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National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/20/19

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National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
The official seal of NACA, depicting the Wright Flyer and the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

Logo
Agency overview
Formed March 3, 1915
Dissolved October 1, 1958
Superseding agency
NASA
Jurisdiction Federal government of the United States

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a U.S. federal agency founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved, and its assets and personnel transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NACA was an initialism, i.e. it was pronounced as individual letters, rather than as a whole word[1] (as was NASA during the early years after being established).[2]

Among other advancements, NACA research and development produced the NACA duct, a type of air intake used in modern automotive applications, the NACA cowling, and several series of NACA airfoils which are still used in aircraft manufacturing.

During World War II, NACA was described as "The Force Behind Our Air Supremacy" due to its key role in producing working superchargers for high altitude bombers, and for producing the laminar wing profiles for the North American P-51 Mustang.[3] NACA was also key in developing the area rule that is used on all modern supersonic aircraft, and conducted the key compressibility research that enabled the Bell X-1 to break the sound barrier.

Origins


The inscription on the wall is NACA's mission statement: "...It shall be the duty of the advisory committee for aeronautics to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution ..." By an Act of Congress Approved March 3, 1915

NACA was established by the federal government through enabling legislation as an emergency measure during World War I to promote industry, academic, and government coordination on war-related projects. It was modeled on similar national agencies found in Europe: the French L'Etablissement Central de l'Aérostation Militaire in Meudon (now Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aerospatiales), the German Aerodynamic Laboratory of the University of Göttingen, and the Russian Aerodynamic Institute of Koutchino (replaced in 1918 with the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI), which is still in existence). The most influential agency upon which the NACA was based was the British Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

In December 1912, President William Howard Taft had appointed a National Aerodynamical Laboratory Commission chaired by Robert S. Woodward, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Legislation was introduced in both houses of Congress early in January 1913 to approve the commission, but when it came to a vote, the legislation was defeated.


The first meeting of the NACA in 1915

Charles D. Walcott, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1907 to 1927, took up the effort, and in January 1915, Senator Benjamin R. Tillman, and Representative Ernest W. Roberts introduced identical resolutions recommending the creation of an advisory committee as outlined by Walcott. The purpose of the committee was "to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution, and to determine the problems which should be experimentally attacked and to discuss their solution and their application to practical questions." Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote that he "heartily [endorsed] the principle" on which the legislation was based. Walcott suggested the tactic of adding the resolution to the Naval Appropriations Bill.[4]

According to one source, "The enabling legislation for the NACA slipped through almost unnoticed as a rider attached to the Naval Appropriation Bill, on March 3, 1915."[5] The committee of 12 people, all unpaid, were allocated a budget of $5,000 per year.

President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law the same day, thus formally creating the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, as it was called in the legislation, on the last day of the 63rd Congress.

The act of Congress creating NACA, approved March 3, 1915, reads, "...It shall be the duty of the advisory committee for aeronautics to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution. ... "[6]

Research


The NACA Test Force at the High-Speed Flight Station in Edwards, California. The white aircraft in the foreground is a Douglas Skyrocket.

On January 29, 1920, President Wilson appointed pioneering flier and aviation engineer Orville Wright to NACA's board. By the early 1920s, it had adopted a new and more ambitious mission: to promote military and civilian aviation through applied research that looked beyond current needs. NACA researchers pursued this mission through the agency's impressive collection of in-house wind tunnels, engine test stands, and flight test facilities. Commercial and military clients were also permitted to use NACA facilities on a contract basis.

Facilities

• Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory (Hampton, Virginia)
• Ames Aeronautical Laboratory (Moffett Field)
• Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory (Lewis Research Center)
• Muroc Flight Test Unit (Edwards Air Force Base)

In 1922, NACA had 100 employees. By 1938, it had 426. In addition to formal assignments, staff were encouraged to pursue unauthorized "bootleg" research, provided that it was not too exotic. The result was a long string of fundamental breakthroughs, including "thin airfoil theory" (1920s), "NACA engine cowl" (1930s), the "NACA airfoil" series (1940s), and the "area rule" for supersonic aircraft (1950s). On the other hand, NACA's 1941 refusal to increase airspeed in their wind tunnels set Lockheed back a year in their quest to solve the problem of compressibility encountered in high speed dives made by the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.[7]


An engineer makes final calibrations to a model mounted in the 6-by-6-foot (1.8 m × 1.8 m) supersonic wind tunnel.

The full-size 30-by-60-foot (9.1 m × 18.3 m) Langley wind tunnel operated at no more than 100 mph (87 kn; 160 km/h) and the then-recent 7-by-10-foot (2.1 m × 3.0 m) tunnels at Moffett could only reach 250 mph (220 kn; 400 km/h). These were speeds Lockheed engineers considered useless for their purposes. General Henry H. Arnold took up the matter and overruled NACA objections to higher air speeds. NACA built a handful of new high-speed wind tunnels, and Mach 0.75 (570 mph (495 kn; 917 km/h) was reached at Moffett's 16-foot (4.9 m) wind tunnel late in 1942.[8][9]

Wind tunnels

VIDEO
NACA wind test on a human subject (1946)

Further information: Subsonic and transonic wind tunnel

NACA's first wind tunnel was formally dedicated at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory on June 11, 1920. It was the first of many now-famous NACA and NASA wind tunnels. Although this specific wind tunnel was not unique or advanced, it enabled NACA engineers and scientists to develop and test new and advanced concepts in aerodynamics and to improve future wind tunnel design.

1. Atmospheric 5-ft wind tunnel (1920)
2. Variable Density Tunnel (1922)
3. Propeller research tunnel (1927)
4. High-speed 11-in wind tunnel (1928)
5. Vertical 5-ft wind tunnel (1929)
6. Atmospheric 7- by 10-ft wind tunnel (1930)
7. Full-scale 30- by 60-ft tunnel (1931)

Influence on World War II technology

In the years immediately preceding World War II, NACA was involved in the development of several designs that served key roles in the war effort. When engineers at a major engine manufacturer were having issues producing superchargers that would allow the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress to maintain power at high altitude, a team of engineers from NACA solved the problems and created the standards and testing methods used to produce effective superchargers in the future. This enabled the B-17 to be used as a key aircraft in the war effort. The designs and information gained from NACA research on the B-17 were used in nearly every major U.S. military powerplant of the Second World War. Nearly every aircraft used some form of forced induction that relied on information developed by NACA. Because of this, U.S.-produced aircraft had a significant power advantage above 15,000 feet, which was never fully countered by Axis forces.[citation needed]

After the war had begun, the British government sent a request to North American Aviation for a new fighter. The offered P-40 Tomahawk fighters were considered too outdated to be a feasible front line fighter by European standards, and so North American began development of a new aircraft. The British government chose a NACA-developed airfoil for the fighter, which enabled it to perform dramatically better than previous models. This aircraft became known as the P-51 Mustang.[3]

Supersonic research


The NACA XS-1 (Bell X-1)


The NACA Scientific and Engineering Staff at the Ames Research Center in Mountain View California shortly before the dissolution of NACA and the formation of NASA in 1958.

