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A Tribute to Jonathan Eric
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by Walter Fordham
The first thing that has to be said about Jonathan is that he was enormously generous. He gave money, time and energy and, amazing as it may seem, he apparently gave without much expectation or ambition and even without much concern for his own security. He was also a remarkable practitioner, especially during his final years when he mixed each new stage of his advancing illness with practice. Without a doubt, his dedication to Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and to practice were unshakeable.
I think it's fair to say that Jonathan was a somewhat awkward person. He tended to be uncomfortable around people and he never liked being the center of attention. But it's also quite apparent that Jonathan grew to accept these qualities in himself; he became comfortable with his awkward nature. Although he might have seemed timid to people who didn't know him well, his friends talk about his shocking directness and biting wit. "Quietly brazen" is the term that his old buddy Alan Sloan used to describe him.
Jonathan first heard of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1970 when his mother, Nancy Eric, showed him a brochure she had picked up about Tail of the Tiger (now Karmê Chöling). Jonathan read the brochure, picked up a copy of Meditation in Action, and decided to visit Tail of the Tiger as soon as possible. When he got there, he requested an interview and was shown into a room with a young Asian gentleman who was smoking a cigarette. Jonathan assumed that this was the waiting room and that this gentleman was also waiting to see Chögyam Trungpa. After awhile, the man turned to Jonathan and said, "So why did you come here?"
"I'm here to meet the man who wrote this book," said Jonathan holding up his copy of Meditation in Action.
The gentleman looked at Jonathan and said, very slowly, "My book ..."
Jonathan was completely startled. He never would have imagined that this was Chögyam Trungpa. He quickly became a dedicated student. Nancy Eric, by the way, also became a dedicated student of Trungpa Rinpoche. She started the Washington Dharma Study Group in the early 1970s and is currently a Chakrasamvara practitioner living in Huntington, Massachusetts.
Starting in the late-summer or early-autumn of 1970, Jonathan began his first solitary retreat — some say for six months, some say for a year. Rinpoche's retreat instructions to Jonathan were to sit and to practice the Sadhana of Mahamudra every day. Jonathan had been reading The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa and was determined to practice with Milarepa-like intensity. During his retreat, he sat without moving for long sessions and in the process permanently injured his knees. In later years Jonathan laughed about this attempt to emulate Milarepa saying he had been naive and overly serious.
At some point, either shortly before or after his long retreat, Jonathan came into a sizeable inheritance. This sudden wealth troubled him; he felt that it wasn't his money. Having it was confusing for him and he decided that he really didn't want it. Jonathan met with Rinpoche, told him how he felt about the money, and asked, "Can I give this money to you?" Rinpoche said yes, and Jonathan gave him all, or perhaps almost all, of his inheritance. If he kept any amount of money for himself, it was very small. Jonathan's father was not at all pleased to hear what Jonathan had done with his inheritance and Jonathan himself expressed some doubts about his own motivations. Was this a neurotic or intelligent response to having money? It seems that he lived with this as an open question and he remained very humble about his act of generosity. In fact, very few people knew the extent of his generosity until after his death.
It is fairly well known in the Shambhala community that Jonathan's gift covered the down payment for Rocky Mountain Dharma Center, which was between thirty and forty thousand dollars. (Please speak up if you know the exact amount.) But sometime in the early 1970s, Jonathan's inheritance was also used to consolidate the ownership of Tail of the Tiger, a transaction that required an additional thirty-to-forty thousand dollars. These two payments left a balance of about twenty thousand, which Rinpoche used for other projects. Jonathan's gift was a huge amount of money in the early 1970s and it was possibly the first large donation that was given to Rinpoche and the community.
But Jonathan's generosity didn't end there. He continued to donate smaller amounts of money to various causes whenever he could. After his death, several people came forward and said that Jonathan had helped them financially and asked them not to tell anyone. When his bank accounts were closed after his death, it was discovered that he had been helping a number of different causes with automatic withdrawals. Some were just little donations and others were larger. One personal example: About a year ago I received an unsolicited donation from Jonathan for the Chronicle Project.
Through the early 1970s Jonathan was a pioneer in the new frontier of American dharma that Trungpa Rinpoche was creating. He was an early leader, teacher, and meditation instructor. He led the first dathün at RMDC, along with Dan Meade. He was one of Rinpoche's early interview secretaries, and later he was one of the first directors of Karma Dzong. He was also one of the more mature people in the early community. Amongst a cast of colorful and sometimes wild characters, Jonathan stood out as steady and reliable — qualities that Rinpoche seemed to appreciate and utilize. When almost all of Rinpoche's close students were invited to attend the first seminary in 1973, Jonathan was left behind. Rinpoche asked him to stay and look after things in Boulder.
