The Genuine Chögyam Trungpa
March 25, 2009 by Bernard Weitzman 
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Commentary by Bernie Weitzman
I address what follows to students of the Vidyadhara, Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche.
The years since Rinpoche’s parinirvana have been uncomfortable for many of his students. Many of us have felt alienated from the community and from the Sakyong’s teachings. We have, of course, dealt with the situation in individual ways. There are, though, commonalities. Some of us have continued to participate fully, some of us have withdrawn, and others of us have continued to teach but have kept ourselves otherwise distant.
A concern that has become increasingly acute for me personally is that Rinpoche’s unique vision, the world altering presentation of the dharma that was my gateway, my access to sanity, is in danger of being lost. I heard many teachers before him, during his time with us and have heard many teachers since Rinpoche’s death. It is clear to me that, if not for him. I would still be wandering in search of a teacher.
I have recently found a significant level of comfort with and confidence in the path the Sakyong is developing. The new format for Shambhala training will, in my view, be a truly fruitional movement in the direction of Trungpa, Rinpoche’s vision. The retreat sequence, climaxing in the Scorpion Seal Retreat, moves Shambhala training and the Kagyu and Nyingma practices into a potentially enriching dialogue — but it’s a step towards that dialogue.
In order for that dialogue to unfold, we students of the Vidyadhara need to enter the discussion. The way is open. We are free to teach within the community. Frank Berliner has coined the topic heading that I feel we all might use: “The Essential Chögyam Trungpa.”
H.H. Karmapa once said to a group of tantrikas, “Your teachers plant yeast in you. It grows and expands in you. Pass it on to your students.” Each of us is yeasted. Each of us has a unique “Essential Chögyam Trungpa.” Let’s pass it on to the current generation and join the Sakyong in fulfilling his father’s vision.
Bernie Weitzman is in private practice as a psychotherapist in NYC. He became a student of Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche in 1972, and has taught at Karme Choling and at the NY and Philadelphia Shambhala Centers.
The truthteller is the one voice which is absolutely not allowed in our society. As soon as he or she starts to speak, all the devils that reside in man rise up to shut them down, jump on them, take them down. The most violent action will always be taken against the truthteller, the most vitriolic speech saved for the truthteller, the most violent effort at suppression always saved for the truthteller. The liars can speak until doomsday and everyone will tolerate, love and defend the liar, but the truthteller MUST DIE. That is the sad way of our world. Think about the absolute ban on true speech in our society, and it will send chills up your spine.
Gyatrul Rinpoche once told a group of students, “Tara, she always tells the truth, but nobody wants to hear it.” Then he laughed and laughed. He said I WAS Red Tara, and when I protested, he said, “No, really, you ARE Red Tara.” I loved him so much, and he loved me. I still love him so much.
Tara,
I like your energy and chutzpah. I think you speak a lot of truth. I’m not sure you’re 100% accurate on all counts, and I’m not sure if you are listening gently to truths others may be speaking. But I like something about your energy.
But I wonder if sometimes we can really explain everything to people that we want them to understand, all at once. You know, straighten out every one of their deceptions. Sometimes I wonder if we have to wait for the right moment to say certain things.
At least, that’s something I’m trying to work on, based on the example of teachers like Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He seemed at times to be able to accommodate certain “problems” (or energies) until the right time or opportunity to address them, and in the meantime he seemed to possess enormous patience and compassion and humor. He was not merely a truthteller, but a very skillful and paradoxical person, I think.
What do you think of that?
Otherwise, I agree with what you say about truthtellers. Very true. Very, very true. Much more true than I used to think.
Which is why in some settings, the only person allowed to speak the truth was the court jester– someone who used humor or entertainment or perhaps trickery to help people swallow the pill of truth. Truth can be a dangerous thing, and requires some care in its handling, I think.
And words alone are not always true, even when they are.
P.S. I love “The Truman Show”. Good morning! And if I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night!
On the other hand, maybe you really are Red Tara. Sometimes people have unfortunate gifts.
And maybe suppressing my speech to try to imitate CTR’s skillfulness is not really getting me anywhere.