Although the Bell X-1 was commissioned by the Air Force and flown by Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager, when it exceeded Mach 1 NACA was officially in charge of the testing and development of the aircraft. NACA ran the experiments and data collection, and the bulk of the research used to develop the aircraft came from NACA engineer John Stack, the head of NACA's compressibility division.[3] Compressibility is a major issue as aircraft approach Mach 1, and research into solving the problem drew heavily on information collected during previous NACA wind tunnel testing to assist Lockheed with the P-38 Lightning.

The X-1 program was first envisioned in 1944 when a former NACA engineer working for Bell Aircraft approached the Army for funding of a supersonic test aircraft. Neither the Army nor Bell had any experience in this area, so the majority of research came from the NACA Compressibility Research Division, which had been operating for more than a year by the time Bell began conceptual designs. The Compressibility Research Division also had years of additional research and data to pull from, as its head engineer was previously head of the high speed wind tunnel division, which itself had nearly a decade of high speed test data by that time. Due to the importance of NACA involvement, Stack was personally awarded the Collier Trophy along with the owner of Bell Aircraft and test pilot Chuck Yeager.[10][11]

In 1951, NACA Engineer Richard Whitcomb determined the area rule that explained transonic flow over an aircraft. The first uses of this theory were on the Convair F-102 project and the F11F Tiger. The F-102 was meant to be a supersonic interceptor, but it was unable to exceed the speed of sound, despite the best effort of Convair engineers. The F-102 had actually already begun production when this was discovered, so NACA engineers were sent to quickly solve the problem at hand. The production line had to be modified to allow the modification of F-102s already in production to allow them to use the area rule. (Aircraft so altered were known as "area ruled" aircraft.) The design changes allowed the aircraft to exceed Mach 1, but only by a small margin, as the rest of the Convair design was not optimized for this. As the F-11F was the first design to incorporate this during initial design, it was able to break the sound barrier without having to use afterburner.[12]

Because the area rule was initially classified, it took several years for Whitcomb to be recognized for his accomplishment. In 1955 he was awarded the Collier Trophy for his work on both the Tiger and the F-102.[13]

The most important design resulting from the area rule was the B-58 Hustler, which was already in development at the time. It was redesigned to take the area rule into effect, allowing greatly improved performance.[14] This was the first US supersonic bomber, and was capable of Mach 2 at a time when Soviet fighters had only just attained that speed months earlier.[15] The area rule concept is now used in designing all transonic and supersonic aircraft.

NACA experience provided a powerful model for World War II research, the postwar government laboratories, and NACA's successor, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

NACA also participated in development of the first aircraft to fly to the "edge of space", North American's X-15. NACA airfoils are still used on modern aircraft.

Chairmen

1. George P. Scriven (United States Army) (1915–1916)
2. William F. Durand (Stanford University) (1916–1918)
3. John R. Freeman (consultant) (1918–1919)
4. Charles Doolittle Walcott (Smithsonian Institution) (1920–1927)
5. Joseph Sweetman Ames (Johns Hopkins University) (1927–1939)
6. Vannevar Bush (Carnegie Institution) (1940–1941)
7. Jerome C. Hunsaker (Navy, MIT) (1941–1956)
8. James H. Doolittle (Shell Oil) (1957–1958)

Transformation into NASA

Main article: Creation of NASA

Special Committee on Space Technology

Special Committee on Space Technology in 1958: Wernher von Braun; fourth from the left, Hendrik Wade Bode
On November 21, 1957, Hugh Dryden, NACA's director, established the Special Committee on Space Technology.[16] The committee, also called the Stever Committee after its chairman, Guyford Stever, was a special steering committee that was formed with the mandate to coordinate various branches of the federal government, private companies as well as universities within the United States with NACA's objectives and also harness their expertise in order to develop a space program.[17]

Wernher von Braun, technical director at the US Army's Ballistic Missile Agency would have a Jupiter C rocket ready to launch a satellite in 1956, only to have it delayed,[18] and the Soviets would launch Sputnik 1 in October 1957.

On January 14, 1958, Dryden published "A National Research Program for Space Technology," which stated:[16]

It is of great urgency and importance to our country both from consideration of our prestige as a nation as well as military necessity that this challenge (Sputnik) be met by an energetic program of research and development for the conquest of space. ...

It is accordingly proposed that the scientific research be the responsibility of a national civilian agency working in close cooperation with the applied research and development groups required for weapon systems development by the military. The pattern to be followed is that already developed by the NACA and the military services. ...

The NACA is capable, by rapid extension and expansion of its effort, of providing leadership in space technology.

On March 5, 1958, James Killian, who chaired the President's Science Advisory Committee, wrote a memorandum to the President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Titled, "Organization for Civil Space Programs," it encouraged the President to sanction the creation of NASA. He wrote that a civil space program should be based on a "strengthened and redesignated" NACA, indicating that NACA was a "going Federal research agency" with 7,500 employees and $300 million worth of facilities, which could expand its research program "with a minimum of delay."[16]

Members

As of their meeting on May 26, 1958, committee members, starting clockwise from the left of the above picture:[17]

Committee member / Title

Edward R. Sharp / Director of the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory
Colonel Norman C Appold / Assistant to the Deputy Commander for Weapons Systems, Air Research and Development Command: US Air Force
Abraham Hyatt / Research and Analysis Officer Bureau of Aeronautics, Department of the Navy
Hendrik Wade Bode / Director of Research Physical Sciences, Bell Telephone Laboratories
William Randolph Lovelace II / Lovelace Foundation for Medication Education and Research
S. K Hoffman / General Manager, Rocketdyne Division, North American Aviation
Milton U Clauser / Director, Aeronautical Research Laboratory, The Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation
H. Julian Allen / Chief, High Speed Flight Research, NACA Ames
Robert R. Gilruth / Assistant Director, NACA Langley
J. R. Dempsey / Manager. Convair-Astronautics (Division of General Dynamics)
Carl B. Palmer / Secretary to Committee, NACA Headquarters
H. Guyford Stever / Chairman, Associate Dean of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hugh L. Dryden (ex officio), / Director, NACA, Namesake of future Dryden Research Center
Dale R. Corson / Department of Physics, Cornell University
Abe Silverstein / Associate Director, NACA Lewis
Wernher von Braun / Director, Development Operations Division, Army Ballistic Missile Agency

