This is the story of my life, and it is also an intimate portrait of my husband, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. The two things are quite intertwined for me. My husband was a Tibetan Buddhist lama, the eleventh incarnation in the Trungpa lineage and the abbot of Surmang, a major group of monasteries in Eastern Tibet. Rinpoche (pronounced RIM-poach-eh), the name by which I usually called him, is a title for great lamas and incarnate teachers, which means "precious one." Rinpoche left Tibet in 1959 because of the communist Chinese invasion of his country, and after spending a few years in India, he came to England. I met him there when he was twenty-eight and I was fifteen. We were married when I was sixteen, which was quite shocking to both my family and to Rinpoche's Tibetan colleagues. We loved each other deeply, and we had a very special connection. However, our marriage was highly unconventional by most standards, and it was not without heartbreak or difficulty. In the end I have no regrets.
Rinpoche was one of the first Tibetan Buddhist teachers in the West and one of the very first to teach Westerners in the English language. The time that he spent in the West -- between 1963, when he arrived in England, and 1987, when he died in North America -- was an important period for the transplantation of Buddhism to the West, and I hope that my viewpoint as his wife may offer a unique perspective on that period. A lot of what my life was about during those years was about him and what happened to him. So a main objective for telling my story is so that the memory of him and of all those things that happened can be preserved.
I also want to talk about our life together and our relationship because it was so human and so intimate. Ultimately I think that this is the essence of the Buddhist teachings: they are about how to live our lives as human beings, intimately, moment by moment. So I will try to share with you what it was really like to love such a person. It was quite extraordinary.
The first time I saw Rinpoche was in December of 1968, during my Christmas break from Benenden School, an elite English boarding school for girls. I was fifteen at the time, and I was spending the holidays at home with my mother and my sister in London. The previous summer, my sister Tessa and I had traveled with Mother to Malta. At that point in my life, I couldn't communicate at all with my mother, and I felt claustrophobic around her. While we were in Malta, I withdrew more and more into myself, and I read many books about Theravada, Zen, and Tibetan Buddhism. When we got back to London, I started to go to lectures and other events at the Buddhist Society in Eccleston Square. Buddhism was not particularly popular at that time, and none of my friends were interested in it. However, my father had had an interest in Buddhism and after his death, when I was thirteen, I began to question and explore my own spirituality, first reading about comparative religion and then focusing on Buddhist writings. In the autumn of 1968, I read Born in Tibet, Rinpoche's book about his upbringing in Tibet and his escape from the Chinese. I thought it was an exciting and somewhat exotic story. However, the book was nowhere near as thrilling as meeting the author proved to be!
Over the Christmas holidays, I went to St. George's Hall to attend a rally for the liberation of Tibet, sponsored by the Buddhist Society. The program went on for several hours, with one speaker after another. I found it quite boring. One of the last speakers on the schedule was the author of Born in Tibet, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who appeared onstage in the maroon and saffron robes of a Tibetan monk. I looked up at him from the audience, and much to my amazement, I felt an immediate and intense connection. Before he could say anything, however, he collapsed and was carried offstage. We were told that Rinpoche had taken ill, but I imagine that alcohol may have been involved.
Although he was only onstage for a few minutes, I knew that I had a very deep and old connection with him, and it stirred up a great deal of emotion for me. The only way I can describe this experience is that it was like coming home. Nothing in my life had hit me in such a powerful way. I said to myself, "This is what I've been missing all my life. Here he is again." This wasn't just some exciting, powerful experience. I knew him, and as soon as I saw him, I realized how much I'd been missing him. From that moment on, I wanted desperately to meet him.
Since the age of thirteen, shortly after my father's death, I had had several very vivid dreams about previous lives in Tibet. I didn't tell anyone about them because I didn't know what to say about them, and I thought that people might misunderstand. I didn't really understand these dreams myself, although somehow I knew that the location was Tibet and these were about previous lives. When I saw Rinpoche, I knew that he was connected to the world that I had encountered in my dreams.
In one of the most vivid dreams, I lived in a nunnery on a large white lake in Tibet. At first I lived in a dormitory with other nuns, but then I was given my own living quarters in a large room dominated by a huge white statue of a Buddha. I stayed in the nunnery for several years, practicing meditation and studying. Then, I left to go on retreat in a cave in the mountains.
