The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Seven (14 page)

55
. Slides of these arrangements are housed in the Shambhala Archives.

56
. As interpreted by Chögyam Trungpa, the tenno room was a room in which formal meetings or discourse were conducted. There were tatami mats on the floor, where everyone participating in a gathering would be expected to sit. There were usually several calligraphies or Japanese brush paintings on display, as well as a flower arrangement and a few precious objects, such as a Japanese tea bowl or tea set, arranged for effect.

57
. The Buddha room was, I believe, a room dedicated to meditation, while the warrior room was a room in which antique Japanese weaponry and armor were displayed. As interpreted by Chögyam Trungpa, the warrior room might have been the ancestral shrine of a Japanese samurai family.

58
. Padma Jong was a rural practice center located in northern California, which was intended to become a contemplative center for the practice of the arts. One of the early students Rinpoche met in California in 1970 was Jerry Granelli, a jazz percussionist and composer, who found the land and was instrumental in the establishment of Padma Jong. Granelli also helped organize and taught in the music department at Naropa for many years. In 1974, Rinpoche taught a seminar entitled “Art in Everyday Life” at Padma Jong; in 1975, he conducted “The Dance of Enlightenment” seminar there.

59
. E-mail communication from Ludwik Turzanski to Carolyn Rose Gimian, May 16, 2002.

60
. Karen Hayward, the founding editor of the newsletter, kindly sent me a complete set of copies for use in preparing
The Collected Works.

61
. Robert Newman conducted this interview with Trungpa Rinpoche in the 1970s, but his book
Disciples of the Buddha: Living Images of Meditation
was not published until 2001.

62
. E-mail communication from Jean Thies to Carolyn Rose Gimian, April 2002.

63
. On this point, see also Judith Lief s introduction to
Dharma Art.

64
. E-mail communication from Gina Etra Stick to Carolyn Rose Gimian, 2002.

D
HARMA
A
RT

EDITED BY

J
UDITH
L. L
IEF

Acknowledgments

F
IRST
, I
WOULD LIKE
to thank the many people who helped in the preparation of this book: Carolyn Gimian and Diana Church of Vajradhatu Archives, Gordon Kidd of Kalapa Recordings (formerly Vajradhatu Recordings), and especially Emily Hilburn Sell of Shambhala Publications. Also, I would like to acknowledge the ongoing work of Vajradhatu Publications, which produced the visual dharma sourcebooks and the many transcripts that formed the raw material for this book, and Ruth Astor, who transcribed and did an initial editing of the Naropa Institute course “Iconography of Buddhist Tantra,” taught by Chögyam Trungpa.

For helpful suggestions and advice, I would like to thank Miriam Garrett, Carolyn Gimian, Sarah Sadowsky, David Rome, Ken Green, and Liza Matthews. I would also like to thank my husband, Charles Lief, who came up with the talk title “Art in Everyday Life,” in a conversation with the Vidyadhara during the 1973 Vajradhatu Seminary. I would also like to thank the many people who have been working closely with the principles of dharma art over the years, especially the wonderful faculty of the Naropa Institute.

Finally, I would like to thank Mrs. Diana J. Mukpo for her continued encouragement and support of the Dharma Ocean Series.

Editor’s Introduction

T
HIS BOOK INTRODUCES
Vidyadhara the Venerable Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s teaching on meditation, perception, and artistic expression, which he termed dharma art.
Dharma
means “norm” or “truth.” In the context of art, it refers to “the state before you lay your hand on your brush, your clay, your canvas—very basic, peaceful, and cool, free from neurosis.”
Art
refers to all the activities of our life, including any artistic disciplines that we practice. It is not an occupation; it is our whole being.

In a meeting in 1982 with the Naropa Institute arts faculty, the Vidyadhara referred to artistic practice as ongoing and all-pervasive. For instance, if you are a musician, you are a musician always, not just while you are playing your instrument. Your awareness of sound and silence is a twenty-four-hour practice. It applies to the way your knife clinks in a restaurant, the way the car door closes, the way somebody sneezes.