Time to watch The Truman Show again. That movie is similar to a theater piece my old teacher wrote.
Tara, have you ever seen “The Cruise”, a 1998 documentary about NYC and one of its brilliant tourguides? You remind me a bit of the protagonist. I need to see that one again too.
Has anyone taken the trouble to google “Carreon”? She and her husband Charles have made a cottage industry out of debunking Vajrayana. Beneath her aggressive posture and the venom of her words, I sense a bitter sadness–she believes she carried out her teacher’s instructions to the letter but ended up defrauded and short-changed.
Clearly, her experience has been different than mine, but if there were ever any guarantees, implied or explicit, laid down by any of my teachers, I must have missed that day.
I’m with Ron on this one–the lady is an obsessive troll. She’s been doing the same shtick for years and has come to RFS in search of a fresh audience.
Tara, was Gyatrul Rinpoche being a “truthteller” when you quoted him as saying that all those expressing same-sex love “should be machine-gunned”?
My teacher promised he would disappoint us.
I forgot to mention that the hero of “The Cruise” seems to be not only brilliant but eccentric, unstable, and has lots of vibrant emotions. But there’s something beautiful about the candor with which he expresses himself.
When he wasn’t disappointing people, my old teacher sometimes encouraged his eccentric students to spend more time around him. Eventually the eccentric people would get pushed to the periphery by the “normal” students (who found the eccentric ones annoying, if not a total pain in the ass), and then my teacher would ask about them again, and the cycle would continue…
I agree with Ron on this too. Whatever insight Tara
may have is displaced by her venom.
Tara, you do have to admit your schtick, as JC called it, is wearing a little thin. It’s been nearly a decade of the same thing.
You’ll have to take my word on this (since you’re thinking otherwise) but I’m not feeling paranoid and I very honestly have nothing here on RFS or at SI to defend or protect. I’m really quite honestly curious how you ended up here.
What would happen if you just opened up? If you let your guard down, dropped your defenses, let go of the provocative game?
What would happen if you stopped yourself from relying so heavily upon ad hominem and got into a debate about ideas?
Say what you will, as I’m sure you will, but, despite the vagaries of e-mail and comment windows and the easy misunderstandings that crop up in them, I’m quite honestly just curious.
Edward — I haven’t seen “The Cruise,” but I’ll go rent it at Casa Video, that describes it as “A layered portrait of Timothy ‘Speed’ Levitch and his tempestuous love affair with New York City. Atop double-decker buses his tours exhibit a peculiar intimacy with the city’s architectural feats and historical and artistic lineage. Each tour he leads is another chance to initiate unsuspecting tourists into the individuality the city represents.” Sounds fun! I’ll tell you if I approve the comparison after I watch it.
damchö — I was surprised when Gyatrul Rinpoche expressed homicidal dislike for homosexuals, but frankly, Mark Buckley was baiting him with news of a gay rights parade, and I really don’t know whether he meant it. He did sound sort of disgusted, but even the Dalai Lama said non-vaginal sexual acts were non-virtuous until the gay area community took him to the woodshed and opened his eyes. So … whatever you want to make of it — do you think there is something to be made of it?
Brad — Of course you’re not paranoid — I was just teasing you because I like you. But about that First Noble Truth — it’s not an ontological statement, is it? I’m letting my guard down here, so will you reciprocate?
Jigme and John — I’m quoting Brad here, since he and I are going to be friends: “What would happen if you stopped yourself from relying so heavily upon ad hominem and got into a debate about ideas?”
Rita — your words are too kind, really — I honestly haven’t achieved anything by my years of practice. It didn’t work for me at the time, and when I stopped, it was like they say about banging your head against the wall — it feels great when you stop. As far as “teaching,” I can share one insight — the effort to annihilate self-awareness is an unhealthy process that leads from solipsism to nihilism, and nowhere after that. I’m sharing what did me the most good — discarding superstition, affirming the fundamental equality of all people, thinking independently, speaking honestly without trying to win approval or avoid criticism, and sharing the positive intentions and concrete plans for improving humanity and preserving the earth that can be drawn from the works of people like Thomas Paine, Ralph Nader, Rachel Carson, Loren Eiseley, and so many others. I work on sharing their works as an online librarian at http://www.naderlibrary.com.
