spirituality set about doing so, for various reasons. Buddhism is often presented as being an atheistic—or at best ag­nostic—teaching, which is scientific and rational, which can be diluted into the "values" of modern society. It is also presented as a form of psy­chological therapy leading to a better existence, or else as a bulwark pro­viding cheap and easy protection against the stress of modern life.

When Buddhism is mingled with the West in such a way, not much of it is left.

But if more attention is paid to how Buddhism can be introduced into the West without being watered down by the media machine and the world of show business, then the work of Chögyam Trungpa becomes vital, because he was the first to warn us with prophetic clarity against the swamp we are sinking into ever deeper.

Chögyam Trungpa presented Buddhism in such a way that it can take root anywhere. He wanted its teachings to become part of everybody's daily life and meaningful in our society.

Buddhism is not a religion, as he frequently explained; it is a way of life. Spirituality must not be a specific field, excluded from the social and secular world.

A presentation of Chögyam Trungpa cannot be limited to the work of the man, no matter how exceptional he was. It also entails examining a fly historic event: a completely novel meeting between the East and the West. Beyond Buddhism, Chögyam Trungpa decided to become an in­trinsic part of our destiny so as to transform it—in other words, to liber-ate its dignity and greatness.

In writing this book, I considered several possible ways of presenting Chögyam Trungpa. I immediately excluded the idea of writing a biogra­phy, because such a psychological approach seemed both reductive and inappropriate to the very notion of egolessness as explained in Buddhist teaching.

Furthermore, who can pretend to know what Chögyam Trungpa thought?

Walter Fordham lived with him for a long time and organized his do­mestic life. When I interviewed him, he told me that every time Chögyam Trungpa came back from a trip, Walter felt as though he didn't know him anymore. He had changed so much that he seemed like a stranger. When you thought you knew who Chögyam Trungpa was, when you believed you had grasped your relationship with him, he broke down all your con­victions. He never stayed still. As Walter told me: "I never knew who he was; he'll always be a mystery for me. The trap some of his students fell into was to believe they had a personal relationship with him. No one was ever at ease with him. His relationship with us was more intimate than that. He completely saw through all of us, but at the same time the whole situation was so light. He was so passionate about who you were, while at the same time it didn't matter." This is why it seemed to me that describ­ing Chögyam Trungpa's personal experience would be impossible. No book could ever pretend to "grasp" such a man.

There was another possible approach: to produce a namthar, a tradi­tional tale describing the life and teachings of a guru, written by his dis­ciples. Such a project would imply a realization of his teachings, which is beyond my powers. Furthermore, it could not become truly meaningful in our modern world without being adapted and transformed, and thus disfigured.

Instead, I decided to sketch a series of portraits that would serve as a series of entrances into the world of Chögyam Trungpa.

Chögyam Trungpa is not a historical figure belonging to the past. He remains present in his works and continually offers us new ways to touch our hearts here and now.

Each chapter has been conceived as a facet of this work, capable of re­vealing a sacred vision—the capacity to see the beauty and space of all ex­perience. The entirety of Chögyam Trungpa's life and work was devoted to transmitting the spirit of enlightenment, and no encounter with him is ever superficial. This is why, wherever he went, people were waiting for him, lining up to greet him. This should not be seen as the expression of fanaticism or mere protocol, but instead as the burning desire to enter into contact with that space.

The life of Chögyam Trungpa surpasses all comparison. As we shall see, it shocked many people and continues to disturb others.

Great spiritual masters abandon all conventions and require no recog­nition. They are ready to take any number of risks in order to communi­cate enlightenment to their disciples: The master "constantly challenges his students to step beyond themselves, to step out into the vast and bril­liant world of reality in which he abides. The challenge that he provides is not so much that he is always setting hurdles or egging them on. Rather, his authentic presence is a constant challenge to be genuine and true."

But such excess cannot become meaningful only in the context that produced it. Certain surprising things he did can seem shocking today, and may also have seemed brutal or crazy at the time, but thanks to them the persons they were aimed at were able to open fully. It is thus difficult to judge them now. But any attempt to conceal his more disconcerting side would also water down the character of Chögyam Trungpa. I have tried to find a happy medium between this and the essential message of his work, while constantly examining the question of how Chögyam Trungpa had the power, and still has the power today, to enlighten us.