Although Rinpoche may have trusted Jonathan's maturity, he never seemed to stop challenging Jonathan to go further. On several occasions, Rinpoche pushed Jonathan to go beyond his limitations and to take on the kinds of roles and activities that were most difficult for him. Starting in late 1976, Rinpoche sent ambassadors to the larger dharmadhatus, or city centers. These men and women were senior teachers, something like acharyas in the current era. But they were also Rinpoche's personal representatives. Their job was to lead and inspire the dharmadhatus, nurture new students, teach buddhadharma and later Shambhala Training, and, to some extent, embody Rinpoche's vision. Needless to say, this was a great honor and a difficult job. At times, I think all the ambassadors felt like they were swimming in deep, dangerous, and uncharted waters. Jonathan was among the first ambassadors to be appointed, fulfilling that role in Chicago from 1977 to 1980. Although he was an experienced teacher and a devoted student, he was an unlikely leader from a conventional point of view. He appeared timid and withdrawn, avoided conflict, and was generally uncomfortable in social situations. He later said that being an ambassador had been excruciating for him, especially in the beginning.
Soon after he arrived in Chicago, Jonathan got together with Tami Moore, now Tamara Eric. Their relationship was like an illustration for the adage that opposites attract. She was young and playful, full of life, and in her own words, a real party girl. He was rather stiff and not all that much fun. She says, "It was like living with my meditation instructor." They survived a rocky start, learned to appreciate each other's unique qualities, and were married in 1978. Jonathan and Tamara had two children: Matthew born in 1983 and Valerie in 1986.
After Chicago, the Erics returned to Boulder where Jonathan was faced with the prospect of having to get a job in the real world, so to speak. He spoke with Rinpoche about what he should do and Rinpoche encouraged him to find a high-powered position of some kind. Jonathan protested that he had no credentials and no real career path. But Rinpoche insisted that none of that mattered and repeated that Jonathan should take a leap into a high-powered job. As Larry Mermelstein, another old friend of Jonathan, put it: "It was horrendous for Jonathan to hear this from Rinpoche. He did try in some manner to follow Rinpoche's advice, but it was very difficult for Jonathan to promote himself, and I think it's fair to say that he never made that particular leap." He did however, become a computer programmer, and that is how he supported himself and his family until he got too sick to work in 1988.
Rinpoche smiles at Jonathan.
(photo by Gary Allen --
date and event unknown.)
I heard one more story in which Rinpoche leaned on Jonathan to go beyond his hesitant nature. At one point, during a discussion with Rinpoche about something or other, Jonathan said that he could never imagine being in Rinpoche's shoes. Rinpoche's response was very cutting and direct. He said that Jonathan was copping out, that he had to be willing to fill his shoes. He said, "That's the whole point."
As Jonathan was settling into the routine of working as a programmer and having a young family, his health started to become an issue. He seemed to need more and more sleep, he would sometimes drop his briefcase on the way to work, and he started to become uncharacteristically irritable. Then in April 1987, just weeks after Rinpoche's death, Jonathan was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Life at home with young children became difficult and the marriage became strained. After several difficult years of trying to make things work, Tamara and Jonathan separated. Jonathan continued to have a very close relationship with his children, and he and Tamara remained close friends until his death.
For the last twelve or thirteen years of his life, Jonathan lived alone. When I visited him in March 2002, the air in his apartment was thick with incense. He was impressive in a way that is hard to put into words; he was focused, present, settled. As I left his apartment, I felt that I was leaving an isolated retreat cabin. He told me that he spent a lot of time practicing, but recently I began to find out just how much practice Jonathan had done in that apartment. He practiced incessantly. He practiced through all of the progressive stages of MS. As his body became ever more cumbersome and ordinary activities became more difficult, he maintained a steady commitment to daily practice. This long retreat included an extended period (at least a year) of Sadhana of Mahamudra practice, during which he maintained a very demanding daily schedule. When this schedule eventually became too difficult, he decided — after much serious deliberation — to adopt a somewhat lighter practice schedule. He developed a strong sense of connection and devotion to the protector Ekajati, set up a shrine to her in his apartment, and kept a candle burning there throughout the day. Another important component of this daily practice was the Great Clouds Of Blessings, Supplication for Magnetizing the Phenomenal World, composed by Mipham Rinpoche in 1879. He loved this supplication and did it at least once every day. At some point during the last year of his life, someone gave him a copy of The Song of Gyalwa Gotsangpa on How to Practice with Illness. This text became a very important part of his daily practice and he shared it with a number of his friends before he died. When asked, he was very straightforward about his illness. Alan Sloan says, "He would talk about his double vision or his incontinence or the things that were painful in the most direct terms, but there was never even a hint of 'Oh poor me.'"
There is always a danger of speaking too highly of the deceased. In our desire to honor our friends, we err on the side of endowing them with more than human qualities. With that in mind, it's probably important to add that Jonathan was sometimes frustrated, lonely, and confused, and that he had his share of emotional upheaval just like the rest of us. He also worked hard, with ever so much dedication, to follow the teachings he had been given. He was one of the Vidyadhara's truly genuine and devoted students. He was an important person in our collective history, a pioneer and a dear heart. We more than miss his clarity, dry wit, and awkward dignity.
© 2004 Walter Fordham
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