References

1. Murray, Charles, and Catherine Bly Cox. Apollo. South Mountain Books, 2004, p. xiii.
2. Jeff Quitney (May 17, 2013). "Creation of NASA: Message to Employees of NACA from T. Keith Glennan 1958 NASA". Archived from the original on November 22, 2016. Retrieved May 8, 2018 – via YouTube.
3. "NASA - WWII & NACA: US Aviation Research Helped Speed Victory". http://www.nasa.gov. Archived from the original on December 18, 2017. Retrieved May 8, 2018.
4. Roland, Alex. "Model Research - Volume 1". Archived from the original on November 13, 2004.
5. Bilstein, Roger E. "Orders of Magnitude, Chapter 1". Archived from the original on January 14, 2007.
6. Dawson, Virginia P. "Engines and Innovation". Archived from the original on October 31, 2004.
7. Bodie, Warren M. The Lockheed P-38 Lightning: The Definitive Story of Lockheed's P-38 Fighter. Hayesville, North Carolina: Widewing Publications, 2001, 1991, pp. 174–5. ISBN 0-9629359-5-6.
8. Bodie, Warren M. The Lockheed P-38 Lightning. pp. 75-6.
9. "ch3-5". http://www.hq.nasa.gov. Archived from the original on September 14, 2016. Retrieved May 8, 2018.
10. From Engineering Science to Big Science: The NACA and NASA Collier Trophy Research Project Winners, 1998, P.89
11. "Dryden Flight Research Center historical data". NASA. Archived from the original on October 13, 2006. Retrieved December 10, 2006.
12. From Engineering Science to Big Science: The NACA and NASA Collier Trophy Research Project Winners, 1998, p. 146.
13. From Engineering Science to Big Science: The NACA and NASA Collier Trophy P.147
14. From Engineering Science to Big Science: The NACA and NASA Collier Trophy Research Project Winners, 1998, P.147
15. Haynes, Leland R. "B-58 Hustler Records & 15,000 miles non-stop in the SR-71". http://www.wvi.com. Archived from the original on November 2, 2017. Retrieved May 8, 2018.
16. Erickson, Mark. Into the Unknown Together - The DOD, NASA, and Early Spaceflight (PDF). ISBN 1-58566-140-6. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 20, 2009.
17. "ch8". history.nasa.gov. Archived from the original on December 25, 2017. Retrieved May 8, 2018.
18. Schefter, James (1999). The race : the uncensored story of how America beat Russia to the moon. New York: Doubleday. p. 18. ISBN 9780385492539. OCLC 681285276. Retrieved June 9, 2019.

Further reading

• John Henry, et al. Orders of Magnitude: A History of the NACA and NASA, 1915-1990.
• Alex Roland. Model Research: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1915-1958.
• James Hansen. Engineer in Charge: A History of the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, 1917-1958.
• Michael H. Gorn, Expanding the envelope – Flight Research at NACA and NASA.

External links

• U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)
• The NASA Technical Reports Server provides access to a collection of 14,469 NACA documents dating from 1917.
• Aerospaceweb.org: Information on NACA airfoil series
• Nasa.gov: "From Engineering Science to Big Science" — The NACA and NASA Collier Trophy Research Project Winners, edited by Pamela E. Mack.

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Crawling Back to the Alleged Hell Portal of NASA's Occult Origins: Retracing the homunculus footsteps of Jack Parsons, the eccentric rocketeer, and his partner in magic, L. Ron Hubbard.
by Brian Anderson
September 2012

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

-- Jack Parsons & the Curious Origins of the American Space Program, by The Magician

Depending on whom you ask, I'm about to be sucked into a Hell portal that allegedly sits in caverns somewhere around NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.

The place looks almost calm from here – I'm standing midway across a footbridge over the Arroyo Seco canyon, near La Cañada Flintridge, California, a good quarter-mile southeast of the lab's campus.

The old line is that JPL is really Jack Parsons' Lab. Marvel "John" Whiteside Parsons, the late chemist, rocketeer and high school dropout had a hand in some of the first rocket tests on what would later become the grounds of the JPL, NASA's famous rocket incubator.

It was the dawn of World War II when Parsons, who'd also co-founded the missile manufacturing firm Aerojet around the same time as JPL's inception, took to the Ordo Templi Orientis. The OTO was a Thelema-based, fraternal-religious sex-magick order founded by Aleister Crowley, the British mystic variously known as the Great Beast 666 and the "most evil man who ever lived."

Parsons saw in Crowley a master-mentor figure. The Feds saw suspicious activity. In 1950, the FBI would investigate Parsons over the theft of rocket documents from the Hughes Aircraft Company; after being discovered, Parsons was immediately fired, and would later lose his top secret clearance. "He planned to submit [the documents] with [an] employment application through American Technion Society for employment in the country of Israel," read the original FBI report.

Whether or not Parsons was acting as an Israeli spy or simply being cavalier, his connection to the occult earned him special attention. The U.S. Air Force advised the FBI that the USAF had already collected files on Parsons and his relationship with Crowley, one of which, dated May 17, 1948, stated: "A religious cult, believed to advocate sexual perversion, was organized at subject's home at 1003 South Orange Grove Avenue, Pasadena, California, which has been reported subversive…" "This cult," it continued, "broadly hinted at free love": there had been "several complaints of ''strange goings on at this home,'" and an unnamed source had described the church as "a gathering place of perverts." Furthermore, "…women of loose morals were involved and…the story of Parsons' activities had become fairly common knowledge among scientists in the Pasadena area."

But soon enough the young explosives guru was running with another OTO buck, a young writer named L. Ron. Hubbard. When Parsons, then in his early 30s, wasn't ranging the canyon beneath me, chanting mantras to Pan before field-testing one of NASA's nascent projectiles, there's good chance the guy could've been found with Hubbard, caught up in all manner of weirdo rites in and around the Arroyo Seco and greater San Gabriel Valley. It's stuff you'd expect out of this sort of thing – wearing robes and bejeweled hoods; scheming to conceive a hulking Moonchild with Parsons' mistress, dawning the Aeon of Horus; plotting the overthrow of 4D spacetime; drug-addled anal parties; animal sacrifices. You know. Cult stuff.

Parsons embrace of this seemingly double life is a knotty bit of history, though maybe not impossible to untangle. It could've been that because he wasn't studying at neighboring CalTech – Parsons and only one other of the core of JPL's founders weren't fully immersed in academia, I'm told – the brilliant, if undisciplined Parsons had no qualms in latching onto the OTO. Or maybe it was the occult's general grasp over southern California that pulled Parsons to the dark arts.


The rocket boys, 1936. That's Parsons foregrounded on the right (via JPL / NASA)

Whatever it was, the move drew fire from some of his contemporaries. More poignantly, it triggered Parsons' migration from JPL's founder's circle, a disparate group of aerospace experimentalists, mechanics, and others known as the "rocket boys," and into the folks-y, tragicomic dustbin of national lab heroism. "As I write," Parsons lamented in 1950, "the United States Senate is pursuing a burlesque investigation into the sphere of private sexual morals, which will accomplish nothing except to bring pain and sorrow to many innocent persons." Parsons' contentious modus operandi and his untimely, fiery demise may shed light on just why it is that we Americans choose to canonize some minds and not others. And perhaps it may even point to why popular opinion continually pits science and reason and religi-magic against each other as eternally incompatible forces.