Tara, since the conversation has drifted so far afieid from Bernie’s topic and as I don’t want to prompt Mark into offering a course correct or locking the thread I’m happy to take things up off-list. You can find me at wll dot wait at gmail dot com. I’ve a response to your query.
Rita, here’s a good example of my thinking now from “Woman and Nature-The Roaring Inside Her,” by Susan Griffin: http://www.naderlibrary.com/lit.womanandnatureroar.toc.htm. You can hear the clear critique against Buddhist-type thinking in the following passage:
Wisdom, Circuit Judge: David Wiley, the appellant, and Eugene Cunningham, a co-defendant, were arrested on March 17, 1971, in connection with an alleged sexual assault … on twelve year old Maxine Lewis … they were charged with carnal knowledge … and taking indecent liberties with a minor child…. The jury found Wiley guilty…. The principal issue on appeal is whether there was sufficient corroborative evidence to take the case to the jury. We find there was not sufficient corroborative evidence.
— United States v. Wiley. 492 F. 2d 547 (D.C. Cir. 1973)
It is said that what is heard is a delusion of the senses. That sound consists of waves. That the wave is a momentary shape produced by energy traveling through molecules of air, or wood, or steel. Whether this wave is heard by the human ear as sound, it is said, depends on the frequency of the vibration of the sound. It is said that there are vibrations too rapid for the human ear and vibrations too slow, that vibrations of sound increase in warmer or thicker media, that the structure of the inner ear increases or decreases the frequency of sound waves, that sound waves of one frequency mask the presence of those of another frequency so that the ear hears only one sound when there are two, that many sounds together are heard as undifferentiated noise, that there is no absolute relationship between what produces sound and what is heard, that what is heard is a delusion of the senses and cannot be said to be real.
(It is established in the law that the testimony of an alleged victim of rape must be corroborated. It is said that corroboration is required because the complainants in such cases too frequently have an urge to fantasize or a motive to fabricate. Therefore the credibility of the alleged defiled, it is said, must be approached with skepticism, especially when the complainant is a young girl.)
It is therefore said that sounds do not exist without ears and a mind to hear them, that all sound exists only in the mind. (And the evidence that shortly after the alleged event a witness said that he saw the alleged victim on the street, crying, in a disheveled condition, upset and without a coat though the day was cold, and that she told him she had been attacked and pointed to her alleged attackers a short distance away, is held not to be corroborative, nor is the evidence of another witness that she appeared to him crying and saying that she had been raped held as corroborative since this is evidence that some event took place but not necessarily evidence that sexual intercourse took place.) And since sound is a product of the mind, it is further argued, it is absurd to believe that sound can exist in an unthinking substance, in the violin, or the wood of the violin.
And since all evidence for the existence of matter is sensual evidence of a like deceptive kind, existing only in the mind, it is concluded that matter exists only in the mind. (It is therefore the judgment of this hearing that the defendant was innocent of rape and that no such crime took place.)
***
Since the existence of matter is unverifiable Each of us can say we have heard footsteps behind us and since sensual data are deceptive each of us tried not to show fear it is questioned if there is any reason since in acting the part of the victim to examine what is called reality we may become the victim or if there is any way each of us has hidden what we are that anything can be known each of us has denied desire since no existence can be verified since it has been said to us that it is our own lust to be known and therefore which is lived out in the body of the rapist how can the act of knowing be known and our terror which inspires attack and therefore neither mind nor body and our own guilt can be said to exist which attacks us through his hands and therefore all existence even to the point of our own death is denied.