In retreat I wore a heavy woolen nun's robe, which is called a chuba, and it was lined with fur. The furnishings in the cave were spartan, with a small bed in one corner, an area for cooking, and a simple shrine in front of which I practiced, seated cross-legged on a small raised platform. At one time, I could remember the deity that I visualized in retreat, although that memory has faded now. Later, when I described this to my husband, he knew exactly what practice I was doing.
I was terrified of wild animals in the vicinity. I started building a fire near the front of the cave every night to keep the animals away. Eventually, people from a nearby village raised the money to build a white facade to the cave, and then I felt safe staying there alone.
Once, I saw some Westerners passing through the area. I was amazed and fascinated by them. They had boots that were like nothing I had ever seen before, hiking boots, I suppose. When I recall them, the memories are as clear as any part of the past.
To get water, I had to walk down the valley to a little stream. It was peaceful there, and I enjoyed these outings. One day, I was sitting by the water holding a pomegranate. I have no idea where I got it. Pomegranates grow in Northern India, and perhaps they grew in this part of Tibet as well. It's quite tropical in some of the valleys. I distinctly remember the feel of the fruit in my hand. Then, suddenly, I died -- just like that. I think I must have had a heart attack. Then I saw my body from a long way away. I felt as if I were in a vacuum hose, being vacuumed up and out of this world through a tunnel. That is the last thing that I can remember.
When I described all of this to my husband, he said that with a little more discussion he could tell me exactly who I had been but that it wouldn't be a good thing for me to know that. He thought it might become an obstacle. He told me that probably I was given my own room in the nunnery because I was the relative of an important person, possibly a high lama. He thought I might have been related to his own predecessor, the Tenth Trungpa. He never said anything further about it.
I only told Rinpoche about this dream after we were married, but he said that he'd known about my past life in Tibet from the first time we met. I have told very few people about all of this, but it seems that it might be helpful now to understanding our connection.
After seeing Rinpoche in London, I continued to read anything about Tibet or Tibetan Buddhism that I could get my hands on. Not long after the rally, I was able to attend a program that he was teaching at the Buddhist Society, which is one of the oldest Buddhist organizations in England. It was founded by Christmas Humphries [Humphreys], a very colorful and well-known judge. When Rinpoche first arrived in England, the Buddhist Society often invited him to teach-there, and they published some of his early lectures in their journal, The Middle Way. However, at some point, the Buddhist Society and Rinpoche had a falling-out. I heard that, after they discovered he was drinking alcohol during a program, they never invited him back.
The particular program that I attended was a series of lectures on Padmasambhava, or Guru Rinpoche, the Indian teacher who was instrumental in bringing Buddhism to Tibet in the eighth century. Rinpoche told us stories of Padmasambhava's life and the lessons that one could take from it. Frankly, I don't remember the talks that well; I mainly remember staring at the teacher. I thought that he looked beautiful in his monks' robes, and although he had rather thick reading glasses, I found him quite good-looking.
The participants were told that we could have a private interview with the teacher if we requested one. Although I felt a bit shy and intimidated, of course I asked to see him. The lectures were conducted in a large room upstairs in the Buddhist Society, across from which was a small interview room. During the interview, Rinpoche was incredibly sweet. He gave me instruction in meditation, which I don't remember very well. I was just so hungry for him. To me, he seemed to be a very special being: so kind, so pure, so sharp. During the interview, I had the sense that he was touching my mind with his. There was absolutely no barrier in our communication. He seemed to fall in love with the mind of whomever he worked with. I felt that he had no personal agenda except to be kind and helpful.
In the interview room, Rinpoche sat on a cushion on the floor, and I sat across from him. There was a bowl of grapes in front of him, and at a certain point, he offered me some. Even though we had just met, I think there was already some sexual feeling between us, but I didn't really pick up on it. I was only fifteen and quite naive at that point. After the interview, I felt enchanted by the experience and by how close I felt to him. I resolved to spend more time with him.
In 1967 Rinpoche had cofounded a rural meditation center in Scotland, named Samye Ling. He spent most of his time there, and one could go to the center to practice meditation and hear lectures on Buddhism. Early in 1969, I heard about a program at Samye Ling that I wanted to attend during a long weekend that I had off from school. Being only fifteen, I had to have my mother's permission. When I asked her, she told me that the only way she would allow me to go was if she came too. The prospect of her accompanying me was unpleasant. Our relationship was not good, to say the least, and my mother also was extremely prejudiced against anybody who wasn't white and a member of the English upper class. She would have had a problem with Rinpoche if he were Italian, let alone an Asian who was an adherent of some strange religion -- as far as she was concerned. However, I felt that I had no choice, so I told her that it would be fine if she came along. I think she was mildly intrigued by something as exotic as a Tibetan lama.
