At the summer, 1978 session of the Kerouac School, the Merwin episode was constantly under discussion. Few, if any, of the poets on the summer faculty had seen the class report, but all had an opinion. Robert Duncan, for instance, compared the stripped lovers, Merwin and Dana, with Adam and Eve, expelled from the Garden. (Which made Trungpa into -- God?)
Toward the end of that summer there appeared in the Rocky Mountain News a very interesting story about Naropa. Tibetan Brings Buddhism to Boulder, the headline announced. Inside the story, a scene at a Trungpa lecture was described. A student asked a question about why classes already paid for are constantly being interrupted by requests from the administration for more money. Trungpa dismissed the question by telling the student to be patient, then, snapping his fingers for a glass of water, continued to speak, telling his listeners they were "nothings," that their lives were like "flat Coca-Cola -- full of yukiness, and yukiness has no personality."
At the end of the News story, the Naropa/Vajradhatu finance officer was asked some dollar questions.
"It's not so important where we get our money or what we do with it," the finance officer replied. "The important thing is what we are trying to do."
What, I wondered, is that?
I showed the Sanders class report to the publisher and editor of the magazine I worked for. They agreed to publish it. Then I wrote to Ed Sanders.
"The Investigative Poetry class at Naropa, that is, those who wrote The Party," Sanders replied on August 17, "voted by mail earlier this year on whether or not to publish the investigation. There was a majority not to publish."
Ed Sanders bumped into Anne Waldman in New York and mentioned to her that I had written to him. I soon received a phone call from a Naropa faculty poet. Was Boulder Monthly publishing The Party? No, I said. Relieved, the poet -- an old friend, by the way -- then advised me that both Anne and Allen felt any further circulation, distribution, or even mention of the Sanders class report would be "bad for everybody."
"I'm still shooting my mouth off all the time," Allen Ginsberg told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter on August 31.
On September 2, Ed Sanders reported to Ed Dorn that the latest result of the ongoing poll of the group was a 50-50 split on whether or not to print.
That same week, Anne Waldman and another faculty poet, Michael Brownstein, approached Ed Dorn with inquiries about how many xerox copies of The Party he had distributed. Brownstein then "weighed in with a piss-off notice" by way of a letter to Sanders protesting Dorn's circulation of the document. (Sanders had given Dorn express permission to distribute copies as he saw fit.)
On September 13, Ed Sanders wrote again to Ed Dorn, "there's been certain amount of pressure to print The Party, and now there is a two-vote margin in the class, not counting me, to do so. Report came in yesterday that the Vajra guards were recently training wearing Canadian Mountie uniforms, and that the word 'democracy' is now being used apparently at Naropa as a catch-all word for the ills of the world ..."
R.C.M.P. Mounties (Royal Canadian Mounted Policemen)
But Sanders went on to say that he was still hesitant to allow the class report to be printed, because (1) to do so would mean a "sure or probable break" with old poet colleagues, and (2) he still approved the "summer camp aspect of Naropa, that genuine city-bound poets and writers can get an almost free summer in a beautiful context, whatever the underpinnings of Trungpaic hype and moolahocracy."
On September 23, Sanders wrote to me again. The vote had shifted, he said, but some class members still hadn't responded to the latest poll, which was being conducted by a member of the class, Al Santoli. "The issue is democracy, as I see it," Sanders said.
One day in October, Stan Brakhage, the filmmaker, told me of how he'd been asked in 1977 to show his work at a benefit for Naropa poets whose salaries hadn't been paid. "I told them I'd do it, but only on condition the proceeds went absolutely to the poets, and not to buy a golden pillow to grace the buttocks of the guru," Brakhage said. "They said fine, I showed my films, and later found out that the poets' salaries still hadn't been paid, but that $200,000 had been spent to bring in a New York public relations consultant to do a PR campaign for Trungpa."
The aspens in the mountains turned yellow, snow came, and then one day in November, Jim Jones threw a sudden KoolAid party in Jonestown.
Two days after the Big Event in Guyana, the Village Voice brought out an embarrassing puff on Naropa by an ex-student, Robert Coe -- Dharma Mater." Under the story's lead photo, it was explained that Trungpa delights in making Americans "suck egg."
The following week, Allen Ginsberg wrote in to the Voice, complaining myopically that Anne Waldman had been left out of the story. Al Santoli also wrote in, calling "the puckish Mr. Trungpa" a "power-hungry ex-monarch whose practice involves something beyond 'crazy wisdom.'"
In his letter, ex-student Santoli describes a party to celebrate Naropa's conditional accreditation: "Trungpa arrived dressed in a British grenadier's uniform, complete with riding crop, as a group of his guards sang the anthem of his Shambhala Kingdom (which includes the U.S.).
"It's easy for a man to giggle about suffering when he is chauffeured in a Mercedes," Santoli suggests, "protected by guards in three-piece suits who hold him up when sake has wobbled his balance, and at home is waited on hand-and-foot by students working as butlers and maids, in black formal English servant outfits, who call him and his wife Your Highness and work for no pay, but rather pay monetary dues to the organization for the honor of servitude."
Jonestown caused a lot of talk among Trungpa's followers. The close-in devotees, the prostrations experts, the core faculty, all agreed that the Trungpa-Jones comparison couldn't be made. Casual students, curious outsiders not part of "the community" (i.e. the 800 dues-paying Boulder members) were not so sure. To them, "it can happen here" appeared to be a less implausible proposition.
Jonestown evidently swayed the Investigative Poetry class also. On December 3, Ed Sanders reported that the group had "voted overwhelmingly (12-4) (me not voting) to print The Party. The question is now, where? And, how many?"
Sanders mentioned continuing interest in The Party from Ferlinghetti, from John Giorno in New York, from The Coach House Press in Toronto, and also expressed interest in publishing an edition himself. On December 19, Sam Maddox, editor of Boulder Monthly, wrote to Sanders to reiterate my earlier offer. Ed Sanders accepted.