 

The exceptionally well produced and edited Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa gives this reviewer an opportunity to revisit his youth and some of the formative moments in his life. Quite simply as a young adult, I experienced an intellectual conversion that the purpose of life, at least my life, was to love selflessly all life. The way to reach this goal was to know myself, not in the argumentative way of a Socrates, but in the transcendental way of the Buddha. I had some smattering exposure to mahamudra and the Yoga of the Great Liberation. So in the late 1960s I set out to become a yogi and eventually a Buddhist practitioner. After some time in a Hindu Ashram practicing the classic meditations of Patanjali’s yoga. I found Buddhist meditation to be more agreeable, especially some tantric forms.

When Born in Tibet became a bestseller among new Buddhists I avidly read it and then stumbled upon the wonderful little volume Mudra, now collected in volume one of this wonderful collection. Chögyam Trungpa' Mudra for me expressed pithy insights that became pillars of my everyday meditation practice. Guidepost through the every intricate net-maze of the mind ensnaring me in suffering as I struggled to cultivate a deep universal and particularly immediate compassion. 

I had the fortune to interview Chögyam Trungpa in the late 1970s after his University Naropa was off and running. Though never considering myself his "student" I did learn from him.  And even considered his anti-exemplar "crazy wisdom" an important challenge to seekers who tend to abandon some behavioral  and ethical norms in order to "learn the higher wisdom"

Later Chögyam Trungpa's Cutting through Spiritual Materialism (in volume 3 of this collection) spoke to the strong and unquestioning commoditization and  "spiritual-experience consumerism" that Americans brought to their quest for spiritual authenticity without the ability to engage in self-reflexive critique or deep integrated practice.

The editors of the Collected Works stress how innovative is Chögyam Trungpa's development of an American idiom for complex Buddhist thought and. though I believe this is a work still in progress, the strides made by Chögyam Trungpa and so well in evidence in these volumes definitely calls for close attention both for subtle misunderstandings and for dynamic shifts in con notational meaning.

Except for the first volume which includes Chögyam Trungpa's earliest English publications, the volumes are arranged thematically with the editor providing detailed biographical and historical context in her introductions to each volume and writings. These volumes are a virtual treasure trove of Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings, including Chögyam Trungpa's own innovative practice adaptation to American ethos in the Shambhala teachings. I will refrain from further comment on the volumes now until I see the last installment which includes the completion of Chögyam Trungpa's Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings as well as his aesthetic forays...
The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa brings together in eight volumes the writings of one of the first and most influential and inspirational Tibetan teachers to present Buddhism in the West. Organized by theme, the collection includes full-length books as well as articles, seminar transcripts, poems, plays, and inter-views, many of which have never before been available in book form. From memoirs of his escape from Chinese-occupied Tibet to insightful discussions of psychology, mind, and meditation; from original verse and calligraphy to the esoteric lore of tantric Buddhism—the impressive range of Trungpa's vision, talents, and teachings is showcased in this landmark series.  

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, Volume 1 : Born in Tibet - Meditation in Action - Mudra - Selected Writings by Chögyam Trungpa, edited by Carolyn Gimian (Shambhala Publications) Review

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume One contains Trungpa's early writings in Great Britain, including Born in Tibet (1966), the memoir of his youth and training; Meditation in Action (1969), a classic on the practice of meditation; and Mudra, (1972), a collection of verse. Among the selected articles from the 1960s and '70S are early teachings on compassion and the bodhisattva path. Other articles contain unique information on the history of Bud­dhism in Tibet; an exposition of teachings of dzogchen with the earliest meditation instruction by Trungpa Rinpoche ever to appear in print; and an intriguing discus­sion of society and politics, which may be the first recorded germ of the Shambhala teachings.