Mother, Tessa, and I took the long drive up from London to Scotland. Although I wasn't looking forward to spending the weekend with my mother, I was excited to be going to Samye Ling, especially with Tessa, with whom I was quite close. The drive took us more than six hours. Most of the roads weren't good, which made it slow going. We crossed the border from England into Dumfriesshire, in the southwest of Scotland. From the city of Dumfries, we turned northeast onto a two-lane highway, which we followed for about twenty miles until we came into Lockerbie, a town of a few thousand residents. We passed through an area forested with short pine trees and then came into a part of the Scottish lowlands with almost no trees at all.We headed north on a small country road. The countryside there feels quite empty, but also quite romantic in a desolate way.
We continued north to Eskdalemuir, a tiny village composed of a few houses here and there. A few miles further north, we found ourselves at Samye Ling. The main building was a large white stone house, several hundred years old, set starkly in the middle of its lawn. There were several small buildings spread around the property, for people doing retreats. The well-tended grounds were surrounded by barren terrain, windswept hills with a mixture of green and brown long grass now flattened by the wind. Little clouds in the sky seemed to mirror the scattered sheep on the hillsides.
When we entered the house, we were directed down the main corridor. On our left was a room with large windows that looked out into the garden. Sherab Palden Beru used this room as his painting studio. He was one of the Tibetan monks in residence there and was a talented painter of traditional Tibetan religious paintings, which are called thangkas. The room was filled with his drawings and paintings in various stages of completion. They depicted Tibetan mandalas and deities, some of them quite fierce. I was somewhat familiar with these images, but it must have been quite strange to my mother's eyes.
Farther down the hall on the left was the main shrine room, a large room set aside for meditation and the conduct of various Tibetan practices and ceremonies. It was painted in deep reds, yellows, oranges, and gold, and a number of shrines were set up around the room. In addition to the more elaborate central shrine, there were smaller shrines in various parts of the room. There were butter lamps burning, and we noticed a number of bronze and gold statues. Thangka paintings hung on the backdrops to the shrines and on the walls of the room, and there was a heavy smell of Tibetan incense. There were low benches and cushions for people to sit on as well as a sort of throne covered in brocade. We were told that this was where Rinpoche sat, as the presiding lama. Early morning services, or pujas, were held every day in the shrine room. Rinpoche used to come down to morning puja. There were stories about him falling asleep on the throne, and people used to drive around the driveway honking the horn to wake him up.
On the right was a room with nothing in it but a rug, a small table, and a few cushions on the floor. This was where Rinpoche conducted personal interviews. I can't imagine what my mother thought, as the whole place had the feeling 'of a Tibetan monastery.
We were given a room on the second floor with ,windows overlooking the grounds. Soon after we arrived, Rinpoche invited Mother to come for an interview. Most of the people who came to Samye Ling were not from my mother's social class and were much younger than she was, so I'm sure that Rinpoche was intrigued to meet her. My sister and I snuck down while she was talking with him and stood outside the room wondering what was going on in there. We had a good laugh, because my mother's high-heeled snakeskin shoes were neatly placed beside the closed door. We thought it was a hilarious image: my mother taking off her shoes and going barefoot to meet with somebody. We found it amusing and incongruous to see these two worlds coming together in that way.
When my mother came out of her meeting, she said, "He asked me to stay." She was absolutely enamored of Rinpoche. This was surprising, to say the least, but it was fantastic news for my sister and me. We all settled into the routine at Samye Ling. We took our meals at one of the long wooden tables in the dining room set aside for Western students. The food was quite simple; I remember we had soup and bread for supper. There were a number of other Westerners there for the weekend, as well as a number of resident students. There were several , practice sessions every day. We got up around 6:30 and practice started at 7:00. My sister and I were asked to help with simple chores, such as doing dishes.
I also had an interview with Rinpoche while we were there. I remember telling him about my anxieties and my problems with my mother. He seemed very understanding. I asked him questions about his new book, Meditation in Action, which had just been published in England by Stuart and Watkins. However, the main thing for me was just being in his presence. I was pretty blissed out.
