The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Three: 3 (3 page)

Later, when we put together
The Myth of Freedom
out of a number of seminars, we just read him everything we did and received much less input from him. But
Cutting Through
was an extraordinary learning experience for us. We sat with him for hours, many times, over a period of many months, discussing the material, rewriting it, and then asking for his comments and corrections, which he gave freely. For instance, the chapter on shunyata was especially opaque in its original form. We discussed the idea with him and then completely rewrote the chapter a number of times, resubmitting it to him until we were all satisfied. In the course of creating the book, I received my education into Buddhist thought. He had given me the heart of the matter in an instant at Tail. It was in the hours of discussion over
Cutting Through
that I learned to relate doctrine to that core experience and to see how all Buddhist thought circles around it.

In the spring of 1972 Rinpoche, Marvin, and I went into retreat together in Jenner, California, for three weeks and pretty much finished the editing. We had gone up to Teton Village, Wyoming, to visit the Snow Lion Inn and Trungpa Rinpoche’s students running it, and then we drove to Jenner in an ancient yellow Karmann Ghia. . . . Rinpoche dictated a number of poems in Jenner, we dropped acid, went to see a Mexican mystical western movie, the name of which escapes me, made many cooking experiments (Rinpoche loved to concoct weird food, such as baked oranges), I somehow contracted and got rid of crabs, and we drove around in the foggy redwood forest and along the coast of northern California. And we edited: Marvin and I writing, reading the text to him, rewriting. Then we drove down the coast to San Francisco, stopping along the way to visit Hari Das Baba (one of Ram Dass’s teachers, living in a stylish seaside development) and José and Miriam Argüelles (who showed us paintings of “guardians” they had met in dreams). In San Francisco we immediately went shopping, and Rinpoche bought Marvin a double-breasted blazer because he told him it made him look thicker, less slight, more substantial. Marvin, so Buddha, who never thought about his personal appearance, beamed with pleasure.

One side note: my father, Edward J. Baker, had input into the manuscript. He had been educated at Yale and Harvard Law, was quite literate, had taught me to write years ago, and I sent him the text for his comments, which he gave, and some of which were incorporated into the finished book. He was also friends with Rinpoche and Diana, as was my mother. . . . In sum, I feel of
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
that it is one of the events/products of my life of which I am most proud, for which I am most grateful. It was part of the revolution Rinpoche worked in my being, a personal teaching to me.

A final note regarding
Cutting Through.
In the fall of 1973 the book had just been published. Rinpoche had done two seminars for Alan Watts on his houseboat in Sausalito and had been on a panel with him for Bob Lester (head of the Religious Studies Department) at the University of Colorado. . . . Alan was in awe of Rinpoche. We had invited him to come and teach at Naropa Institute [which was in the planning stages at this point] and he had accepted, and we also wanted him to write a review of the book for the
New York Times Book Review
or a similar [venue]. So I was sent to visit him in his Zen retreat cabin on Mount Tamalpais outside San Francisco. He met me at the door in Zen robes, and we sat on zafus as he agreed to write the review. When I asked him how much he would charge to teach at Naropa, he smiled knowingly and said that he would do it for free, that he knew we were inviting him because he was a “draw.” He had become a friend. Sadly, he died that winter of a heart attack in his sleep.
⁵

When
Cutting Through
was published in 1973, it was an almost overnight success. It was
the
book to be reading, at least in certain circles. Following its publication, lectures by Trungpa Rinpoche, which might previously have drawn an audience of a hundred, now might draw an audience of a thousand in a major American city. Since his arrival in America in 1970, he had crisscrossed the continent many times, developing a following in many cities, including Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, Boulder, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Vancouver. By 1973, he had students in these and other locales who helped host his visits to their area. They set up lectures—and sometimes “dharma festivals” or other special events—in large venues that would accommodate all those who wanted to hear him speak.

