Fifty years ago, Trungpa Rinpoche gave a community talk in the shrine room of the Boulder center at 1111 Pearl Street (now the Boulder Book Store). In the question and answer period, someone asked what he thought of Guru Maharaji, a pudgy adolescent being billed as an Avatar, whose photo was on hundreds of posters that had suddenly appeared everywhere.
Rinpoche was well known as a snappy guru disparager, and the questioner no doubt hoped to elicit some memorable quip. Instead, Rinpoche glared at the young man and snarled: “He gives them faith to live, doesn’t he?”
This remark is not part of the repertoire considered typical of Trungpa Rinpoche, and does not, to my knowledge, appear in any books, or maybe even transcripts. And yet, I think it points to what we must do, not just as Buddhists, but as human beings. Knowing even slightly what this world is, it is at the core of all teachings and all our social endeavors. Give others faith to live.