Most of the Western students at Samye Ling were English or Scottish. I don't remember meeting any Americans at that time. In addition to Rinpoche and the painter Sherab Palden Beru, we were introduced to another Tibetan: Akong Rinpoche, Trungpa Rinpoche's longtime companion and the cofounder of the center. Akong had escaped from Tibet with Trungpa Rinpoche and had lived with him at Oxford University, where Rinpoche had studied for several years after he arrived in England. Akong at this time was not teaching very much, although Akong was a rinpoche as well. He was in charge of the administration of Samye Ling, while Rinpoche was the spiritual head of the center. Apparently, they had known each other for several lifetimes (the Trungpa tulkus, or incarnations, and the Akong tulkus had been very close in previous lives), and the two had been very close in this lifetime as well, like brothers. However, by the time I visited Samye Ling, they were having major disagreements, though I didn't know this at the time. During our stay there was no evidence of discord. As far as I could see, it was a peaceful scene.
I was also interested to meet an English Buddhist nun, Josie Wechsler, who was a student of Rinpoche's and very fond of him. There was an area of the house upstairs where the Tibetans lived, which was generally off-limits to Westerners. Josie, however, was allowed to stay in that part of the house when she was not in retreat.
Both the morning and the evening services were chanted in Tibetan. The main emphasis at that time was on a traditional Tibetan approach to meditation practice, quite different from what Rinpoche eventually developed. Things were already in transition, however. Rinpoche had introduced a new liturgy that was practiced in English almost every day, and the atmosphere was changing rapidly.
In the summer of 1968, Rinpoche had gone to India for a visit. It was the first time he had returned to Asia since coming to the West five years earlier. While he was there, he went to Bhutan at the invitation of the queen, who was a devout Buddhist practitioner. She and Rinpoche were both students of the revered teacher Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. She was very friendly and extended her courtesy to Rinpoche when she heard he was coming to India. While at Oxford, he had been a tutor to Jigme Singye Wangchuck, her eldest son and the future (now current) king of Bhutan. In addition to an invitation to visit the royal family in Bhutan, Rinpoche was permitted to do a meditation retreat at Taktsang, a famous cave where Padmasambhava meditated before entering Tibet.
While Rinpoche was in retreat there, he uncovered a liturgy entitled the Sadhana of Mahamudra. I say that he uncovered it because, according to traditional Tibetan belief, he didn't write it himself. Instead, Rinpoche discovered this text -- a text that Padmasambhava was believed to have composed hundreds of years ago -- hidden in the recesses of his own mind. Meditating in the cave where Padmasambhava had practiced centuries ago unlocked this precious text, which is about the spiritual degeneration and materialism of the current age and how this darkness can be overcome by an ecumenical approach to presenting genuine spirituality. My husband was considered to be a terton, a Tibetan tide that means "treasure finder" or "treasure revealer." A terton is a little bit like a prophet, in the Western biblical sense. Many of Tibet's greatest teachers have been tertons. This tide is given to those who discover teachings -- and sometimes actual texts and ritual objects -- that Padmasambhava is said to have hidden in' various places to help people in future generations. I think of such teachings as time bombs, in the sense that they often reveal a new understanding, or wisdom, at the appropriate time. The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a famous example of one of these hidden teachings. Some of these texts are discovered hidden in a rock in a cave or are found in a container left at the bottom of a river, or in other unusual places. Some of them are said to be hidden in the mind, and they arise or are discovered there, in the mind of a terton. Rinpoche was considered to be the kind of terton who was able to find such mind terma or mind "treasures" as well as physically concealed terma. He had already discovered a number of terma as a young lama in Tibet, but the Sadhana of Mahamudra, I believe, was the first terma he found after leaving his country.
When we were at Samye Ling, Rinpoche had only recently returned from his trip to Bhutan, bringing this text with him, newly translated into English. Now, in addition to chanting in Tibetan, students at Samye Ling practiced the Sadhana of Mahamudra in English. I remember that the text was crudely mimeographed on colored sheets of paper.
One afternoon, after we'd been there for several days, I walked into the bedroom to find Mother sitting on the bed, absolutely frozen. She seemed to be in shock. She didn't move or say anything for several minutes. Then she said, "My God, I've been hypnotized. I've been hypnotized by this Asian. Pack your bags immediately. It's black magic. We have to get out of here."
Looking back, I realize that it was amazing that she stayed at Samye Ling as long as she did. In a way, it was magic. She had completely set aside her normal concepts of propriety during this period of time. I don't actually understand why this was possible. Whatever the spell was, it was now broken.