While he talked about serious topics and warned listeners of the many pitfalls of spiritual endeavors, he did so with warmth and unconventional humor, in a way that generally charmed the audience. The atmosphere surrounding his public appearances was sometimes more like a happening than a lecture. I can remember young women dancing and a band of Hare Krishnas chanting, with much audience participation, as we waited for Chögyam Trungpa to arrive and speak at a lecture hall in San Francisco around 1972. After the main part of his address, he was always patiently and delightedly open to questions and audience participation. He loved to be challenged and seemed to draw energy from the interaction with the crowd.

To be sure, there was a more serious side to all this. Public lectures almost always were a prelude to weekend, sometimes longer, seminars, which generally were attended by fifty to one hundred participants. Here students sat and practiced meditation, had private interviews, and heard in-depth talks on topics from “Mahamudra” to “Buddhism and American Karma.”

Although not published until 1976,
The Myth of Freedom
was largely drawn from public talks and seminars that Trungpa Rinpoche gave in many parts of the country between 1971 and 1973. While in some ways it is a continuation of the themes articulated in
Cutting Through, The Myth of Freedom
is also a departure. Rather than painting a detailed picture on a vast canvas, which was the style of the first book, here Chögyam Trungpa’s approach is to provide many snapshots of the steps on the path. The chapters are short and pithy and largely self-sufficient; one can start almost anywhere in this book, read a chapter or two, and feel that one has gained something valuable, something that stands on its own merits.

In the intervening years between the publication of
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
and
The Myth of Freedom,
several events occurred in Trungpa Rinpoche’s world that affected
The Myth of Freedom.
In 1973, the first Vajradhatu Seminary was held. It was the training ground for introducing vajrayana practice to Rinpoche’s senior students. Before that time, all of his students were solely practitioners of sitting meditation.
⁶
By 1976, he had more than three hundred students engaged in ngöndro, or the foundation practices, to prepare them to receive empowerment, or initiation, in the practice of tantric sadhanas. In 1974, the first session of Naropa Institute (now Naropa University), the first Buddhist-inspired university in North America, drew eighteen hundred students to Boulder, much to the shock of Rinpoche’s students who had been organizing the institute on his behalf. They had been expecting a maximum of five hundred participants. Although there were a number of reasons that people came to Naropa that summer, the success of
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
and interest in its author were major contributing causes. Also in 1974, the head of Trungpa Rinpoche’s lineage, His Holiness the sixteenth Gyalwang Karmapa, visited the United States for the first time and gave his blessing to Rinpoche’s work, noting his great accomplishments in transmitting the vajrayana teachings in the West. His Holiness proclaimed Chögyam Trungpa “a Vajra Holder and Possessor of the Victory Banner of the Practice Lineage of the Karma Kagyü.”

All of these events had an impact on
The Myth of Freedom.
First, the success of Naropa Institute and Rinpoche’s general celebrity encouraged him and his editors to undertake a second popular volume of his teachings. Second, in
The Myth of Freedom,
he chose to acknowledge and honor His Holiness Karmapa: the only photograph in the book is a portrait of the Karmapa, accompanied by one of Rinpoche’s poems, entitled “Enthronement.” This lends a sense of lineage and heritage to the book—not a lineage in the distant past but a lineage right at hand. Finally, although all of the talks in
The Myth of Freedom
were given to public audiences, there is much vajrayana or tantric content, including the translation of a short but important tantric text, “Mahamudra Upadesa,” at the end of the volume. This was, in part, simply the natural outgrowth of the fact that Rinpoche’s students—and his editors—were themselves becoming familiarized with and steeped in vajrayana. John Baker commented on this and other aspects of the editing of
The Myth of Freedom:

