Conditional Sudden Enlightenment
People talk about sudden enlightenment, a sudden glimpse, satori and all kinds of other spiritual attainments. Those things require the conditions for you to pull yourself together. You need to be in the right frame of mind to experience such a thing. So-called sudden enlightenment needs enough preparation for it to be sudden. Otherwise, it can’t happen at all. If you have a sudden accident in your motor car, you have to be driving in your car. Otherwise, you can’t have the accident. That is the whole point: whenever we talk about suddenness and sudden flashes of all kinds, we are talking in terms of conditional suddenness, conditional sudden enlightenment.
Sudden enlightenment is dependent on the slow growth of the spiritual process, the growth of commitment, discipline, and experience. This takes place not only in the sitting practice of meditation alone, but also through the life-long experience of dealing with your wife, your husband, your kids, your parents, your job, your money, your sex life, your emotions, whatever you have. You have to deal with everything you experience in life, and you have to work with and learn from those situations. Then, the gradual process is almost inevitable.
Scholastically and experientially there is no such thing as sudden enlightenment in Buddhism. So-called sudden enlightenment is simply insight, or understanding, that depends on what we have already experienced. We call it sudden in the same way that you might say, “Suddenly I saw the sunrise.” Or, “Suddenly I saw the sunset.” But what you are seeing is dependent on the situation that already exists, and you are just making it sound dramatic. The sun doesn’t suddenly rise or set, although you may suddenly notice that it’s going to happen. It depends on your experience.
With Carolyn Gimian and Barry Boyce ,
Sunday, January 6, at 1:00 PM EST
Session Four of Cutting Through Ego Clinging
Changling Rinpoche will teach a fourth session of his extraordinary commentary on Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism along with instructions from Khenpo Gangshar on recognizing and working with ego clinging.
Sunday, January...
Robin Kornman on the The Rain of Wisdom
Robin talks about some of the Kagyü Gurtso and some of the early history of the Nalanda Translation Committee.
Remembrance
My first perception of Khyentse Rinpoche was that of a wonderfully loving grandfather.
Father Thomas Keating Dies at 95
A Trappist monk with a connection to Trungpa Rinpoche
Father Thomas Keating and Trungpa Rinpoche Talk About Egolessness
This conversation took place during Naropa’s 1983 Christian Buddhist Conference
Chogyam Trungpa in Mousehole
Chogyam Trungpa in Mousehole
The west Cornish potter and teacher Bill Picard, died aged 92 in 2007. He was a cultured and charismatic buddhist. In the early 1960s, having been...
Love in the Time of Chaos
Training in Tenderness, by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, Shambhala Publications, 2018
Glimpses of Yarne
Gampo Abbey is a Buddhist Monastery on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. At the time of filming, it was celebrating thirty years since its founding by Chögyam Trungpa...
Chögyam the Translator
"...he used to amazing effect the fact that no one expected him to speak syntactically perfect English. Subtle, complex, and mind-opening ambiguities, as well as multiple shades and layers of meaning emerged easily from his often slippery sentence structures."
Vana Jakic recalls Trungpa Rinpoche
Vana Jakic talks about her interactions with Trungpa Rinpoche in England in the 1960s.
Rainy Season Dathün at Deer Park
In India, sites sacred to the Buddha are scattered all over the land, but in the Buddha’s homeland there are very few Indian practitioners who follow the Buddha’s teachings.
Collected Vajradhatu Seminaries 1973- 1985: Vajrayana eBook
A truly remarkable resource for researchers, scholars and students, the Collected Vajradhatu Seminaries 1973–1985: Vajrayana eBook, are the searchable transcripts of the vajrayana talks given by Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche at all thirteen seminaries.
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Mark Nowakowski
Mark Nowakowski talks about the don days at the end of the lunar calendar and the annual practice of "Pacifying the Turmoil of the Mamos."
In the Kitchen at BPB
In 1981 or 82, when I was living at Karmȇ-Chöling in the position of head cook, I still couldn't figure out whether I was connected enough to Rinpoche to...
Lunch is served
I was on staff as a cook in the Vidyadhara's household in Los Angeles in 1979. It was a joint ITS (Intensive Training Seminar) and ATS (Advanced Training Seminar)...
Research Expedition to Prince Edward Island
“We should research PEI,” Rinpoche announced one evening after dinner in early September 1984. It was a golden period in the Mill Village retreat. Rinpoche was generally in a jolly mood—full of mischief and good humor.
No Place To Go
Setting: Karme Chöling 1972
Trungpa Rinpoche and I are sitting side by side. There's a long period of silence. Out of the blue, he looks over at me and says:...
The Big Thud
I'm unsure what year this was, probably the late summer or early fall of 1986, but it was the last time Rinpoche was to be in the States, and...
Every Lifetime
I had not seen the Vidyadhara in a while. It was probably 1975 or 1976... and when he was visiting NY I had an interview with him. Among other...
Letters of The Current Situation
The Current Situation (TCS), as it was known, grew into a bitter dispute that seemed unresolvable, and over the course of the next three years, generated a flurry of letters and official statements, several of which are presented on this page.
Training: Pema Part Two
That's when he made the famous comment which I've repeated many times: "The monks and nuns should always be horny." He said, "We want real energetic juicy monks and nuns but they should keep their vows impeccably."
Journey to Taktsang
In this slideshow, Chögyam Trungpa talks about receiving the Sadhana of Mahamudra at Taktsang in 1968. Commentary and readings by Carolyn Rose Gimian.
In 1968, Trungpa Rinpoche left the United Kingdom...
GLIMPSES OF ALAYA
A Discussion with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the NTC
The Nalanda Translation Committee,
Kalapa Court in Boulder, Colorado,
Circa 1980.
Left to right: Nelson Dudley, Scott Wellenbach, Lodro Dorje, Chögyam Trungpa, Larry Mermelstein,...
Shunryu Suzuki Roshi Connections
On the anniversary of his passing