The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Seven (13 page)

12
. Neither one of them seemed to remember that they had first met in the early sixties at the Young Lamas School in New Delhi. Ginsberg only realized this “pre-meeting” had taken place after Rinpoche’s death, when Ginsberg looked at a photograph of himself being shown around the Young Lamas’ School and realized that Trungpa Rinpoche had been his guide.

13
. Allen Ginsberg,
Spontanteous Interviews:
1958–1996
,
edited by David Carter (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001), p. 381; © 2001 by the Allen Ginsberg Trust. See also David Rome’s comments in the Editor’s Preface to
First Thought Best Thought.

14
. See Samuel Bercholz’s remarks on this occasion in the publisher’s foreword to Volume One.

15
. Many poems appear in both collections.

16
. John Castlebury, a student of Trungpa Rinpoche’s and a poet himself, has for many years published
Windhorse,
a journal of poetry, which he began in Boulder, Colorado, and moved to Nova Scotia, Canada, in the early 1990s. A number of Chögyam Trungpa’s poems appeared in various volumes of
Windhorse.
In 1997, for the tenth anniversary of Trungpa Rinpoche’s death, John published an entire issue of
Windhorse
dedicated to the poetry of Chögyam Trungpa, as well as his talks and panel discussions on poetry. A number of poems from
Windhorse
are included in
The Collected Works.
David Rome, James Gimian, and I also put together two posthumous volumes of Rinpoche’s poetry:
Warrior Songs
and
Royal Songs. Warrior Songs
was handset in letterset type; both small volumes are fine, cloth, small press editions of poetry, available in limited editions. David Rome and I did the editing of both volumes; James Gimian was the publisher and actually did the typesetting of
Warrior Songs
himself, together with Mr. Dawson at the Dawson Print Room of Dalhousie University, Halifax.

17
. Ginsberg,
Spontaneous Interviews,
p. 406.

18
. Ibid, p. 399.

19
. E-mail communication from David I. Rome to Carolyn Rose Gimian, January 29, 2002.

20
. Over the years, students were not infrequently asked to contribute lines to Rinpoche’s poems or to produce their own poem on a topic. For example, in the late 1970s in a late-night session in his office, following the abhisheka of Vajrayogini in which Rinpoche entered a number of his senior students into this tantric mandala, he and a group of students, including the Vajra Regent (Rinpoche’s dharma heir), wrote dohas, poems expressing spontaneous insight. These have never been published. There are many other examples of this kind of group poetry effort.

21
. I was one of Chögyam Trungpa’s primary students of elocution, and during the last few years of his life and also since his death, I’ve taught a number of elocution classes based on the exercises and method that he developed. Allen Ginsberg, being a curious, open-minded, and unassuming person, attended a four-week elocution course that I taught at the 1984 Vajradhatu Seminary. He was interested in learning what new things Chögyam Trungpa was doing with the English language, and I’m sure that he had a much better appreciation for the deeper significance of Rinpoche’s method of elocution than I did! It’s my intention to write an article about Rinpoche’s interest in English pronunciation at some point, since it is one of the less-well-known, more humorous, and quite intriguing aspects of his love affair with the English language. For further information on Trungpa Rinpoche’s approach to elocution, see the excellent chapter in
Trungpa: Biographie
by Fabrice Midal (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2002; English translation forthcoming from Shambhala Publications under the title
Chögyam Trungpa: His Life and Vision
).

22
. Edited from notes taken by Carolyn Rose Gimian December 17, 1983, at an evening of elocution and other readings at the Kalapa Court, the residence of Chögyam Trungpa.

23
. Fax on the Milarepa Film Project from Johanna Demetrakas to Carolyn Rose Gimian, August 2002.

24
. E-mail communication from Baird Bryant to Carolyn Rose Gimian, December 2, 2002.

25
. For materials related to the Milarepa Film Project, see also the articles on the life of Milarepa in Volume Five. In the Introduction to that volume, the suggestion is made that one of these articles was an early treatment of some possible scenes for the Milarepa film.

26
. In
Trungpa,
Fabrice Midal reports that Rinpoche’s discovery of the existence of these thangkas was his inspiration altogether for the Milarepa Film Project.

27
. Bryant, ibid.

28
. Demetrakas, ibid.

29
. Baird Bryant, ibid. The Archives, as mentioned, does have close to a hundred slides of details of these beautiful Milarepa thangkas, photographed during the trip to Sweden.

30
. Demetrakas, ibid.

31
. Ibid.

32
. Baird Bryant, ibid.

33
. Demetrakas, ibid.

34
. Along with Michael Wood, John McQuade was the founder of the current Miksang Society. Miksang was the inspiration of the Vajra Regent Ösel Tendzin, Chögyam Trungpa’s dharma heir. His interest in photography led him to start the first Miksang group for exploring the possibilities of a contemplative approach. Later he encouraged and supervised the development of the current Miksang Society. In 1985, he approved the Miksang course of training and officially established the Miksang Society as a vehicle for exploring and presenting contemplative photography. Ösel Tendzin’s calligraphy “Miksang” serves as the masthead of the group’s stationery.

35
. Probably Baird Bryant is referring to making of the film
Empowerment
during His Holiness Karmapa’s first visit to North America in 1974. Much of the footage from this film eventually was used in
The Lion’s Roar.