Crowley says it was the sheer force of Parsons and Hubbard's ritualisms around here that opened the portal. Still others say the steady beam of strange vibes over the region was so intensely powerful over Parsons that for him there become simply no other option besides rocketeering here, despite being trolled by the FBI. The Arroyo's dark energies wouldn't only boost rockets' precision, Parsons thought. They'd have them cruising further, faster.

You've maybe been hearing a lot about this place. The brains behind JPL's Mars Science Laboratory not only built and launched the Curiosity rover. They flawlessly parked the $2.5 billion drone on another goddamn planet.

We're off the bridge, now, and back onto trail. A friend, John, guides my way off what I assume is sanctioned path. John's got a monster stride. He breaks only when it's absolutely necessary. He also hardly ever looks back over his shoulder, sparing himself the sad sight of me hobbling all sweaty and pathetically cryptid-like (people claim they've seen those here) because I suck and somehow managed to forget both shorts and hiking shoes. It's bright, maybe 85 degrees, and I'm descending into semi-arid brush – maybe even a portal to Hellfire – in jeans and busted canvas lowtops.

We hop a chain-link fence. A riparian zone rich in massive willows and various wildlife, this area is a magnet for hikers, joggers, paranormal enthusiasts, equestrians, graffitists, young people tripping acid, assorted weirdos. Together their meanderings have carved a network of paths that hit damn near every last bluff, brook, and crevice defining this narrow slice of the Arroyo. Whatever trail we were on certainly wasn't over beginner, either. And from what I see up ahead – an open-air, paved staircase pacing down about 50 yards, then jutting left, out of sight – I probably can't say much different about how it'll be getting to wherever we're going.

But this is still unforgiving land. You'd be an idiot to think that veering out of bounds, as I assume we're doing, isn't without risks. You stress something awful when knowing full well the price tag on getting air-lifted from some ashen gulley after snapping a tibia because your shoes are essentially equivalent to a second pair of socks.


JPL campus and San Gabriel mountains, looking east (via JPL / NASA)

We rest a while. John says we're on course for the bowels of the Devils Gate Dam, a barrier that's defined the land since 1920. But long before then, long before Parsons showed up, the Tongva, an indigenous tribe whose territory once spanned present-day San Gabriel, had been picking up bad vibes from a particular run along the Arroyo Seco River. They could see the devil's face right there in the rockside, so much so that tribe members were apparently forbidden from straying too close to the horned visage. Centuries later, when the county needed a name for its gaudy new flood-control project, the choice was easy: Devil's Gate. So sure enough, as we start again a white sign rises from the brush: County of Los Angeles Department of Public Works – DEVILS GATE DAM.

And that's just it. Forget the natural splendor; I'm struck by a prevailing sense of an immense, crushing infrastructure. This place is testament to an enduring compulsion to tame nature – or overcome Her forces, in the case of Parsons. His explosive fuel studies and pioneering work with solid-state rockets and JATO, or jet-assisted takeoff, have over the years led some, including the late Hungarian-American aerospace engineer Theodore von Kármán, to go so far as crediting him with launching the era of modern space travel.

But others aren't so quick to call Parsons NASA's unsung hero.

"I think that's going far too far," JPL Historian Erik Conway will later tell me. "Very far, too far."


Parsons, middle, and colleagues watch the U.S.'s virgin jet test (via NASA)

Records from the period are scant. Which is unfortunate – being an experimentalist but also tremendously undisciplined, Parsons didn't make strides in a normal, scientific sense. He didn't log the particulars and progress of his trials, as any diligent experimentalist would. He didn't publish papers.

"He didn't contribute to the literature in that way," Conway goes on. "He lacked that kind of rigor."

What he lacked in methodic restraint he might have recouped in auras siphoned off the land. Because this is the place, it seems; this is where the bullheadedness of man – drunk on science, God, sex-magick, or some cocktail thereof – gives the wilds a run for their money. I'm in a page ripped from the book on great American public works and civil engineering. I'm in a fucking cathedral of cement, flanked by the towering underpass of Pasadena's so-called Suicide Bridge (Hwy. 210) and the Devil's Gate itself. Through it all, crusties claim, bores a labyrinth of tunnels. I partly buy this – John and I have been through a few, already. If I were any more conspiratorial or crusty, I would also buy the one about all of this merely being part of a network of tunnels coursing beneath all of LA.

I can't say if any of this explains why I'm trudging down here, exactly. I'm not sure what even to expect. I don't think John knows, either, and it's not like this is his first trip down. John first heard of the spot – the actual, physical Gate in Devil's Gate – and its curiosities from some dude over in Sierra Madre. A cursory search online then turned up the bit about Parsons and Hubbard and the alleged Hell portal, but also how the Gate meets the river at the mouth of a tunnel. And that if you're up for it, there's a way to get there.

John tells me it's little more than a blockade of cell bars, a failed attempt by the county at preventing curious trespassers from entering the tunnel, which bores horizontally back into the rock, back toward the dam itself. I assume it acts as a kind of overflow-relief valve, if in fact it's still functioning. John's not sure. He's never gone in. The one time he gazed into what some folks would tell you is one of just a handful of terrestrial Hell portals, he had to bail before setting foot inside the roughly 10-foot by 10-foot tunnel. Apparently the rest of his crew bummed so hard on a horrific stench eking from the lightless shaft that consensus aborted their mission. John smelled nothing.


The Devil's Gate Dam in 1923

I'm sure it'd be a trip to at least brush the edge of a vortex to the dark side, if such a Hellscape existed. You know, just have a real, "Oh, wow." To think, the gate was unlocked. They could've been how close? Wow.

This holds for pretty much any portal – to Mars, to other dimensions, other times. But at the moment, at least, I'm just starting down these stairs. I can't possibly be slipping into Hell. I just can't be. I don't feel any different. No sudden rush of biting, wicked vibes. No crawling skin. My teeth are noticeably unclenched.

But I'm not looking for Hell, or its chute. I'm not looking for any robed orgy, or the residues of some of NASA's first fuel reserves. I'm definitely not looking for the stains of an end-times infant homunculus à la 2001 (or even Rosemary's Baby), only utterly failing. Of course stumbling on any of those would be a real wow. But just knowing that Parsons' genius – a largely innate, at times feared prowess that however unorthodox helped launch rocket science before "rocket science" became the stuff of household chortling – spellbound him to the dark arts, that exerts a pull of its own.

Parsons once wrote of himself as an "Antichrist loosed in the world," pledging to carry out the word of "the Beast 666." So if he took pains to sink his hands into both pots, as if to shatter what he saw as a bunk dichotomy between the supposedly cool, collected march of science and the maelstrom of esoteric sorcery, I don't want to suck the cursed marrow from the non-existent bones of the OTO's botched Hellchild so much as jaunt through a patch of strange land, the throbbing of which has since left Parsons noticeably absent from both the American subconscious and pop-sci record. Because who were you taught about in grammar school, Enrico Fermi or Jack Parsons?