At the time, I didn't appreciate how remarkable her behavior had been. Rather, I was focused on wanting to stay longer and distraught that she insisted we leave. Both my sister and I tried to convince her that everything was all right, that it wasn't black magic, and that we could stay. I pleaded with her, but she said that we had to go immediately. I went to say good-bye to Rinpoche, whom I felt I'd barely seen while we were there. I told him that, because of my mother freaking out, we had to leave. He reassured me and told me not to worry, that it would be all right, and that we could get together in the future.
My sister had friends nearby in Scotland, and since she was older, Mother allowed her to stay with them for the rest of the weekend. I had to drive home alone with Mother. I loaded our cases into the car, a Jaguar sedan, and the two of us drove back to London. I didn't speak; I didn't open my mouth on the whole trip, except to give monosyllabic replies to direct questions. Several hours into the journey, Mother stopped and bought me an ice cream cone, thinking it might change my mood. I waited until we were on the road again; then I opened the window and threw the cone out. I remember her pleading with me, "We'll move to South Africa. You'll like it there. I'll buy you a horse farm. You can have. as many horses as you want. Just please, please forget your interest in Buddhism and this strange man." Of course, I did nothing of the kind.
Soon after this, I went back to school at Benenden. It was the spring of 1969, and I didn't see Rinpoche again for almost six months. During the spring term, I was shocked to hear that he had had a terrible car accident and was paralyzed on his left side. Shortly after that, I heard that he was slowly recuperating and was planning to marry a young Englishwoman by the name of Maggie Russell. That was another shock. Then, a little bit after that, I heard that Maggie had decided not to marry him. Strangely enough, that was the most disturbing news. I couldn't believe it. I remember thinking, "How could somebody say no to him? How could he want to marry somebody and they would turn him down like that? She has to be out of her mind." I thought to myself that if I ever had the opportunity to marry him, I wouldn't hesitate. I would have no second thoughts.
When Rinpoche later wrote about his car accident, he talked about overcoming hesitation, doubt, and self-deception. In the epilogue to Born in Tibet, "Planting the Dharma in the West," he wrote about the message that came through to him from this accident:
When plunging completely and genuinely into the teachings, one is not allowed to bring along one's deceptions. I realized that I could no longer attempt to preserve any privacy for myself, any special identity or legitimacy. I should not hide behind the robes of a monk, creating an impression of inscrutability which, for me, turned out to be only an obstacle. With a sense of further involving myself with the sangha, I determined to give up my monastic vows. More than ever, I felt myself given over to serving the cause of Buddhism.1
At the time, I knew nothing about the implications of the accident, For my part, I simply thought about Rinpoche constantly and couldn't wait to see him again. A young girl of fifteen, I was infatuated with him and caught up in my own life, my own dramas. I didn't stop to think about the deeper meaning of what he was going through.
During this period, my schoolwork started to slip. I had never been that comfortable at Benenden, and now having met Rinpoche, my view of life was changing drastically, and I seemed to be increasingly out of place and out of step. Benenden was where the British upper class, the children of foreign diplomats, and royalty from around the world sent their daughters. It offered the best education in the style of British public schools -- which is what the most exclusive private schools in England are called. Frankly, I never felt that I fit that well into English society, from early childhood, so at its best, Benenden was not an easy place for me to be. At this point, I couldn't relate to ,the situation at school at all, and I became more and more disconnected from life there. I was becoming quite a problem child by that point. I remember feeling that I just wanted to get away. Especially after the falling-out with my mother at Samye Ling, I felt desperate and somewhat depressed.
During this time, a friend, who was in school near Cambridge, started to send me drugs in the mail. Periodically, she would send marijuana, which I enjoyed smoking -- anything to take the edge ?ff of my life. Then, she sent me some opium in the mail. I had never tried that. I thought I would save it for a special occasion. A few weeks later, we were told that Queen Elizabeth was coming to Benenden to visit Princess Anne who was one of the girls in my house at school. I thought this was the perfect opportunity, and I ate the opium before the queen arrived. I remember having a really good time, feeling very relaxed and enjoying myself immensely during her visit. At a certain point, I was standing in formation to say good-bye to the queen in the parking lot, and I felt as though I were floating.