36
. Baird Bryant, ibid. Baird ends his memoir: “All I can do is point to the greatest tribute that has ever been paid me. In
The Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala,
Rinpoche writes, ‘. . . I have a friend and student named Baird Bryant whom I’ve worked with for many years. He is a filmmaker, and we worked together on several films. I can see that he has that kind of sadness. He wishes that something could be done for others, that something could be made right. He has that sadness, aloneness and loneliness, which I appreciate very much. In fact, I have learned from witnessing my friend’s experience, my best friend.’ Thank you for all your precious gifts, my best friend, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.”

37
.
Kingdom of Philosophy, The Heart Sutra, Prajna, Water Festival, Sandcastles, Child of Illusion,
and
Proclamation. The Heart Sutra
appears to be an earlier version of
Prajna.
It was apparently composed as an exercise for a theater and play-writing workshop Rinpoche conducted in 1973 or early 1974.
Kingdom of Philosophy
was written during a retreat at Charlemont, Massachusetts, in 1972. I have been unable to obtain information on the dates or circumstances of the composition of the other plays.

38
. From a work in progress,
War, Sex and Dreams: A Playwright’s Memoir
by Jean-Claude van Itallie. Used by permission.

39
. Midal,
Trungpa,
p.185.

40
. Ibid, p. 181. According to Fabrice Midal in
Trungpa,
his book on the life and teachings of Chögyam Trungpa—which contains an excellent chapter on Mudra Theater—the Sound Cycles were written in response to a request from Joseph Chaikin, the founder and director of the Open Theatre, who asked Rinpoche to write something that reflected his theories of theater work However, according to Jean-Claude van Itallie, who figured prominently in the development of the Mudra work, Joseph Chaikin, when recently asked, told van Itallie that he never asked Rinpoche to write anything. Jean-Claude van Itallie wrote to me, “I think it quite possible, however, that Rinpoche was stimulated toward theatrical explorations by theater discussions he had with me and other theater people.” E-mail communication from Jean-Claude van Itallie to Carolyn Rose Gimian, November 2002.

41
. E-mail communication from David I. Rome to Carolyn Rose Gimian, October 2002.

42
. From an e-mail from Jean-Claude van Itallie to Carolyn Rose Gimian, 2003. Used by permission.

43
. This story is included in Volume Three of
The Collected Works.

44
. According to Midal in
Trungpa,
Rinpoche asked David Rome and Ruth Astor to present the sound cycles at the conference.

45
. “Memories of the Mudra Theater Conferrence,” Lee Worley, November 2002. Lee notes that her quotations are from a transcript of the Mudra Theater Conference talk given by Chögyam Trungpa on February 19, 1973.

46
. All quotations of Andy Karr from a conversation with Carolyn Rose Gimian, October 2002.

47
. E-mail from Jean-Claude van Itallie to Carolyn Rose Gimian, November 2002.

48
. E-mail from David I. Rome to Carolyn Rose Gimian, October 2002.

49
. E-mail from Jean-Claude van Itallie to Carolyn Rose Gimian, November 2002.

50
. As quoted in Midal,
Trungpa.
From unpublished Mudra Theater transcripts in the Shambhala Archives.

51
. Ibid.

52
. Ibid., p. 186, quoting from a presentation of Intensification Exercises, February 24, 1973, unedited transcript.

53
. Naropa provided a ground for Rinpoche to explore many of his interests in the arts. From its inception, the Institute brought together a remarkable group of artists working in many different disciplines. It was a fertile environment that nurtured artistic creativity. Throughout the early summer sessions, there were many performances of dance, music, and theater, and many exhibits of visual art. In addition to being a situation where Trungpa Rinpoche’s work could be exhibited and performed, Naropa also provided a venue for Rinpoche to present his ideas on dharma art. In 1975, as mentioned above, he presented the long seminar “Tibetan Buddhist Iconography,” which was not about symbolism in Tibetan art per se, but rather an exploration of much more primordial issues of symbolism and perception—very much in the spirit of exploring the five buddha families that he presented in the Milarepa Film Seminar. Many of the chapters in
Dharma Art
are based on the iconography seminar at Naropa. Later, when Rinpoche began to present dharma art seminars, Naropa became a main venue for those events as well.

54
. A brief description of a later foray that Rinpoche made into spontaneous theater seems warranted before leaving the discussion of his work with theater. As discussed above, Allen Ginsberg talked quite a lot about Rinpoche’s spontaneous approach to composing poetry and how that affected Ginsberg’s own work During a month-long teaching visit in New York in 1976, Rinpoche composed spontaneous plays, which took place late at night, usually at his residence, when he had to take medication before retiring for the night. Rinpoche would mimic seppuku, or ritual suicide, which ended with him taking his pills and seeming to collapse and die from having ingested poison. I happened to witness one of these plays in Boulder in the summer of 1976. That evening—and every evening that these plays took place—David Rome was the narrator of these spontaneous dramas. In fact, he was more precisely the translator, for Rinpoche would hold forth as though he were speaking Japanese—but since he didn’t speak the language, he was just mimicking sounds he was familiar with, from Japanese movies and other situations. David would provide spontaneous translations of this pseudo-Japanese oratory. David writes: “To my knowledge, the seppuku performances were all in NYC in February 1976, and then just one took place at the Kalapa Court in Boulder to show people [what they were like]—probably the one you saw.” I found the whole experience quite perplexing and hair-raising—and needless to say, quite dramatic. When Rinpoche “died,” he really seemed to have lost consciousness, and I was worried that a doctor should be called—until he revived himself.