Startracks. Spiral nebulae. Craters of the moon. She lets herself fall. She falls into the room of her wants. The room where the demands of women are endless. Where her voice has endlessly demanded her to go. This room which reveals her. Where she is clumsy again. Where she is awkward in her grown-up clothing. Where she aches. This room of the revelation of all she thought horrible, and of her endlessly demanding body. Of all she shrank from in herself. This room filled with herself. She fell into this room. This room of outcasts. Where we uncover our bodies. Where we meet our outcast selves. The room in which she does not mock herself. This room filled with darkness. Where we go into darkness. Where we embrace darkness. Where we lie close to darkness, breathe when darkness breathes and find darkness inside ourselves. The room of the darkness of women. Where we are not afraid. Where joy is just under the surface. Where we laugh. Where laughter fills us utterly when we see what we thought was horrible. Where our demands are endlessly received. Where revelation fills us with glee. The room which she said she needed. The room without which she was sure she would perish. The first room in which she experienced space. This place where she could finally breathe. The place where she breathed out the stories she had not believed. The room where we confess we never believed those stories were about us. The room where she cast those stories from her forever. Where we began to feel the atmosphere wants us. Where she began to believe the horizon. This room of her wants. Of her desiring. This room of her desiring to live. This place which allows her to exist. Where the women stare into each other’s eyes. Where the daughter feels the life of the mother. Where our words are undressed. And we touch. This room of our touching where the mother teaches her daughter to face her secret feelings. The labyrinth of her knowledge. Where she has her own reasons. The coral skeleton. The crystals of frost. Of her knowing. This place of her wandering. The circles of the tree’s growth. The beehive. The room of her first wandering and of her finding. This place where she finds her way.
***
We heard of this woman who was out of control. We heard that she was led by her feelings. That her emotions were violent. That she was impetuous. That she violated tradition and overrode convention. That certainly her life should not be an example to us. We were told that she moved too hastily. Placed her life in the stream of ideas just born and we should have little regard for her, even despite the brilliance of her words. That she moved from passion. From unconscious feeling, allowing deep and troubled emotions to control her soul. But we say that to her passion, she brought lucidity and to her vision, she gave the substance of her life. For the way her words illuminated her life we say we have great regard. We say we have listened to her voice asking, “of what materials can that heart be composed which can melt when insulted and instead of revolting at injustice, kiss the rod?”
By her words we are brought to our own lives, and are overwhelmed by our feelings which we had held beneath the surface for so long. And from what is dark and deep within us, we say, tyranny revolts us; we will not kiss the rod.
Tara, I won’t answer in any depth because it would take this thread even further off-topic… But very briefly, for me yes, there would be something to be made of it. Two reasons: 1) even if (ie, assuming!) he didn’t mean it, it’s a bizarre thing to say and I can’t see even a remote point to it; and 2) it would surprise me to hear a Tibetan teacher speak in such reified terms. The Dalai Lama spoke with regard to specific prohibited sex *acts* as per the Gelugpa tradition, which apply to whichever combination of genders are performing them and however a person identifies–or doesn’t identify–him- or herself. Again, we are far afield from the topic “The Genuine Chogyam Trungpa”! So I’ll leave it at that.
Damcho, I also recall that clarification by the Dalai Lama, he made a couple iirc. One, as you say, clarifying monastic precepts where even masturbation is prohibited and also, while meeting with gay practitioners, that his response to the original question foisted on him by a reporter relied upon canon, Longchenpa maybe, or Nagarjuna. Canon, in any case, that he was unwilling to veer away from.
Who knows why anyone would ask the Dalai Lama for sex advice in the first place….
I recall reading Gyaltrul Rinpoche’s machine gun comment some time ago, I don’t recall if it was in the gay press or Tricycle or what. Pretty small blip on the seismigraph but definitely weird. What can be said? If it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck…
Somewhat close to the original topic the new curriculum programs are being unveiled at the San Francisco Shambhala center next month, “Meditation in Everyday Life”. Level II is still a three day weekend program.
And you know, speaking to the shrine changes everyone has gone thru, SF put their old shrine pictures up in the common room, quite prominently displayed, including a photo of a very dapper Regent.
AND I don’t think there’s a single direction you could face in that center, unless you were face down on the floor, where there wouldn’t be a photo of CTR in your line of sight.