The next thing I remember is that I was lying down in a corridor in the school because my legs were suddenly so heavy. My housemistress was standing over me, saying, "Diana Pybus, get up immediately. Stand up. Why are you lying there?" I looked up at her and said, "What's the problem, man? I'm just stoned." Of course, that got a reaction out of her. She reported me immediately to the headmistress and then put me to bed, because I was quite incoherent at that point. The next morning I was sent to explain myself to the headmistress. I told her that, no, of course it wasn't drugs. I said that I had drunk my first glass of wine ever, feeling despondent about my father's death and how much I missed him. I didn't receive a very serious punishment. Either they believed my explanation or they felt sorry for me. Actually, I had lain in bed the entire night having hallucinations and enjoying it.
At one point during the term, I asked to see the headmistress and told her that I was becoming a vegetarian because I was now a Buddhist. She told me that she wasn't about to enter into a philosophical discussion with me but that I simply must eat meat. I also told her that I didn't want to go to church anymore. We were required at Benenden to attend services twice on Sundays. Being a Buddhist was not considered an acceptable excuse. I was told that I absolutely must attend.
I stopped going anyway, and eventually I got caught. As a punishment, I was told to walk about two miles to the church in the village, where I was to sit quietly by myself, memorize a psalm, and then walk back to school where I was to recite the psalm to our housemistress and all the monitors in my house at school. My friend Veronica Bruce Jones decided to come with me. When we got to the church, there was no one around. It wasn't the regular hour for services, so the church was empty. We were, however, able to get into the main sanctuary, and behind the altar I found the vicar's robes. Veronica and I also found a bottle of sacramental wine, which we drank. Then I put on the robes and stood in the pulpit, where I delivered a sermon to the empty pews on the meaning of impermanence and the Buddha's teaching of the Four Noble Truths. At the end, I remember standing there and saying, "Well, I'm a Buddhist, and Buddhism is better than this!" After that, we walked back to school, rather sloshed.
Somehow I finished out the year at school, but I knew that I didn't want to go back to Benenden in the fall. I asked my mother if I could transfer to Kirby Lodge, where my sister had spent her last two years of school. Although I longed to go to Samye Ling in the summer of 1969, I was away all summer with Mother and Tessa on a trip to Mijas, Spain, where my mother rented a villa for our vacation. I investigated where to buy local drugs cheaply and also enjoyed shoplifting in the marketplace. I stole a number of caftans, colorful long dresses worn by women in some countries of the Near East. I took to wearing these as the perfect sort of hippie clothes. While we were in Spain, I had a pet goat that I named Pan. I used to walk him around the village on a leash.
In the fall of 1969, I started school at Kirby Lodge, a' small school for sixteen- to eighteen-year-old girls located in a village outside of Cambridge. At Benenden I had done best in sciences, but at Kirby Lodge I decided to do my A-levels (advanced coursework and examinations) in languages: Sanskrit, Spanish, and English. I wanted to study Sanskrit because of my interest in Eastern religion. There were no courses in Sanskrit offered at the, school, but they arranged for me to have. a tutorial with one of the professors at Cambridge. I used, to take the bus into Cambridge once a week to have my Sanskrit lesson. However, I didn't do the assigned work, so eventually the professor refused to teach me any longer. Altogether, I'm afraid that I didn't do very well at Kirby Lodge. I had changed schools, but that didn't solve anything because that wasn't the real source of my problems.
There was one bright light in my studies during this period. I had also wanted to learn Tibetan, of course, and I heard about a Tibetan lama, Ato Rinpoche, living in Cambridge. I approached him, and he agreed to give me Tibetan lessons. His wife, Alithea, was the English daughter of an Anglican bishop, and I believe she has remained a Christian. He was absolutely devoted to her and she to him, calling him Rinpoche-la. At that time, although he occasionally lectured on Buddhism, Ato Rinpoche made his living as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital. I went to his house in Cambridge once a week for my Tibetan lesson. He was very patient, and both of them were very sweet to me. He knew Trungpa Rinpoche and respected him very much, so I loved going to visit him.
On the home front, I was still having terrible problems with my mother, and our communication -- or lack of it -- did not improve. The custom at Kirby Lodge was that on your birthday your parents would bring up a cake and other food. I had my sixteenth birthday coming up on the eighth of October. At the last minute, my mother decided not to come for it at all. Sixteen is an important milestone in a young girl's life, so it was particularly devastating that she wasn't going to be there. I had already invited people to a party when I found out that Mother wasn't planning to come up. Mother told me to go out and buy things for the party myself.
