From almost the beginning of the seminary, Merwin's presence created a problem. A pacifist, he first of all refused to participate in the prescribed chanting of poems addressed to horrific deities. So did Dana Naone.
I later asked Allen Ginsberg to describe these poems. He read several aloud. They had lines like "as night falls you cut the aorta of the perverter of the teachings," and "you enjoy drinking the hot blood of the ego." An RX straight out of the prescription book of Dr. Benway!
From the hearts of the hosts of deities of the self-visualization and front visualization, shine rays of razor-sharp mantra light like showers of meteors and forks of wild lightning. These set upon all the dualistic forces of harm and sever their aortas.
-- The Miraculous Activity Sadhana of Vajrakilaya, the Razor Which Destroys at a Touch, by His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche, Jigdrel Yeshe Dorje
"The poems are very un-American to say the least," Ginsberg didn't have to explain to me. "From the point of view of somebody who hasn't been a poet, they're really off the wall."
"Did they bother you, when you were at the seminary?"
"Oh, sure. They bug everybody. They're supposed to. That's what they're there for."
Merwin, who'd been a serious peacefreak for his entire adult life, couldn't swallow the blood-drinking poems, and clammed up when they came up. Later, he was involved in a snowball fight against the Vajra guards, and attempted to inspire further insurgency against the master, Trungpa -- including a scheme involving zapping the guru with laughing gas. Finally, he aroused Trungpa's Vajra ire by departing early with Dana from a Halloween party which the guru had thrown to inaugurate the dread final month of teachings, in which "heavy" tantric matters were to be broached.
It had been a wild party. Trungpa, who'd arrived late and drunk in jeans and lumberjack shirt, had slipped quickly into something more comfortable -- his birthday suit. Borne naked on the shoulders of obedient guards, he circled the room in bawdy triumph, ordering the stripping of selected celebrants. Later, he danced with one student who afterwards was left with a souvenir you wouldn't file away with your senior prom corsage -- i.e., teeth marks on her face from where he bit her. ("It was very nonverbal, direct, intense, brutal communication," this apparently intelligent young woman recalled.)
Midway through his party, it came to the guru's attention that his star pupils, Merwin and Dana, had escaped to their room.
"Bring them down," Trungpa told his guards.
"They don't want to come," said the guards.
"Bring them anyway!" the master commanded. "Break down the door."
The guards finally had to smash a plate glass door to gain entry to Merwin's room, making for a Crystalnacht scene that reminded many present of Night Porter -- a film the seminarians had seen the week before. The angry poet sliced several guards with broken beer bottles before submitting to being dragged down with Dana to the "party", where the drunken Trungpa entertained them with his special brand of heavy comedy.
While Merwin and Dana were being fetched, Trungpa had been instructing the other partygoers on "exposing your neurosis". He continued the theme when the captives were brought in, accusing them of neurotic violence and aggression. When they had the gall to argue, the master blew a gasket. He threw a glass of sake in Merwin's face, and made a series of racial remarks to Dana that will probably never be recorded in the Annals of the Lamas.
Rinpoche talking to Dana, said, 'You're oriental; you're smarter than this. You might be playing slave to this white man but you and I know where it's at.'
-- Interview with Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
-- Behind the Veil of Boulder Buddhism: Ed Sanders, The Party, by Ed Sanders
Librarian's Translation:
"You're a hot Asian Babe. What are you doing fucking this white boy? Asian dick not good enough for you? I've got some you can have. Ditch this asshole and become my hot disciple."
"We're both Oriental," the guru advised the young woman. "The Communists ripped off my country. Only another Oriental can understand that."
"You're a Nazi," Dana responded.
Soon thereafter, Trungpa "invited" Merwin and Dana to take off their clothes. When they refused, he had them both stripped in front of the gaping eyes of a shocked, but compliant roomful of seminarians.
"Guards dragged me off and pinned me to the floor," Dana Naone recalls. "I could see William struggling a few feet away from me. I fought, and called to friends, men and women, whose faces I saw in the crowd -- to call the police. No one did. Only one man, Bill King, broke through to where I was lying at Trungpa's feet, shouting 'Leave her alone' and 'Stop it.' Trungpa rose above me, from his chair, and knocked Bill King down with a punch, swearing at him, and ordering that no one interfere. He was dragged away ... Richard Assally was stripping me, while others held me down. Trungpa began punching Assally in the head, and urging him to do it faster. The rest of my clothes were torn off..."
Merwin and Dana stood there -- "gorgeous bodies, very beautiful, like Adam and Eve," laughed the woman whose face Trungpa had earlier lunched on -- and then, on Merwin's angry challenge, everybody in the room stripped. Trungpa said, "Let's dance." Everybody danced. Merwin and Dana slipped away to their room.
The following morning, Trungpa had a letter placed in the seminarians' mail boxes. "You must offer your neuroses as a feast to celebrate your entrance into the vajra teachings," he told them. "Those of you who wish to leave will not be given a refund/but your Karmic debt will continue as the vividness of your memory cannot be forgotten."
Merwin and Dana requested an interview with Trungpa. Trungpa urged them to stay on for the tantric teachings. He did not apologize. They stayed on for more teachings, three weeks' worth, then -- faced with the prospect of another seminary party -- high-tailed it back to civilization.
Presumably W.S. Merwin will be more careful in selecting his gurus in the future. And Trungpa has definitely been forced as a result of this episode to be a lot more careful about how he conducts himself around Occidentals.
But then, that must be an awful strain, since these days Occidentals are the only people Trungpa ever sees.
Could Akong Tulku have been right?