In Tibet the Vidyadhara studied a variety of traditional artistic forms, including monastic dance, poetry, calligraphy, and thangka painting. He liked to tell stories of the rigor of his dance training, in which he would need to hold his arm aloft for hours beating a hand drum, until his arm would swell up and he would reach the point of exhaustion. In later years, despite his partial paralysis, he could still demonstrate dance moves from his early training, including dances from the folk tradition as well.

When Trungpa Rinpoche came to England in 1963, he thoroughly immersed himself in the study of Western arts and culture. His interests were wide ranging, including architecture, photography, painting, writing, theater, and music. He also pursued an interest in Japanese arts, including calligraphy and flower arranging, which he studied with Stella Coe of the Sogetsu School. In 1972, he published
Mudra
, his first book of poetry. It included many poems written in England. Through his new wife, Diana Mukpo, an accomplished equestrian, he developed an appreciation for the art of dressage. Throughout his seventeen years of teaching in North America, the Vidyadhara actively pursued his artistic disciplines and followed his far-ranging interests with immense inquisitiveness and delight.

The Vidyadhara practiced calligraphy on a regular basis and created numerous calligraphies, primarily for his meditation centers and as gifts for students and friends. At the time of taking the refuge vow and again at the time of the bodhisattva vows, students would each receive an original calligraphy of their dharma name. Occasionally he would donate calligraphies to be used in fund-raising auctions. He illustrated points in his dharma art seminars by executing spontaneous calligraphies on transparencies that could be displayed to the audience by means of an overhead projector. In that way, the students could see the process as well as the final result. In his calligraphy, the Vidyadhara worked with Japanese brushes rather than pens, often combining Japanese brush and ink with Tibetan language forms. Such a fusion of forms and methods from different cultures—primarily Tibet, China, Japan, India, England, and North America—characterized his style.

Poetry was a regular and ongoing aspect of the Vidyadhara’s daily life. Most often, he would create spoken poetry spontaneously, in informal small group settings. He seldom wrote his poems down; instead, students would transcribe his poetry as he recited it. He often invited his students to participate as well, contributing whole spontaneous poems or lines of group poems. In meetings with the Naropa writing faculty, the Vidyadhara introduced a number of traditional Tibetan writing exercises, based on threefold logic. He encouraged the tradition of spontaneous recitation and the experience of being on the spot without the support of a written text to follow.

When Trungpa Rinpoche came to North America in 1970, he met many artists and poets, and a number of his early students were accomplished artists, such as the poet Allen Ginsberg, the dancer Barbara Dilley, and the musician Jerry Granelli. He also made a close connection with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Maezumi Roshi, and a number of other Zen teachers and so continued his interest in the link between Zen and tantra and in Japanese style. He brought with him from Great Britain a great appreciation of English style and design, discipline, etiquette, ceremony, and court forms.

The Vidyadhara also loved to go to the movies and to both observe and create theater. In 1973, the Vidyadhara directed a theater conference in Boulder that attracted many pivotal figures, including Robert Wilson and Jean-Claude van Itallie. He subsequently formed an ongoing theater workshop called Mudra Theater Group. Working with Mudra Theater, the Vidyadhara developed a sequence of awareness exercises called mudra space awareness practice. He also wrote and directed several plays, including
Prajna, Kingdom of Philosophy, Child of Illusion
, and
Water Festival
.

The Vidyadhara pursued his interest in filmmaking in many ways. In the early seventies, he hosted the Milarepa Film Workshop, to discuss filmmaking and develop a film based on the life of Tibet’s poet-saint Milarepa. With a small group of filmmakers, he traveled to Sweden to visit the Museum Ethnographia, where a series of magnificent Milarepa thangkas had been stored for years but seldom seen the light of day. The museum staff graciously agreed to pull out the thangkas for viewing and gave permission to the Vidyadhara and camera crew to both film and photograph the entire collection. Unfortunately, although much work was done to develop the Milarepa film, it was not completed due to technical problems with the film. However, the technology now exists to correct these problems, and the film may be completed at some future date.