With regard to
Myth of Freedom,
I never liked it quite as much as
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism,
felt it too much a synthesis from too many seminars, that it was overedited and had lost punch, lost some of the sound of his voice. Nevertheless, it has its moments, for sure, as for instance, the chapter on love. At some point I realized that it was pure Anu Yoga [an advanced stage on the tantric path]. I went to Rinpoche and asked him if he really wanted it in the book as it was, if it wasn’t revealing teachings he only wanted to present to students intimately, at [the Vajradhatu] Seminary. He laughed and said it was all right, that no one would “get it” anyhow. However, with regard to Tilopa’s “Mahamudra Upadesa,” the poem Rinpoche translated for the conclusion of the book, he did edit out the references to tantric sexual yoga, deeming them too precious and esoteric for this venue.
⁷

The year 1976, when
The Myth of Freedom
was published, was a turning point in Chögyam Trungpa’s Buddhist community. With the coming of the Karmapa in 1974, Rinpoche’s students had discovered that they were part of a large family. Having already found religion, in His Holiness Karmapa’s connection to the community they found tradition. And with tradition came responsibility. The end of the party was in sight. Although there were certainly further celebrations to come, the careless freedom and sometimes wild atmosphere that characterized the earliest years began to fade after the Karmapa’s visit. Similarly, although the first summer at Naropa Institute seemed like one huge happening, it also had implications. By 1975, what might have seemed like a lark just a year before now clearly held the potential to build an enduring and important institution of higher learning. There were departments to build, programs to plan, degrees to offer. And as Rinpoche’s students began their ngöndro, entering the vajrayana path in earnest, they
felt
more personally the preciousness of the teachings they were receiving, and they discovered firsthand how much discipline and devotion were vital parts of their training. Also in 1976, Chögyam Trungpa appointed an American student, Ösel Tendzin (Thomas Rich) as his dharma successor, or Vajra Regent. Tradition was now an intensely personal affair for Rinpoche’s students: it was theirs to carry on. As if to underscore this point, Rinpoche announced that he would be taking a year’s retreat in 1977, leaving the administration of his world to his Vajra Regent and all his other students.

That things began to settle down and take shape for the future was all for the good, for otherwise the community might have been marooned in the seventies. Still, there was an unfettered exuberant quality that was difficult to leave behind, and indeed some students left around that time, unable to make the transition from emptiness to form. It was a bit like the change from adolescence to maturity—necessary but poignant. The changes in the community also made room for many others to explore their interest in Buddhism and meditation, for there were many who were not attracted to the formlessness of the early years. While some had found it liberating, for others it had appeared merely messy and chaotic.

If one reads
The Myth of Freedom
now, most of this surrounding cultural history is invisible—happily so. The book speaks to readers today who have no relationship to the era from which it sprang. The directness of the prose is hard-hitting, and the fact that the chapters are short makes the book almost more digestible for current readers than it was for its original audience.

The Heart of the Buddha,
edited by Judith L. Lief and published in 1991, is a collection of fourteen articles, sixteen if one counts the appendices. “The Four Foundations of Mindfulness,” “Taking Refuge,” and “The Bodhisattva Vow” all appeared first in issues 4 and 5 of the
Garuda
magazine. Although
Garuda
was originally published by Vajradhatu, Chögyam Trungpa’s main Buddhist organization, the last three issues were co-published by Shambhala Publications, with limited sales to the general public. These three articles are meaty, in-depth discussions of the topics, and they deserve the wider audience they enjoy by being incorporated into
The Heart of the Buddha.
The same is true for the chapter “Devotion,” which was edited from one of Trungpa Rinpoche’s seminars, “The True Meaning of Devotion,” to be the main text in
Empowerment,
a beautiful, slim book with many photographs, commemorating the first visit of His Holiness Karmapa in 1974. “Devotion” and the three articles previously mentioned each give a comprehensive view of their topic. Each incorporates material from many of Rinpoche’s talks on the same subject. Both “Taking Refuge” and “The Bodhisattva Vow” are based on talks that he gave when he presented Refuge and Bodhisattva Vows, committing his students to formally becoming Buddhists and then to treading the mahayana path of selfless compassion for all beings. These articles thus have a very personal and direct quality to them.