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The Shambhala Sun Surveys The Teachings of Chögyam Trungpa
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Barry Boyce,
Photo by Liza Matthews
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In this article from the January 2012 Shambhala Sun, senior editor Barry Boyce takes on the impossible task of surveying Trungpa Rinpoche's fathomless ocean of teachings, with impressive results. In just 5,000 words, Boyce looks insightfully into CTR's seminal teachings, including cutting through spiritual materialism, living in the Charnel ground, sitting practice of meditation, bodhicitta, dharma art, kasungship (here he coins the term "meditation-in-interaction" to describe the practice of kasungship), and the path of Shambhala warriorship.
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Ocean of Dharma
By Barry Boyce
From the Shambhala Sun Magazine January 2012
1. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
In the summer of 1968, a twenty-nine-year-old Tibetan monk
traveled from Scotland to Bhutan to do a retreat in a small and
dank cave on a high precipice—a place where Padmasambhava,
who brought Buddhism to Tibet, had practiced 1,200 years earlier. He brought along with him one of his small cadre of Western students. For the student, it was an exotic journey filled with
hardships, including ingesting chilies no Englishman should be
asked to eat. For the monk, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, it was
challenging in a different way. He felt imprisoned by his circumstances. He'd been trained since age five in a rigorous system of
study and meditative practice—intended as a direct path to the
Buddha's realization. It had passed from teacher to student in
an unbroken lineage for more than a thousand years. He longed
to share that training and understanding but couldn't quite see
how—in his new home the buddhadharma was a foreign plaything, either intellectualized or romanticized.
In 1959, when he was nineteen, he had fled Tibet, leaving behind
the teachers who had trained him, the monasteries he'd been
responsible for, and a society in which his role had been clear. After
a few years in India, he'd traveled to Britain to study at Oxford and
eventually established a small center in the Scottish countryside. In
monk's robes in this adopted home, he often felt he was treated like
a piece of Asian statuary uprooted from its sacred context and set
on display in the British Museum. Few Tibetan colleagues offered
support, seeming to feel Westerners were sweet but uncivilized and
incapable of training in genuine dharma. Deep in his heart, he felt
it must be otherwise. What to do? -Continued
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Ocean of Dharma: A Shambhala Sun feature on Chögyam Trungpa by Barry Boyce
Tribute to Arbie Thalacker
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