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Offerings for Parinirvana Day 2006
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Please send your poems, thoughts, or reflections from then (nineteen years ago) or now to chronicles@chronicleproject.com.
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* * *
Supplication to the Vidyadhara, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Kind root guru, Vajradhara in person,
Essence of the buddhas of the fourth moment,
Source of dharma more profound and vast than the ocean,
Your galaxy of oral instructions arises from one point--
the luminous star of egolessness.
Example of joyful realization,
You gave us the empowering scepters to follow your example.
Grant your blessing so that we may realize mind to be dharmakaya.
As Amitabha,
You smile red-faced from the kaya of simplicity.
Grant us the supreme siddhi inseparable from bliss-emptiness.
As compassionate Avaloketesvara,
You glow with the rainbow light of sambhogakaya.
Grant us the realization of luminosity-emptiness.
As nirmanakaya Padmakara,
Help us spread the dharma west of the Land of Snow and back again,
So that dharma is victorious over the three Lords of Materialism
and so that we all may enjoy the three yanas of the Great Eastern Sun.
Like Marpa Lotsawa and Great Repa Mila,
May our exertion not wane either in the world or in yogic retreat.
Grant your blessing so that we see the inseparability of samsara and nirvana.
With the bodhicitta amrita from your skullcup
Intoxicate conceptual mind so that appearance is seen as illusory
and emptiness as pregnant with possibility.
Grant us awareness that transcends mind.
With your cystal sword
cut through confusion,
Revealing the expanse of primordial purity.
Lovable, inscrutible Vidyadhara,
King of sacred outlook,
May our actions, like yours, become dharma art.
Druk Sakyong who breathed wisdom prana into our lungs
and opened our hearts to the mind-stream of AWAKE,
On top of my head
sing and dance with your awareness consort,
turning the wheel of supreme siddhi
So that I, easily distracted and lazy Jinpai Pema,
May repay your great kindness
by realizing the true nature you first pointed out.
Linda Lewis
Sopa Choling
* * *
Offering to Rinpoche
Tears freely rolling down my cheeks
As I listen to Your voice.
You put me here.
You keep me going.
Yet - all i have of you is a picture-video-poem-recordings of your voice.
Why did you leave us?
You gave us this amazing gift
Not even waiting to see it fully unwraped
I need you to help me unwrap it.
Unwrap myself.
For it is so painful.
All I have are haunting memories, shadows, recollections.
In all of THIS i see YOU.
A tease.
For I want more.
Monica Peters
- Written at a Karma Choling Dathun, 2005.
* * *
A Song
This day is heavy.
Almost forgot to stop and let air seep in.
I've found a treasure
Sadness you have attained through
A tender touch.
My jealousy is a blue flame
So pretty, what a beauty, what a shame.
I've missed
A magic show
You are a caravan of gypsies.
You dance
You sing
You are picture perfect
Framed in stories
A metaphor for every time of year
You are the world
So simple though.
I take your smile as a gift
I'm lucky.
Nothing have I missed-
How can you miss what you've never met?
A handshake is but a punctuation,
It is the
Page the space the time that carries
weight.
And this weight I know
- not a briefcase full of pebbles,
but a clothesline full of sheets,
with a sudden gust of wind it is lifted.
Then all we have is today
loneliness
- the footprint of a tender touch. A Rose.
You have given me a smile that only ever grows.
Now
I have a song!
I have seen your caravan
Ascend
Solidify
Expand
Give birth
Explode
I have heard this song before a long long time ago
It is ancient, turning
Into new.
Alicia Fordham
April 4, 2006
* * *
AND NOW YOU ARE DEAD
For Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
And now you are dead,
After all.
Yet your mind keeps unfolding,
And your vast heart keeps beating
Inside me.
I don't know whether to laugh or to cry,
But then with you, I never did.
You saw what was needed
And had to be done.
You took up a sword.
You chewed up this world,
And swallowed it whole.
I guess that killed you in the end,
As everything does,
But not before it made you blaze.
You cared so much,
You couldn't care less.
Yet you went right on
Tickling our minds,
Breaking open our hearts,
Spilling our blood on your sword.
I owe you everything.
You showed me my mind
And asked me to dance.
Your death was the final blessing:
It let me know how much I love you.
John Welwood
San Francisco
May, l987
* * *
For the Eyes of the Solitary Warrior Only
The War was Never Begun
The Battle Never Ends
Winning and Losing are Costly Illusions
The Solitary Warrior Knows when to Engage
Make a Good Dinner
Be Sure to Place Flowers
Philip Bralich, Ph.D.
Fire Puja about 1998
* * *
On April 4th for Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
When you died,
Devotion became more confusing and entertaining than ever
Among those of us that never knew you,
Some worship you
In our homes,
We are presented the opportunity for real devotion
We could attend to the most intimate details,
Instead we flee
In our work,
Our hearts are connected to the arteries of the world
We could nourish the entire planet,
But we shut down
In our hearts,
We could make selflessness and kindness our priority
We could see with eyes of stillness,
But we stay blind
In your stead,
I devote myself to your same hopeless task of tenderness
Not placating you like some god,
I vow to love
On this day,
You continue to turn me away from spiritual materialism
The fish are biting right here,
This path is true
Your students,
Still carry on your precious lineage and commitment
I vow not to waste this gift,
Thank you so much
Dudley Jackson
Columbia, SC Shambhala Center
April 4th 2006
* * *
Hommage à celui qui, parmi les protecteurs de la terre,
Est semblable à un dragon.