Throughout this dismal autumn term at Kirby Lodge, I thought about going up to Samye Ling to see Rinpoche again. It was out of the question to discuss this with Mother, so I decided to find my own way there, the first chance I got. At the end of October I decided to leave school for the weekend without permission. I asked my friends at school to cover for me, and I hitchhiked up to Scotland. Before I left, I went to a nearby greengrocer and bought Rinpoche a pomegranate as a gift. I didn't consciously know why I chose that, but it seemed appropriate, and I put it in my bag.
When I arrived at Samye Ling, I discovered that Rinpoche wasn't staying there. He was living about a mile down the road to recuperate from his accident, at a residence called Garwald House, an old Scottish home owned by Christopher and Pamela Woodman, two students who were quite devoted to him.
Rinpoche also left Samye Ling because he and Akong had had a major falling-out. After his trip to Bhutan, but even more so after his accident, Rinpoche started to reach out to his Western students. He really wanted to explore the world beyond monastic constraints, and he didn't want to be typecast as a Tibetan monk. He wanted to go beyond all of the cultural boundaries. Akong became frightened of what Rinpoche was doing, and as Rinpoche told me later, Akong's fear became controlling. There was a huge discrepancy in the way that they wanted to treat Westerners and to be treated by them as well. Akong didn't mind Rinpoche's behavior -- which included some sexual activity and the consumption of alcohol -- as long as it was kept very private. But after the accident, Rinpoche was no longer willing to hide behind the pretense of religiosity. The only way that Akong seemed able to deal with Rinpoche's behavior was to say that Trungpa Rinpoche had gone crazy. Akong often would not allow Rinpoche to teach at Samye Ling, and it became a very limited existence for him there.
But at this time, I knew nothing about all this. Rinpoche's students who lived in and around Samye Ling may have known what was going on, but publicly everyone, except Rinpoche, was trying to keep things very hush-hush.
The first evening I was at Samye Ling, Rinpoche came by to have dinner with the Tibetans. After dinner, as he was getting ready to return to Garwald House, I saw him outside by the car. He was no longer wearing monks' robes. Instead he had on a layman's chuba, or robe, and he was walking slowly in a labored way with the aid of a walker. He was quite crippled from the accident. I managed to get close to him, and as he walked past me, he stopped to greet me. I had the pomegranate with me to present to him as a gift. I pulled it out of my bag and extended it to him. He took it graciously and thanked me for it, commenting that it was a very significant gesture. At that point, I hadn't told him about my dreams of life as a nun in Tibet.
Although I only saw Rinpoche that evening for a few minutes, in that short period of time I realized that he was a completely different person than he had been before his accident. Of course, he looked quite different physically because he was paralyzed on one side and had obviously been through a lot. However, it wasn't just his physical being that had changed. He manifested differently now, which I found fascinating. Before the accident, he had been so youthful, pure, and light. Now he was much more heavy and solid, and there was a well-processed feeling about him. He seemed much older, and he had an unfathomable quality that I hadn't experienced before. He was transformed.
His earlier manifestation had been one that Westerners, especially the proper English Buddhists, were more comfortable with. He was obviously powerful and accomplished, but not in a way that was threatening. He radiated loving kindness. Now, although his kindness was still apparent, there was a wrathful quality. It was a little bit scary to approach him, and when he looked at you, it was penetrating and disconcerting. But for me, he was magnetic.
I desperately wanted to have an audience with him, but the people I spoke to at Samye Ling told me it would be impossible. Nevertheless, the next day I decided to visit him at Garwald House. I walked a little over a mile to the turnoff to the house, and then began to walk down the long driveway that wound through the Woodmans' property. I was wearing a red caftan, part of the collection I had shoplifted the previous summer.
Near Garwald House, I met one of Rinpoche's American students who was helping to care for him after the accident. When she asked me what I was doing there, I told her I had come to see Rinpoche. She said that he simply wasn't having any visitors. She was adamant, but so was I. I told her that if he didn't want to see me, I wanted to hear that from him directly.
I walked on down the driveway, and when I got to the house, someone went upstairs to tell Rinpoche that he had an unexpected visitor; A few minutes later, she came down and said that I would be allowed to go up to his bedroom for a few minutes. I was told to keep it short. I was led up the main stairs to a large room, whose only furnishings were a double bed and a small nightstand. When I entered the room, Rinpoche was in bed, and he was wearing maroon cotton pajamas. He spent a great deal of time in bed during this period, as he was still recovering from the accident itself and from the pneumonia and pleurisy that he had developed as side effects of the original trauma. However, as I soon found out, his injury didn't stop him from being sexually active.