Damcho:
I oppose everything Gyatrul Rinpoche does at this point in my life, and think it quite unfortunate that he ever had anything to do with Pednor Rinpoche, or Sangye Khandro, who he twice said was the biggest demon in his life, but when Mark Buckley teased him that Tibetans liked to fu_k animals rather than little boys (which isn’t true), and he said, “That’s better!”, I still agree with him that bestiality is better than homosexuality, a term I ascribe only to men and men. If homosexual men by and large didn’t hate women for so many millennia, and try to crush us out of existence, I would feel different. But if you’re trying to put me on the spot for my views, and force me on the homosexual bandwagon, like you’re trying to get the rest of society, I’m not going to do it. So stick that in your pipe and smoke it!
Edward:
I’m having a ball transcribing “The Cruise,” with Timothy Speed Levitch. Thank you for the comparison to this beautiful hunk of a man! I’m totally in love! I just finished this part:
To all my enemies that add flavor to my life, why don’t you come up here to the Brooklyn Bridge so we can talk about it? Why don’t you come up here and talk to me about it?
To Leslie Lindenstraus, “Look, if you want to try and choke me when I’m like prebuscent and really much smaller than you, that’s fine. I mean, I know that’s how we all really feel about each other, and I know that that’s what it’s really all about, but I’m going to find you and kick your ass ’cause I’m not seven, and I’m not prebuscent anymore. I don’t know where you are, but I remember that day.”
To Jordan, “Look, bananas may be something that you and your friend can eat without me, alright? I mean, yes, I wanted a banana, and yes, you left me out, but that’s okay, because I mean there are other bananas. I think I’ve proved that to you by now.”
To Tierta, “There was about two hours of my entire life thus far on earth when I was absolutely dependent upon you. And those were a couple of the worst hours of my life.”
To Charles Purpura, “I know you never read my screenplay.”
And to Leslie Lee, “I know you didn’t read that full-length play. I worked on it, I sweated on it, I turmoiled over it, I malaised through it, I lived above it, under it, because of it, not because of it, I hated it, I loved it, I died, and I re-lived, and I was reborn within the room as I worked on that play. And I know you did not read it.
To Swayne, who supposedly was going to read that script I gave him, “And you know what? Fuck the script. You are forever known as the tour guide who got hit by a traffic light. And I think that’s the proper epithet for you. And how dare you do a Tina Howe play in the middle of June in New York City as if I have time to sit there and listen to that trash when there’s schticking and Cruising to be done. You obviously lead an infant-testamile existence.
To Josh: “Your narcissism is mediocre. Narcissism in some ways is inevitable. I mean, since we’re all living in the same body for this mortality, it’s almost inevitable that we will be self-absorbed at some point. But why is it that so many people have a narcissism — as yourself — that leads to mediocrity and nothing else?”
To Jan and Michelle: “That was supposed to be an orgy. I don’t know how it came down to a double date with me as a fifth wheel. That sucks! I mean, I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve been so severely dissed. I mean, an orgy is when everybody participates, not four out of five in the room.”
To Real: “I am not going to go to some single Jewish party because I’m a dissheveled wreck of a schticker. To try and meet some Long Island Jewess and land on a front yard, and a house with two cars, and children who bow at my name through their own salivary glands. That may be your approximate goal, but that is not mine. I am surprised by your unoriginality. And I am tired of your silly emasculations. I would prefer to be emasculated by a woman with much more severity and with a little bit more backbone.”
To Mem Levitch, “Why don’t you leave me alone? I’m trying to lead something of a youthful existence here. I’m standing here on the Brooklyn Bridge today, talking to the Brooklyn Bridge about the miniscule moments of alienation that I remember so well for the last quarter century, and all you can do is leave messages on my machine, and lecture me about how much you need me up there in Westchester. What am I supposed to do? Check the air in your tires? You never once vaulted out of the golden chair. You never had the guts, the audacity to stand up and do something with your life! You could only utilize your own narcissism, and your own self-absorption to always, in an eternal sense, imply to me your child, that I had to save your life. And this has been a daily crusade since the first moment of my birth. And when I emanated from your bloody thighs, if I’d known all this, I’m sure I would have crawled back in. Don’t you know that all the menstruation that happened after that was parts of myself left behind that you were choking to death? THAT WAS MY BLOOD!
Course correct!!! Please!!!
Tara,
What a drama bunny! Actually, I find it quite entertaining…thank you for all your posts! And I hope it all works out there for you OK….