These stairs, though. They're the kind that if only could've been set just a bit deeper and longer would make getting pulled down into Hell not look like a stutter-step cavort. There's a drop-off ahead. I don't know how I feel about it.


John, descending (via B. Anderson)

The ladder is caged. It's slick iron to the very bottom, years' worth of hand grime rubbed into the 50-some odd rungs I counted off. There's a platform about 20 feet from the top of the rockface, at which point, descending another 30 feet to the river's edge, you realize that the mighty Arroyo is actually shallow-looking and seemingly non-flowing, a chalky-orange standstill of what otherwise cannot be described as sewage. Maybe it's just the season, but I smell nothing particularly rank.

Most likely the water takes its stain from the same mud notorious for plugging the basin in back of the dam, toward JPL's campus. An estimated 1.5 million cubic yards of mud have amassed at the Devils Gate since 2009's Station fire, leaving some to argue that floodwater simply has nowhere to go. Coupled with the 100,000 cubic yards of mud already deposited here, built up between 1994 and 2009, there's now enough of the orange goop to fill a good four Rose Bowl stadiums. The Los Angeles Times even reported that it would take as little as 40 minutes, under a worst case scenario, for torrential rains to send enough mud, rock and water hurtling over the gates to flood all of south Pasadena and northeast LA.

So standing here, face to face, now, with the stone Devil, part of me wants to say JPL's site selection was maybe not the best thinking. Not awful. But, really? Right smack at the head of a floodplain?

What became the Jet Propulsion Lab was actually first an Army outpost. It was only grafted onto NASA a few months after four other research centers scattered around the country were merged to form the agency, which, according to Conway, is a product of the now defunct federal aerospace organization, the National Advisory Committee in Aeronautics, or NACA. Doesn't quite roll off the tongue as easily.

I'm sure for Parsons the Tongva legend may've only added to the Arroyo allure. I, for one, am really not buying the hex thing. The idea that by traipsing down to the Devil's Gate I'm now flirting with the possibility of the cloud of misfortune hanging over the rest of my days stinks of the well-worn trope of the "ancient Indian curse." We've all heard that one before.

True, on Halloween, 1936, the rocket boys did stake their professional reputations on hauling a ramshackle rocket motor out to the Arroyo to try and make a bang. They tested four times that first day. Trials culminated in a blown oxygen line that whipped and cracked in the late-afternoon chill, with untamed, fire-spitting abandon. And while I'm sure that all of this could – and maybe has – made for some seminal urban legends, I just can't bring myself to say that any claims of JPL spells stem from either ancient pagan harvest festivals or celebrations for the dead.


Another rocket-boy Arroyo test gone up in flames, late November, 1936 (via JPL / NASA)

I don't know. And yet there's really no getting fully around the general vibe that something here is almost uncanny. Almost.

On top of the Tongva's claims and all the mud and flood threats, the disappearances of at least four children in the late 1950s adds a particularly grim air to the Devils Gate surroundings.

Bruce Kremen, 6, was out on the trails with a summer camp group. Tommy Bowman, 8, was hiking with his family. Others, like Donald Lee Barker, 13, and Brenda Howell, 11, were out bicycling around the dam. All seemed to vanish into thin air, almost as if vacuumed down some earthly ingress. Here's hoping we don't experience similar fates.

"Ah, fuck," John mutters, shaking the chains that hold the Gate shut. "It's locked."

Only leave it to some bolt-cutting speed freak to have nipped off just enough of a gap in the Gate to slink your body through. We go in. With no flashlight, it's increasing darkness up a slight, maybe 7- or 8-degree incline for about 600 feet. We hit a dead end. How this would relieve dam overflow, as this doesn't appear to be an active valve, is beyond me. It's almost like the thing has been plugged.

But that's it. No wildly shifting temperatures. No crippling stench. Still no crawling skin. Just some amateur graffiti, and the occasional flicker of smashed glass bottles. We turn around, and in relative silence walk out from the maw, and back toward the light.

"Well shit, man," John, after a moment. "Do you feel any bad vibes?"

"Not really?" I admit. "I mean, maybe some weird vibes back at the end, there, but none right here. You know? None right now."


Looking back toward the Gate from the tunnel's approximate midway point (via B. Anderson)

Crossing back over the footbridge, the JPL beams silver across the basin. While I'm fairly certain that I haven't been consigned to living in an underwhelming sort of utero Xenuian Hellscape, I can say that California is still totally fucking weird.

Hubbard, of course, would go on to further establish himself as a pulp sci-fi novelist and eventually found the Church of Scientology. His relationship with Parsons would self-destruct when he absconded with Sarah Northrup, Parsons' mistress, who would become Hubbard's personal auditor and instrumental to his writing of Dianetics. Crowley had warned Parsons that Hubbard was a con man, and indeed, when Hubbard and Cameron eventually abandoned Parsons and their nascent business plan to start a boat dealing company, they absconded for a port in Florida with Parsons' boat and over twenty thousand dollars of Parsons' savings.


Sarah Northrup, Parsons' mistress, absconded with and later divorced Hubbard.

Upon learning of their escape, Parsons retreated to his hotel room and attempted to summon a typhoon in retribution with an evocation of Bartzabel, an intelligence presiding over the astrological forces associated with the planet Mars. A squall at sea ripped the sails from the boat, and Hubbard and Sarah were forced back to port where they were detained by the U.S. Coast Guard. Northrup would later divorce Hubbard, calling him "insane."

In 1969, Caltrans heavy-equipment operator and noted LA County serial killer Mack Ray Edwards admitted to slaying little Donald and Brenda, and to later burying their remains in freshly lain highways. A year later, Edwards would hang himself at San Quentin. The disappearances of Tommy Bowman and Bruce Kremen remain unsolved.

As for the mud, some want to see the orangish glop hauled away, and quick. The LA County Public Works Department stated in an urgent 2011 report that the reservoir "no longer has the capacity to safely contain another major debris event," and warned of "significant" risks of flooding and debris flow "below the dam". Meanwhile, the city, out of concern for the willows and riparian wildlife, is saying hold it, let's carry out a two-year environmental feasibility study into hauling out the muck. Temporary measures – hauling out 25,000 cubic yards of the stuff currently plugging one of the dam's drains, namely – are one thing. The Public Works proposal, which would have 300-400 dump trucks daily hauling in and out of the Arroyo Seco, removing mud, is another.

"The better approach would be to have an ongoing sediment management program," Tim Brick, managing director at the Arroyo Seco Foundation, told the Times. Better taking away only "some [mud] every year," Brick continued, "rather than one big project that was going to amount to 400 trucks a day for three years."