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, Volume 2 : The Path Is the Goal - Training the Mind - Glimpses of Abhidharma -Glimpses of Shunyata - Glimpses of Mahayana - Selected Writings by Chögyam Trungpa, edited by Carolyn Gimian (Shambhala Publications) Review

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Two examines meditation, mind, and mahayana, the "great vehicle" for the development of compassion and the means to help others. Chögyam Trungpa introduced a new psychological language and way of looking at the Buddhist teachings in the West. His teach­ings on human psychology and the human mind are included in this volume.

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, Volume 3 : Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism - The Myth of Freedom -The Heart of the Buddha - Selected Writings by Chögyam Trungpa, edited by Carolyn Gimian (Shambhala Publications) Review

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Three captures the distinctive voice that Chögyam Trungpa developed in North America in the 1970s and reflects the preoccupations among Western stu­dents of that era. It includes Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism and The Myth of Freedom, the two books that put Chögyam Trungpa on the map of the American spiritual scene. The Heart of the Buddha and sixteen articles and forewords complete the volume.

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, Volume 4 : Journey Without Goal - The Lion's Roar - The Dawn of Tantra -An Interview with Chögyam Trungpa by Chögyam Trungpa, edited by Carolyn Gimian (Shambhala Publications) Review

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Four presents introductory writings on the vajrayana tantric teach­ings, clearing up Western misconceptions about Buddhist tantra. It includes three full-length books and a 1976 interview in which Chögyam Trungpa offers penetrat­ing comments on the challenge of bring­ing the vajrayana teachings to America . Review

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, Volume 5 : Crazy Wisdom-Illusion's Game-The Life of Marpa the Translator (excerpts)-TheRain of Wisdom (excerpts)-The Sadhana of Mahamudra (excerpts)-Selected Writings by Chögyam Trungpa, edited by Carolyn Gimian (Shambhala Publications) Review

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, Volume 6 : Glimpses of Space-Orderly Chaos-Secret Beyond Thought-The Tibetan Book of theDead: Commentary-Transcending Madness-Selected Writings by Chögyam Trungpa, edited by Carolyn Gimian (Shambhala Publications) Review

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, Volume 7 : The Art of Calligraphy (excerpts)-Dharma Art-Visual Dharma (excerpts)-SelectedPoems-Selected Writings by Chögyam Trungpa, edited by Carolyn Gimian (Shambhala Publications) Review

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, Volume 8 : Great Eastern Sun - Shambhala - Selected Writings by Chögyam Trungpa, edited by Carolyn Gimian (Shambhala Publications) Review

Part 2

TRUNGPA

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa brings together in eight volumes the writings of one of the first and most influ­ential and inspirational Tibetan teachers to present Buddhism in the West. Orga­nized by theme, the collection includes full-length books as well as articles, semi­nar transcripts, poems, plays, and inter-views, many of which have never before been available in book form. From mem­oirs of his escape from Chinese-occupied Tibet to insightful discussions of psychol­ogy, mind, and meditation; from original verse and calligraphy to the esoteric lore of tantric Buddhism—the impressive range of Trungpa's vision, talents, and teachings is showcased in this landmark series.

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, Volume 1 : Born in Tibet - Meditation in Action - Mudra - Selected Writings by Chögyam Trungpa, edited by Carolyn Gimian (Shambhala Publications)

The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume One contains Trungpa's early writings in Great Britain, including Born in Tibet (1966), the memoir of his youth and training; Meditation in Action (1969), a classic on the practice of meditation; and Mudra, (1972), a collection of verse. Among the selected articles from the 1960s and '70S are early teachings on compassion and the bodhisattva path. Other articles contain unique information on the history of Bud­dhism in Tibet; an exposition of teachings of dzogchen with the earliest meditation instruction by Trungpa Rinpoche ever to appear in print; and an intriguing discus­sion of society and politics, which may be the first recorded germ of the Shambhala teachings.

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)' 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 inter-views and forewords, prefaces, and introductions to books by other authors.

This extensive body of work illustrates that Trungpa Rinpoche 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 byGeorge 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 196o, having traveled on foot and horse-back 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 West-ern 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 . 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 .

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.

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 "break-through" 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" (p. 264).