I sat down on the side of the bed and we started to chat. I was so happy to see him. I couldn't believe that I'd finally found my way to him. He was very friendly, and I felt closer to him than I had ever felt before. Somewhat unexpectedly, but also much to our mutual delight, one thing led to the next between us. I reached out my hand to him, and he took it and we kissed each other. He sat up in bed, put his arm around me, and invited me to get into bed with him. I accepted with no hesitation. It was in fact exactly the invitation I was hoping for at that moment.
I had barely turned sixteen, and I knew very little about sex or about men, having grown up in a sheltered environment, having my father pass away when I was just thirteen, and having attended boarding schools from the age of nine, where there were no boys. I had a boyfriend in Cambridge, but we hadn't done anything much more than kiss. As I was climbing into bed, Rinpoche started to take off his pajamas. I remember saying to him, "Where are your knickers?" And he replied, "Well, men don't wear knickers." I also was shocked to discover that men had pubic hair.
Once I entered his bedroom, his manner was so intimate that it seemed natural for us to take the relationship to this new . level. I had never been with a man before, but I didn't have any qualms about making love with him. When I visited him again a few weeks later, I asked him a number of questions about a religious teacher having sexual relationships and why he had given up his robes. But we didn't talk about any of that the first time we were together. I was so happy being there with him that I didn't question anything. Later on, I realized that it was rather outrageous for us to be sleeping together, but I also thought it was terrific.
After we made love, we stayed in bed and talked. In fact, we spent the entire weekend in bed together. Being with him made complete sense to me, in a way that nothing in my life had before. I had never connected with English culture, and I had always felt like an outsider. Basically, I thought the whole English thing was crackers, from day one. I had felt emotionally repressed my entire life. Suddenly here was this person who I could connect with, who could go anywhere with you in your mind. I felt that I had been rescued -- and liberated, because it wasn't just that I could go anywhere with him; he would go anywhere with me, too. During that weekend with Rinpoche, I discovered this tremendously vast playground. There was so much space, and I felt the freedom to be myself. That was one of the things that I always most appreciated ;bout him: that fathomless quality.
I remember that at some point he turned to me and said, "Maybe one day, someday, we could get married." I pretty much melted at that point, and I said, "Yes, yes, I'd love to marry you." While we were together, he wrote me a beautiful poem. It began, "This marriage is the marriage of sun and moon."
People have many naive ideas about tantric sex and what it must be like to sleep with the guru. It was certainly amazing to be with him, but not because of exotic sexual positions or super orgasms. What was extraordinary about it wasn't the physicality at all. Rather, it was the atmosphere of pervasive gentleness and compassion. There was, I would almost say, a sense of being zapped by the huge space of his mind. I can only describe the experience as a combination of profundity and sweetness.
By the end of the weekend, I was in a fog, but it was a soft, velvet fog unlike the cold spaces I usually inhabited. It was difficult to leave, but I pulled myself away and caught a ride south with someone leaving Samye Ling. I managed to slip back into school undetected. I think they never knew that I'd been gone.
This Marriage
This marriage is the marriage of sun and moon.
It is the marriage of ocean and sky.
What can I say if the universal force demonstrates it?
Today there is a big storm;
The autumn leaves are swept by the force of wind.
That is the meeting of wind and tree.
Emotion, what is that?
Longing for you is something deeper than my impression of you
And the memory could be carved on rock, something substantial.
Your letter is beautiful because it is written by you.
I hear Krishna playing his flute
In the long distance.
There needs to be courage from both you and me.
The words that I said will not fade
Because they are carved on this gigantic rock.
Your presence in my chamber
Still remains
As the presence of my Guru
In my mind.
Let's dance together
In the nondualistic air.
Let's sing together
In the silent clarity.
Still there is sorrow
As oneness crowned with thorns and crucified.
But it's not the fault of Pontius Pilate;
It's beyond his stature and his power.
There have been many discoveries
Like a child collecting pebbles.
I'm so pleased that you are the source of happiness.
You radiate light.
This is the gateway for you:
As you enter this gate
You will find openness without effort.
Faith is most important.
Nothing else matters.
It is the channel for everything.
Come my darling,
Be open.
There is tremendous discovery.
It is not you alone
If we both make the effort.2
NOVEMBER 2, 1969