Or, as one morning walker put it: "It's just a beautiful place. It takes a long time to make another tree."

All copyright crashes aside, the Curiosity rover upped its camera not long after sticking its landing, and as of this writing has already found evidence that at one point, likely billions of years ago, steadily-flowing water cut through the JPL drone's Martian stomping grounds, an area known as Gale crater.

"It becomes just an incredible exercise in engineering to make sure that it's all going to work," Jim Adams, NASA's deputy chief technologist, told me on the eve of Curiosity's hellraising touchdown in early August. "And then in a moment, all you can do is sit back and let the computer do its job."

Proof, I'd wager, of a non-curse. Or as others might call it, magic. Weeks later, I asked Adams if he'd ever heard of Parsons. He hadn't.

I don't totally blame him. The JPL has taken pains to "not sanitize anything," according to Conway, who reminds me that Parsons is given ample time in a three-part documentary film on the history of the lab that JPL released a few years back. The trilogy, entitled The American Rocketeer – Explorer 1 – Destination Moon, was subsequently given to every member of the lab's staff. It was screened at CalTech, and also ran on a local television network.

But even still, it's like the Jet Propulsion Lab remains near obscurity across a great swath of the U.S. The lab's bread and butter – let alone the camp double-life of just one of its founders – remain at the margins of American consciousness. Every year, Jack Parsons' Lab hosts an open-house weekend that draws some 3,500 visitors to its campus. Given the open-door vibe, Conway says he's always stunned when he hears about area residents, some living mere blocks away, who have no familiarity whatsoever as to the regular goings on at JPL. I don't totally blame him, either.

But to hear that some folks beyond the Devils Gate, including NASA brass, haven't heard of Jack Parsons? Conway asks. "That doesn't stun me at all."


Officer tours blast site at 1701 S. Orange Grove Ave. in Pasadena. Parsons was said to have been preparing for a trip to Mexico (via)

Parsons held onto both horns 'til the bitter end, quite literally before the flames took him. He died of wounds after setting off an explosion of Mercury (II) fulminate in a basement experiment gone horrifically wrong, on June 17, 1952. He was 37.

The tragic, untimely death has since sparked numerous rumors as to just what, exactly, the eccentric rocketeer was up to in his final hour. Had he actually been keeping detailed records, we'd maybe have some closure. To Conway's knowledge, the OTO, which claims global membership to this day, has never reached out to the JPL. So whether Parsons met his end brewing the next generation of NASA's jet propellant, or cooking up the lifeblood to Crowley's ultimate reveal, is anyone's guess.

Maybe it's best we never know. History may well come to judge Parsons' blaze of glory as the ultimate redemption, a disruptive marrying of science and sorcery. Think about it. Both fields receive equal amounts of flak, and it's no small coincidence that quite often it's the champions of one who wage war on the other. Both stand on the shoulders of what for lack of a far better word can only be deemed as a kind of faith – faith that bold, leading-edge research will overcome the underlying mechanisms of this world to see all our rockets and space drones cruising further, faster, and with freakish precision; faith that the summoning of Pan's good graces will provide that extra boost.

And for Parsons, at least, it was like retaining a moral imperative to embrace both the theoretically explainable and the fog of magic with equal aplomb, to demonstrate a surmounting over that which many others deemed unconquerable, trolls be damned. As he wrote three years before the accident:

It has seemed to me that if I had the genius to found the jet propulsion field in the US, and found a multimillion dollar corporation and a renowned research laboratory, then I should be able to apply the genius in the magical field.

And while he may've never raised that moonbaby, he eventually got there, and in no small way. Twenty years after his passing, the International Astronomical Union named a far-side moon crater (37N 171W) after Parsons, in a nod to his pivotal contributions to solid-fuel rocketeering. If that's one stop along the figurative Hell portal, then we should all be diving in, now.


Parsons stands over unidentified rocket gear, 1936 (via) @thebanderson

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My Love for Kunga Dawa [Richard Arthure]
by John Baker
June 29, 2018

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

-- Richard Arthure on Meeting Chogyam Trungpa, The Chronicles of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Kunga with Rinpoche; Image from Vivian Kurz's On Retreat in Charlemont: Silent Footage from 1972



Last month (May 2018), while I was in Boulder to spend time with my family there, I visited with my old friend, Kunga Dawa (Richard Arthure). I had called ahead from my home in New York, and he had told me that he would love to see me, if he was still alive, as he had already had two heart attacks. He sounded so cheerful and vital, I found it hard to imagine that he would die soon.

We spent the better part of an afternoon, laughing and reminiscing, sharing our mutual devotion to our root teacher and the teachings. He told me again that he expected to die in the near future, and again I found it hard to credit, he seemed so full of happiness, intelligence and humor… life! I believed him with my mind, if not with my heart. I have known Kunga for 48 years now.

In February or so of 1970 I went to hear a Tibetan lama speak in mid-town Manhattan: Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. I had met Ram Dass a couple of years earlier, had set off on my own spiritual quest – Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, Christianity, Sufism, and a bit more – and now I was going to listen to a Tibetan Buddhist teacher. I went with my friend and fellow traveler, Charlie Rokoszak, now passed these many years. We sat in the back of a well-lit room on folding chairs.

At the time I didn’t know that Rinpoche had recently come to this continent from England and Scotland, nor did I know that he had landed in Canada and was stuck in Toronto, waiting for a US visa. So I was surprised when a Caucasian fellow walked through the door – handsome, with curly light brown hair, blue eyes, he seemed to look directly at me across the tops of the heads of the seated audience and flash me a brilliant smile. Of course, it was Kunga.

While I have never forgotten the smile, I no longer remember what he said, but it was enough so that a few months later, when Rinpoche actually did come to New York, I went again. This time the talk took place in a darkened loft somewhere in the southern part of the city. I was seated on the floor, trying my best to maintain full lotus (to impress the teacher?). Rinpoche came in wearing a business suit and tie, accompanied by a blond girl in a mini-skirt, Diana of course. Rinpoche gave a talk on the importance of having a sense of humor. I did not find it funny and left, crossing him off my list of potential teachers.

That summer I purchased a ticket for a charter flight to India. I figured I would go and see if I could find a guru, as Ram Dass had done, or at least have a good adventure and smoke a lot of bang. I had sold the keys to my rent-controlled apartment and all my possessions, and I was camping in my cousins’ Park Avenue apartment while they were in Italy, waiting for my flight in August. It was late June and very hot.

Charlie, more impressed with Trungpa Rinpoche than I, had gone up to Tail of the Tiger (now Karme Chöling) in Vermont to hear him teach. We spoke on the phone, and he suggested I beat the New York heat and join him, hear some dharma (I knew almost nothing about Buddhism, in spite of a course in college), and we would have a good time. I took my Abercrombie and Fitch sleeping bag (they sold sporting equipment in those days), and clothes and caught a bus.