In the late seventies, the Vidyadhara encouraged the development of a for-profit film company called Centre Productions in Boulder, Colorado. Through Centre Productions, he worked on the direction and part of the actual filming of
Discovering Elegance
, a film based on the process of setting up his environmental installations. In early meetings with the Centre Production staff, the Vidyadhara discussed principles of dharma art as they applied to filmmaking. At the request of his students, he expanded on these informal talks in a series of public seminars on dharma art which form the basis for much of this book. In the eighties, the Vidyadhara worked with Centre Productions on a film about the life of the Karmapa, called
The Lion’s Roar
.

In his approach to art, the Vidyadhara stressed collaboration as opposed to solo endeavors. He was well aware of the danger of ownership in art and the problem of feeding ego through art. He discouraged his students from clinging to their identity as artists and encouraged them to think bigger and more inclusively. He also encouraged artists to establish communities. Two artistic communities were formed in the early seventies under his auspices: Padma Jong in Northern California and the Boulder Craft House, which formed the first artists’ cooperative in the Boulder area. The Vidyadhara also was involved in the development of a commercial design firm in Boulder, called Centre Design Studio, and served as board chairman. He was an active participant in a variety of design projects under the auspices of Centre Design, most notably the design of a local jewelry store called Kensington’s.

Trungpa Rinpoche paid meticulous personal attention to all aspects of the design of his centers, from corporate logos and lapel pins to architecture and furnishings. As his organizations grew and matured, he delegated many things to his senior students, but he rarely delegated design work. He did not view such work as merely decorative, but as having power to direct the energy and set the tone of the whole enterprise.

Having been brought up in a culture where you can take down your tent, roll up your thangkas and rugs, travel to a new location, and quickly set up an elegant and sanctified space out of nothing, Trungpa Rinpoche translated the flavor of nomadic tent-culture into a Western context. He designed a series of calligraphed banners and standards that were displayed in his centers internationally. In designing meditation halls for his Western students, the Vidyadhara was very much influenced by Western Zen, and incorporated both Tibetan and Japanese elements. For instance, he used the round Japanese sitting cushions called zafus, but he had them made in red and yellow, rather than black or brown as in Zen. Later, he developed his own unique style of meditation cushion, called a gomden, which is placed on top of a traditional small Japanese mat called a zabuton.

Trungpa Rinpoche continually exhorted his students to respect the forms of their own culture and not to succumb to fascinations with things Eastern. In preparing for the visit of a leading Tibetan dignitary, His Holiness the Gyalwa Karmapa, in 1974, he encouraged his rather scruffy students to observe proper Western decorum: proper posture and table manners, suits and ties, haircuts, dresses. At the same time, he gave a crash course in Tibetan manners. He wanted his students to be equally at ease with the conventions of tea drinking English style or in the style of the salty butter tea of Tibet.

Trungpa Rinpoche worked with the details of the environment and at the same time with the details of personal dignity and decorum. In this regard, he introduced a series of lapel pin designs, which over time became numerous and elaborated, with each club or organization having its own design. Trungpa Rinpoche did not view these pins simply as identifying symbols, but more like seed syllables, which, though small, contain the essence of the power and magic of the teachings. He did not emphasize form for form’s sake, but tried to point out to his students, many of whom had been disillusioned by what they considered the empty and hypocritical religious forms of their childhood, the power of form to teach and to transform. In this sense, he used art all along to convey the essence of things as they are.

In 1974 the Vidyadhara founded the Naropa Institute, North America’s only accredited Buddhist-inspired university, and his interplay with Western artists continued. Summer arts festivals blossomed into a year-round college in which the arts departments play a central role to this day. Naropa’s creative writing department, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, was formed by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman. Barbara Dilley formed the Naropa Institute dance program. Naropa Theater was begun by Lee Worley. And Naropa’s program in world music and jazz was founded by Jerry Granelli and Bill Douglas. The Vidyadhara hoped that one day Naropa would have a full array of fine arts as well as applied arts and crafts, as did Nalanda University in medieval India.