He returned from Bhutan to Great Britain , where in spite of the inner discoveries he had made, he found that outwardly he was still hesitant to jump in fully. A few months later, in early 1969, he was severely in­jured in a car accident, from which he emerged paralyzed on the left side. However, he took the accident as good news, a breakthrough: "In spite of the pain, my mind was very clear; there was a strong sense of communication—finally the real message had got through—and I felt a sense of relief and even humor. . . . I realized that I could no longer attempt to preserve any privacy for myself, any special identity or legiti­macy. I should not hide behind the robes of a monk, creating an impres­sion of inscrutability, which, for me, turned out to be only an obstacle. With a sense of further involving myself with the sangha, I determined to give up my monastic vows. More than ever, I felt myself given over to serving the cause of Buddhism" (pp. 264-65).

In "Things Get Very Clear When You're Cornered," a 1976 interview in The Laughing Man magazine, Chögyam Trungpa talks about the dilem­mas faced by Tibetan teachers and his own personal challenge in teach­ing in the West, as well as the message of his accident…

Tibetans generally have to break through the cultural fascinations and mechanized world of the twentieth century. Many Tibetans ei­ther hold back completely or try to be extraordinarily cautious, not communicating anything at all. Sometimes they just pay lip-service to the modern world, making an ingratiating diplomatic approach to the West. The other temptation is to regard the new culture as a big joke and to play the game in terms of a conception of Western eccentricities. So we have to break through all of that. I found within myself a need for more compassion for Western students. We don't need to create impossible images but to speak to them directly, to present the teachings in eye-level situations. I was doing the same kind of thing that I just described, and a very strong message got through to me [after my accident]: `You have to come down from your high horse and live with them as individuals!' So the first step is to talk with people. After we make friends with students they can begin to appreciate our existence and the quality of the teachings.'

A few months after having renounced his monastic vows, in an even more radical move, on January 3, 1970 , Trungpa Rinpoche married. His bride, Diana Judith Pybus, was a young woman of sixteen at the time. Three months after they married and within a year of his accident, he and Diana left England for North America .

These events of 1968 to 1970 show an enormous shift in Chögyam Trungpa's outer manifestation. The writings that make up Volume One of The Collected Works are a window into the inner world of this extraor­dinary man, both before and during this transformation. For his manifes­tation after these changes, we have another seven volumes to peruse!

Diana Mukpo, the author's wife, remarked on how much his outer being changed following his accident. She first met him during a seminar he was giving in London at the Buddhist Society in early 1969. Trungpa Rinpoche had just recently returned from Bhutan , where he had received the sadhana. It was before the accident. Diana requested a per­sonal interview with him, which she describes as follows: "During the interview, Rinpoche was incredibly sweet.... To me he seemed to be a very pure being: so kind, so pure, so sharp. During the interview, I had the sense that he was touching my mind with his. There was absolutely no barrier in our communication. Whomever he worked with, he was in love with the other person's mind. I felt that he had no personal agenda except to be kind and helpful."

The next time she saw him was in the fall of 1969, when she hitch-hiked to Samye Ling, Rinpoche's meditation center in Scotland . She writes:

The first evening I was at Samye-Ling, Rinpoche came by to have dinner with the other Tibetans who lived at Samye-Ling. After din­ner, as he was leaving . . . I saw him outside getting ready to depart. He was no longer wearing monk's robes, but instead he had on a layman's chuba, or robe, and he was walking slowly in a laboured way with the aid of a walker. I realized that he was quite crippled from the accident. I managed to get close to him. . . . Although I only saw Rinpoche that evening for a few minutes, in that short period of time, I realized that he was a completely different person than he had been before his accident. Of course, he looked quite different physi­cally because he was paralysed on one side and had obviously been through a l0t. But that wasn't it. It wasn't just his physical being that had changed. He had a very different manifestation now, which I found fascinating. Before the accident, he had been a youthful Ti­betan monk, so pure and light. Now he was much more heavy and solid, and there was a sort of old dog or well-processed feeling about him. He seemed much older, and he had an unfathomable quality that I hadn't experienced before. He was transformed."