Tail of the Tiger was an old, Vermont woodcutter’s property: about 400 acres then with a ramshackle house, a large, ancient barn, and a falling-down syrup shed. There were already about 30 or 40 people there, living in the house and camped on the grounds, including a few students who had accompanied Rinpoche from England: Kunga (Richard Arthure) was obviously Rinpoche’s closest student, and there were also Fran Lewis and Tania Leontov, who were very close to him and who ran Tail.

The rest of the crew I encountered included “the Brandeis Boys” (Alan Schwartz, Karl Springer, Chuck Lief, and Marty Janowitz), Michael Chender, Michael Kohn, Polly Monner (Flint/Wellenbach), George Samuels, David Wilde, V. Manoukian, William Hanniman (he was eventually the inspiration for the Vajra Guards), Fern, Olive Colón, Jack Niland and Sara Kapp, and a hitchhiker they had picked up on their way named Melanie, and more. A number of these are now dead.

Within a few days of my arrival I had formed a bond with Rinpoche which has endured and dominated the rest of my life. I think many of those present at that time experienced the same. Kunga, being the heart son, was much respected and held in some awe. One day I walked into the “library,” a small room with bookshelves and a few meditation cushions. There I found Kunga, alone, meditating. “Oh, I’m sorry for interrupting you,” I said, as I stepped through the door and saw him sitting on the floor. He looked up at me with that flashing smile and said, “Interrupted me from what?” I have never forgotten.

Later I encountered Kunga repeatedly, and we became friends. He continued to teach, and in 1971 Rinpoche told me to start teaching as well. But Kunga was the star. Until one day when he had been in San Francisco teaching, we received word that he had had a mental breakdown of some sort. The report was that he had tried to have sex inappropriately with a woman, had somehow gotten himself stabbed in the leg by someone unnamed, had been running down streets naked, and more. Rinpoche sent some students to San Francisco to bring him back, which they did. At that time Marvin Casper and I were living with Rinpoche in a house just outside Boulder, Colorado in Four-Mile Canyon. It was to this house that Kunga was transported, and for a few weeks I watched and participated as Rinpoche worked with Kunga. Eventually, he was committed for a few weeks to Boulder Psychiatric Institute. After that he calmed down and, more or less, recovered, but never again did he hold the position of prominence he had prior to his “break.”

After we got back to Boulder, Rinpoche took off on another teaching tour, and I was left at home. John Baker went with Rinpoche, and Marvin Casper was away somewhere else. At this time, P.D., another senior student, was also staying in the house with us. While Rinpoche was away, P.D. started to lose touch with reality and ultimately had a psychotic episode, which I had to deal with on my own.

When the two of us went to the supermarket together, P.D. picked out a huge raw ham and an industrial-sized package of coffee filters. Nobody in the household drank coffee, so I found this odd, but I didn't think too much about it. That night, after I went to bed, P.D. came into my bedroom in a manic state. I felt threatened by his tone of voice and his erratic movements and comments. I had the baby and I didn't want him in my room, so I got him to leave, and then I put the dresser in front of my bedroom door. He banged on the door for a while and tried to push his way in. This went on for a few nights. Every night he would try to break into the bedroom, and I kept myself barricaded in. Then, one morning when I got up and moved the dresser, I looked around the house but P.D. was nowhere around. I got the baby up and dressed to go out shopping. When I went out to the car, I found P.D. walking naked down the road in front of our house at Four Mile Canyon. I convinced him to come back inside and get some clothes on.

At that point, I phoned Rinpoche and told him that we had to deal with this issue as soon as possible. The night that Rinpoche got home, there was a party at the house to welcome him back. As always, a lot of people showed up to hang out with Rinpoche. During the evening, P.D.'s behavior disintegrated, and it was obvious that he needed help. After observing him for a while, Rinpoche said, "I think we have to take him down to the hospital." So John Baker took our disturbed friend in one car, and I drove Rinpoche in the other. We went down the canyon to Boulder Memorial Hospital at the end of Mapleton Avenue. At this point, it was about two in the morning.

P.D. and John Baker had arrived ahead of us, and we joined them in the waiting room. The psychiatrist on duty came over to where we were all sitting, and before anyone could say anything, P.D. announced, "Here is Mr. Mukpo. I've come to commit him." Rinpoche replied, "Actually, P.D., I've come to commit you." Confusion ensued, with P.D. insisting that Rinpoche was the prospective patient. Finally, the psychiatrist said, "I want everybody to be quiet. I'm going to ask a third party who has come to commit whom." Shordy thereafter" P.D. was admitted to the hospital. There were a lot of wild times, but this one stands out for me because I had to deal with much of the situation alone. To me, it signified how vulnerable and somewhat abandoned I felt at times when Rinpoche was away.

-- Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chogyam Trungpa, by Diana J. Mukpo

That summer Rinpoche gave a seminar on the Bardos in a large camp on the Peak-to-Peak Highway outside Allenspark, Colorado. Many of us were camped out in tents; the lectures took place in a large space with a roof, dirt floor, and no walls. Altitude: about 12,000 feet.

One night we were sitting around a campfire with Rinpoche. The whole business with Kunga was unfolding in Boulder, and everyone at the seminar knew about it. The question in everyone’s mind: How could this happen to Rinpoche’s closest student? If it could happen to Kunga, what about me?

Rinpoche knew what we all were thinking, and finally he addressed the issue directly. Laughing, he said: “Everyone overestimates the importance of a guru. I’m just a clark (clerk) sitting in the booth. You buy the tickets, get on the train, and take the trip!”

Eventually Kunga was released from BPI and began living a more normal life. He held a number of jobs — I remember him selling cars at a local Boulder dealership — but I lost touch with him until some time in the late 1980’s or early 1990’s when he decided to go into 3-year retreat in New Mexico. At that time, one of his sons, Adam Arthure was living in the Boulder and Kunga asked me to visit him from time to time, as he would be in retreat and unavailable. This I did until Adam relocated and I lost touch.

After Trungpa Rinpoche’s death, Kunga studied with Tulku Urgyen and other lamas. Tulku Urgyen told him to spend as much time in retreat as he could, and so he did go into retreat for three years in a cabin remote in the New Mexico chaparral. There he wrote a number of the poems included in his book The Medium of the Breath. His poem, Remembering the kind root guru Chokyi Gyatso, the 11th Trungpa Tulku, is a product of that time. You may buy the entire book online at Xlibris.com (Kunga self-published it), and it is beautiful.

During this time Kunga also taught in various places in the U.S., including a few years ago at the Westchester Buddhist Center, which I and Derek and Jane Kolleeny run in Irvington. There he taught a seminar on … of course, the Sadhana of Mahamudra.

Kunga’s devotion to the dharma and his teachers was profound. Throughout his entire life his devotion never flagged, that I know of. I think it accurate to say that the dharma was his life. He is an inspiration to me and to many others. I and we love him, and I thank him for the example he has set. I remember him with tears of love and gratitude.