Brad, you’re so punitive! You’re like one of those horrible persons who call the police on their family members. That happened to me, once. I was visiting my father who was on his deathbed in my Aunt Elsie’s kitchen. The only reason he was on his deathbed was because she decided not to feed him anymore because she decided it was time for him to die. I’m trying to have a tearful conversation with my dad, who is as bright and cheery and strong as ever, totally compliant in dying since Aunt Elsie said so, and she was hearing every word I said. So finally I got fed up, and asked her if she would please leave the kitchen so I could be with my father alone. Oh, no! She wasn’t going to do that! What an outrage! This was HER kitchen! This was HER house! (Paid for with my father’s money for the last 30 years, she being appointed his conservator after his car accident and subsequent brain damage). Then — naturally — I got into an argument with her, which ended with my telling her that I would NOT be coming to HER funeral! At which point she picked up the phone and called the police. As my sister hurried me into her black jaguar, I told her “Fuc_ you, you bitc_!”
After that I was determined to save my father’s life. All it took was a bunch of expensive lawyering! I took every penny away from that greedy woman. She hadn’t given his three kids hardly a dime our entire lives. She kept it all, saving it for us, she said. But she was keeping it all. Of course, she said, we did it for the money! Like a daughter doesn’t love her father!
Edward:
I’m still working on the transcript of Timothy Speed-Levitch. When I’m done we can talk about it. Here’s where I’m at right now.
The anti-Cruise is an attempt to imprison us at every level of living that exists. [Sigh] Younger Cruisers have asked me, “Why, why is the anti-Cruise so avaricious and constant in its attempt to stop the Cruise?” And I have no answer! There is no answer. I mean, it’s gravitational. It’s a relationship that’s made up of reciprocals and of pulling gravities. It simply exists. Where there is Cruise, there is an escort of anti-Cruise. But even in a complete bastion of anti-Cruise fodder, which this entire square block is, there is Cruise. Somewhere in there is a sparkle of Cruising energy, deeply sublimated within the bellowing belly of the beast.
Survivor! He knows no prison. They are all over the prison floor, but you never saw them looking melancholy. They kept Cruising. No imprisonment for the cockroach. Life impending drastic survivor through the millenias, through the eruptions of time, past the dinosaurs, witnessing the flight of birds for the first time. Clouds dying, asteroids hitting the earth. No prison for the cockroach. I have such respect for those bastards.
But I was not so fortunate. But, you know, I was Cruising hard at that time. So when you think about it, the anti-Cruise breathing down my neck could not allow me even physical mobility. And according to them, I was running from the cops for a month before they caught up to me. I was not even aware that I was running from the cops as much as I was aware that I was running from the anti-Cruise. And I felt like a fugitive. But you know what? Every day I feel like a fugitive. It never occurred to them that I’m running from the anti-Cruise every day. And when I was up in front of the Judge for my arraignment, the judge said, “My biggest problem with this case is that this guy, this current person that we’re judging, ran from the police for a month.” And if I could have spoken, of course, I wasn’t allowed to speak, I would have said, “It’s been a lot more than a month! I’ve been running from you people all my life. All my life! And I’m going to keep running!”
And there’s so many prisoners, inmates. There’s so many people to be judged. They don’t even have time to consider you as a human being. You’re filed through as an assembly line. And in some ways it made me think of the fact that in terms of molecular biology we have the same infrastructure as plants. So this entire notion of individuality is a delusion anyway. It’s a direful delusion. There is no real individuality except for that which we project. But sitting in the cell block I realized that the pursuit of that so-called individuality is everything I believe in. The fullest pursuit of those possibilities of that quote, unquote “Individuality,” even if it is an absolute failure, is the most beautiful failure I can think of. I don’t care if it’s a delusion. I don’t care if we have the same infrastructure as plants. I want to be the plant that grows the highest. I want to be the beanstalk. I want to be the flower that smells the most profusely, that veers most drastically towards the sunlight.
Sigh! Dear Tara, I think there’s some goodness here, and some nuggets, but this is getting past any latitude in how to conduct oneself. No more comments on this thread!