That purity and lightness, which others who knew Trungpa Rinpoche during this time have also noted, are reflected in the quality and style of Born in Tibet , as well as in the articles published in The Middle Way. This light touch is also apparent in Chögyam Trungpa's first book on the Buddhist path, Meditation in Action, which was based on talks he gave at Samye-Ling beginning in 1967. There are indeed a sweetness and a gen­tleness that pervade these early works. While not abandoned later, these qualities became colored by a deeper range of emotions and a different vocabulary in America .

The third book that is included in Volume One, Mudra, was not in fact published until 1972, several years after Chögyam Trungpa came to North America . However, it has been included in Volume One because the core writings in Mudra are poems composed in England in the 1960s. (The translation of a poem that the author wrote in the Valley of Mys­tery in Tibet in 1959 also appears here.) There are several poems from 1965, in a section called "Songs"; the remaining verses are all from 1969, several from before the author's accident, the remainder following it. Together they give us another picture of this period: the voice of the poet, which for Trungpa Rinpoche was always a highly personal voice, much more so than the tone of his lectures.

Up to this point, the discussion has been of how one can read these early works for signs of the author's personal growth and development. In many schools of Buddhism, the teacher's life is taken as an important object of study and contemplation. For it is assumed that the life of a great teacher is a life that contains many lessons. A teacher's life is teach­ing by example.

However, The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa is not the author's spiritual biography, and in general it is not the editor's intent to discuss themes from Rinpoche's personal life in the introduction to each of the volumes. Yet it seemed that for this first volume it was worth making an exception and including in this commentary some important biographi­cal themes, especially since the author's only autobiography, Born in Tibet , is included here. However, the teachings from this early period can primarily be enjoyed as good reading and for the good dharma that they expound.

When Born in Tibet was published in 1966, it was among the very earliest Tibetan autobiographies and accounts of life in Tibet told by a Tibetan in English. It was also one of the first descriptions of the com­munist occupation of that country recounted firsthand by a Tibetan. There are few works, even today, from which one can learn as much about the traditional upbringing and training of an incarnate teacher in Tibet . It owes its genesis very much to its English editor, Esme Cramer Roberts. Chögyam Trungpa and Mrs. Roberts were introduced through mutual acquaintances at the Buddhist Society in Oxford . In his foreword to the book, Marco Pallis thanks Mrs. Roberts for "her encouragement in the first place," without which, he notes, "the work might never have been begun." Mrs. Roberts and Trungpa Rinpoche worked on the book together for more than two years.

Born in Tibet was written at a time when Chögyam Trungpa's com­mand of English was still very much a work in progress. Understandably, the language and the style employed in the book were heavily influenced by Mrs. Roberts's own skills with the English language. It is fortunate for the reader that she was such a sensitive editor; much of the charm of the phraseology of Born in Tibet , as well as its literacy, were undoubtedly her contributions.

Marco Pallis also notes that Mrs. Roberts tried very hard to preserve the flavor of the author's thoughts. As he puts it, "she wisely did not try and tamper with a characteristically Tibetan mode of expression." With-out knowing exactly what he meant by this, it is still clear that Chögyam Trungpa himself, not his editor, determined the basic content and struc­ture of the book. Mrs. Roberts was the first of many book editors he worked with. And while all of these made their imprint on his printed words, none of them—starting with this first venture—overrode the strength of his vision and his ability to communicate that.

There is some evidence that Mrs. Roberts sometimes did not under-stand all the details of the stories Trungpa Rinpoche told her. A number of years later, when he gave several seminars on the lineage of the Trungpa tulkus (incarnate lamas) and on his teacher Jamgon Kongtrul, there were small but notable discrepancies in his description of various events. That said, Born in Tibet is a book that he was proud of, and he was immensely grateful to Esme Cramer Roberts for having helped him to write it.

Born in Tibet was also significant because, for a very long time, it ap­peared to be the only available record of Trungpa Rinpoche's early life and his teachings in Tibet . It is now known that he composed over a thousand pages of writings while in Tibet and that, as a young tulku, he had already found several important termas. These were left behind when he fled the country, as was the history of the kingdom of Sham­bhala that he was writing during his escape. According to one story, he left it hidden near a high pass in the Himalayas . Until recently, all of these materials were believed to have been lost, destroyed during the communist Chinese invasion of the country.