Ton univers luisant, vivant, noir comme l'encre au bout du pinceau,
Ton Est regorgeant d'or et de diamants,
Interpénètrent notre monde et notre esprit.
Le carmin et le corail de tes enseignements
Sur le principe féminin,
Cet immense espace aux tonalités d'aurore et de safran
Nous emplit de liberté et d'audace.
Apprends-nous à rugir comme le tonnerre.
Tes couleurs resplendissantes accomplissent le bien des êtres.
Pour le parinirvana du Vidyadhara,
Le vénérable Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoché
Esther Rochon, Montréal Avril 2006
* * *
Rinpoche left us
Rinpoche left us
he's gone
I can hear his voice
I remember sitting by his bedside
with my daddy getting him dressed
I remember waiting right outside
the bathroom for my daddy and Rinpoche to come out.
I remember singing nursery rhymes with Rinpoche.
I remember Chubby*
I remember "don't forget the secret."
by Catherine Fordham (age 6)
April 5, 1987
Boulder, Co
* * *
Spontaneous offering in response:
Hunkered together in the dusk,
smothered and cuddling in questionable Halegonian hospitality
of encroaching autumn, looming blanket of winter,
your ongoing illness and heavy medications
symptoms of the far vaster fogs and ice to come,
all encapsuled in the closed curtains
denying the passage of
daytime
nightime
this time
that time
but still somehow
as always with him
a very very,
- though now not quite so jolly -
Good
Time.
How good you make time, Sir.
You and Ciel,
and later I,
sharing your last evening meal, all of us eating together
in the darkened, twilight grey-painted bedroom
your last in this world.
And after dinner
accompanied by witty and sad Mukpo chit-chat
then a last night of endless hyper-ventilation
without pause, breath after breath;
and then
I left at noon;
and then you left a minute or so later;
and then Walter came in and found you,
and then months in and out of the hospital
and then the fog and ice rolled in
and then our world became permanently
yours
forever
as the ice melted and flowed away into the ocean of awareness.
Oh we long for you, Chokyi Gyatso,
our tears fill the rivers and lakes of these rugged, darling maritimes
providing rain of blessings
of our true-hearted, true-blue, all-victorious Mukpo-fied sadness.
Let us carry your all-victorious banner of compassion and good-humour
deep into the rocks and bones of this land,
and out into the vast bardos beyond living and dying.
Or, as they say in France: 'one for all and all for one!'
In response to his call for poems or reminiscences, this last one living of the three who partook of that ‘last supper’ together, Ashley Howes, Cape Breton resident, on this day of bittersweet remembrance, on this day when the winters snows have melted all away, composed this spontaneous poetic song for my old friend Walter Fordham and all in our marvellous Gem of a Sangha.
Love, Ashley
4 April 2006
* * *
The best green tea
The best green tea
came out of the fragrant wet earth of Jiangsu
southchinagrown in hillside rows
and harvested by
short dark skinned people,
laboring in large woven conical bamboo hats.
From this well,
Is life aroused and nurtured,
And drinking it, senses snap as if a fluttering pendant by a sudden wind blown.
Taste and fragrance are unparalleled
And people join together to drink it.
In imari bowl
bought at the 28th
st. Target
it sits,
intoxicating hesitation, wonder and desire.
Lee Weingrad
4-4-06
Beijing
* * *
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The Gradual Path of Raising Buddhist Children:
Inner Chronicles:
Work Sex Money: Seminar Three,
Ocean of Dharma: A Shambhala Sun feature on Chögyam Trungpa by Barry Boyce
Tribute to Arbie Thalacker
Chronicles Highlights 2011
Chronicles Holiday Sampler
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse on the passing of his father, Thinley Norbu Rinpoche
SMR joins Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and Rabjam Rinpoche [Video 11:35]
Tribute to Thinley Norbu Rinpoche
Qualities
Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche on Distinguishing Ordinary Consciousness from Wisdom
At the
Tribute to Fabrice Champion
Crazy Wisdom, a review by Victress Hitchcock
Tribute to Michal Friedman
Radio interview with Chogyam Trungpa in 1971;
Mingyur Rinpoche: The essence of meditation
Julia Sagebien talks with Thrangu Rinpoche about fulfilling the aspirations of the Vidyadhara
Gold Lake Oil, by Tom Bell
THE BIG NO
Thrangu Rinpoche talks about Trungpa Rinpoche and his students [Audio 48:54]
In appreciation of the Very Venerable 9th Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche
Teaching Stories: Never Give Up, told by Jim Lowrey
Memorial to Mary Smith, by Lee Weingrad
Conversation with Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel: Part Three
Khyentse Foundation: Ten Years of Giving
What Made Him Tick: a Review of Crazy Wisdom by Suzanne Duarte
Teaching Stories:
Tribute to Mary Smith