Although he received occasional letters and news from Tibet , Trungpa Rinpoche was never able to return there. It was only after his death that a connection to Surmang Dutsi Tel, his main monastery, was rees­tablished by the Western sangha. One of Trungpa Rinpoche's students, Lee Weingrad, traveled to the monastery in September 1987, five months after Rinpoche's death, and has led many groups of Westerners there in subsequent years. Rinpoche's eldest son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, then led an official delegation to Surmang in the summer of 2001. During his visit, the Sakyong was given nearly four hundred pages of texts that Trungpa Rinpoche composed before leaving Tibet . Mipham Rinpoche received this material from Trungpa Rinpoche's nephew, Karma Senge Rinpoche—who, in the aftermath of the communist occupation, trav­eled around the Surmang area gathering everything he could find of Trungpa Rinpoche's writings to preserve these texts for future prac­titioners. In time, much of this material will be translated and made available to English-language readers.

The second volume that is included in Volume One of The Collected Works is Meditation in Action, which was published in 1969 by Vincent Stuart and John M. Watkins. The material in the book dates from talks given at Samye Ling Meditation Center in Eskdalemuir , Scotland , by Rinpoche in 1967 and 1968, before his transformative vision at Taktsang. There is a simplicity and a purity of thought that have made this little book an enduring classic on meditation and the path of the bodhisattva. This is the first book based on transcripts of audio recordings of the au­thor's lectures. The great majority of his subsequent publications have been based on transcripts of lectures, his poetry being of course the major exception. That he—and other important Buddhist lineage holders—came to the West at a time when the technology existed to easily record the human voice was an accident, but an extremely fortuitous coincidence. The teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha were remembered and written down by his major disciples, and that tradition of students passing on the words of their teachers from memory was a main vehicle for the transmission of the Buddhist teachings for many centuries. At the time that the historical Buddha lived, the culture was much more attuned to that kind of oral transmission. Had the preservation of Chögyam Trungpa's dharma teachings relied purely on the memory of his Western students, I think it is fair to say that a great number of the teach­ings would have been lost or strangely altered. So we can be grateful that the arrival in the West of so many great Buddhist masters coincided with a technology uniquely suited to preserve their words.

For the transcription and editing of Meditation in Action, thanks are due to its editor Richard Arthure and other English students of Rinpoche's who worked on the manuscript. Richard was with Rinpoche when he composed The Sadhana of Mahamudra at Takstang in Bhutan and worked closely with Rinpoche on the translation of that text." Of the genesis of Meditation in Action, Richard tells us:

The idea of putting together a book, based on talks given by Rinpoche mostly in 1967, arose in conversation between the Vidyadhara and myself, probably early in 1968. I thought it would help in making more people aware of what an extraordinary teacher Rinpoche was and, in particular, that it would draw more people to the Dharma and to Samye-Ling. I selected the material and set about transcribing and editing the talks that I thought would hang together to make up a book. It was solitary and labor-intensive work. For transcribing, I had an old reel-to-reel tape recorder and the first draft was written out by hand and then typed double-spaced on a Hermes typewriter. The challenge was to transform Rinpoche's spoken words into clear and elegant English prose. Even then, he had a fairly extensive and ever-growing vocabulary in English, but his sentence construction and grammar were rather sketchy and unorthodox...

I worked on the book for about four months in the Spring of 1968 in between bouts of intensive ngondro practice. I wanted to finish both before Rinpoche and I left for India and Bhutan , which was late June or early July of 1968. I had no idea what the title of the book would be until after the manuscript was finished. I remember there was some discussion as to whether it should be Meditation and Action or Meditation in Action. In retrospect, it seems self-evident that Meditation in Action is a much better title, but it wasn't quite so obvious then as it is now with hindsight. Robert Bly happened to be visiting Samye-Ling at the time that I was putting together the final type-script. He very kindly reviewed it and suggested a handful of minor changes, mostly in the matter of punctuation. . . . The corrected proofs were sent to Stuart and Watkins only days before [Rinpoche and I departed] ... for India , and so it happened that the book came out in England when both of us were thousa