Ki Ki So So, Richard, Kunga Dawa. I love you and hope to meet you again. John

John Baker


John Baker

John Baker has been a student Buddhism since July 1970. A close disciple of Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, he co-founded Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, serving as its CEO for the first three years of its existence, teaching Buddhism there for five and later serving on its board of directors. He also co-founded and co-directed the Karma Dzong Meditation Center in Boulder for the first five years of its existence. He is the co-editor of Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism and The Myth of Freedom and author numerous articles. After 23 years in private business, he retired in 2000. During this time he continued teaching Buddhist thought and meditation practice throughout North America, delivering lectures, weekend programs, and multi-month courses. Today he is a senior teacher in the North American Buddhist community at the Westchester Buddhist Center and New York Buddha Dharma in Manhattan, both of which he co-founded. Between 1999 and 2007 he led month-long meditation programs at Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado and Karme Chöling Meditation Center in Vermont and taught at the Vajradhatu Seminary. He is currently on the boards of directors of Light of Berotsana Translation Group, New York Buddha Dharma, and the Westchester Buddhist Center. He has practiced psychotherapy and led Buddhist/Modern Analytic psychotherapy groups for fifteen years in Manhattan. He currently enjoys working as a life and executive coach. You can see his complete bio at http://www.johnbakercoaching.com. John lives in Manhattan where he has a daughter, Olivia, age 13. He also has a grown daughter Cara, son-in-law Vajra Rich, and a granddaughter Stella who live in Boulder, CO

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A Report on Trungpa Rinpoche’s Class at CU Boulder, Winter 1971
The Three Bodies of the Buddha
by John Baker
November 1, 2014
Copyright John J. Baker 2014

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

A recreation of Trungpa Rinpoche's blackboard sketch

In the fall of 1970 Bob Lester, then Chairman of the Religious Studies Department at the University of Colorado, invited Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a highly ranked, Tibetan Buddhist lama, to teach a course on Buddhism to undergraduates. Rinpoche had arrived in the U.S. that spring from Scotland, landing at Tail of the Tiger (now Karme Chöling) in Barnet, Vermont, where he gave summer seminars on the teachings of Milarepa and other subjects. In August some CU professors had invited Rinpoche, then about 31 years old, to come to Boulder, and I and another student, Marvin Casper, both in our mid-twenties, had asked him if we could accompany him. So in October of 1970 the three of us moved to Colorado, initially living together in a stone cabin with a pot-bellied stove and outhouse at 10,000 feet in Gold Hill, but later moving to a modern duplex in Four-Mile Canyon just outside of town. Rinpoche’s wife, Diana, joined us after a couple of months, and they lived together in the first-floor apartment, while Marvin and I inhabited the upstairs.

The CU course was to run in the winter semester of 1971. Rinpoche appointed Marvin and me his teaching assistants, which meant helping him select readings, construct the syllabus, run the class, and conduct discussion groups. He, of course, determined the content and delivered the lectures.

At Tail of the Tiger Rinpoche had given Marvin and me pointing-out-instruction and forged a bond stronger than any I had known in my relatively short lifetime. He had recently asked us to start teaching the students who were coming to him from the coasts and elsewhere, hippies mostly, without much money, adventurous and inspired by the dharma, in general, and Rinpoche, in particular. We knew very little doctrine, but Rinpoche had introduced us to the heart of the teachings. He felt it important for Westerners to connect to the essence of Buddhism first so that they would not be dazzled and seduced by the many exotic forms promising spectacular results, a problem he considered pandemic in America at the time.

The university had a population of about 25,000, including staff and students; this in a town whose total population was about 100,000. In addition, the town had a prominent population of Seventh Day Adventists (no alcohol sold within city limits), there were no malls, and hippies were arriving from the coasts to live in the town and in the communes that constellated around it.

CU in those days had the reputation of being a second-tier school with a few stand-out departments, such as engineering. It was known to be popular with undergraduates who wanted proximity to Colorado’s ski areas, as well as the overall opportunity to play and party. So our expectations for the class were not high, and we were not disappointed. My memory was that 40 or so students sat slumped in their chairs (the kind with an enlarged arm for notepads), giving the impression of sleepiness and apathy. In fact, a few of them later became devoted students of Rinpoche. You just never know.

The room was large, stark, bare, and brightly lit, both by the overhead fluorescents and the Colorado sunlight streaming in through out-sized windows. Rinpoche wore a sport coat and tie, portly with tousled hair. He stood before the class, blackboard behind him, the Flatirons visible through the windows, rising 1,800 feet into the clear blue sky. Marvin and I sat in the front row, to the side.

Rinpoche presented basic Buddhist doctrine, but with an emphasis on the teaching of “spiritual materialism,” which he felt was particularly relevant to his audiences at that time. America was in the throes of the counter-culture revolution, protests against the Vietnam War, and the invasion of Eastern religions from India, Tibet, Southeast Asia and Japan. Think Satguru, Maharishi and the Beatles, Yogi Bhajan, Hare Krishna on street corners and in airports, Zen Beats, macrobiotic diets, of course yoga and meditation and kundalini energy and much more. We were all so naïve, ready to ape the cultures of these imports, hoping that, by adopting their to-us-exotic forms, we would enjoy some benefit or release from unhappiness. Rinpoche spent a lot of his time debunking that notion: he once told an audience, almost apologetically, “If I told you to stand on your heads 24 hours-a-day, you would do it!” A lot of the Hindu teachers preached happiness/bliss/love, etc. Rinpoche called that “love and light.”

The lecture that most stands out in my memory—because it was so revelatory for me personally and so brilliant—was the one he gave on the trikaya, a Sanskrit term that refers to the three (tri) bodies (kaya) of the buddha: the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya, which are to be understood at various levels. This was not a lecture on spiritual materialism.

Most basically, the term nirmanakaya refers to the actual, physical and mental manifestation of Shakyamuni Buddha, as well as other enlightened individuals. Nirmana is usually translated as “manifestation” or “apparition” or “incarnation.” It is the idea that one has taken rebirth many times—died and been reborn over and over again—and that this current birth is the “nirmana” or current manifestation/incarnation. The Tibetan for this term is tulku, a word applied to reincarnate lamas, so the Dalai Lama is the 14th tulku (or nirmanakaya) in his line, and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was the 11th Trungpa tulku.

In one sense we are all nirmanakayas (tulkus), because we all have been reborn many times, however the term is usually reserved for enlightened teachers who take rebirth deliberately, out of compassion and because they have taken a vow to work for the benefit of confused, sentient beings until there are no more. The rest of us unenlightened individuals take rebirth not deliberately but out of the force of our karma: habit and desire drive us forward in life and in death to continual and uncontrolled rebirth in various realms of suffering. We are fortunate to be human beings in this life—the human realm is the only one in which a being may traverse the path to enlightenment and freedom—but we may not be so fortunate in future lives. Sooner or later we will be reborn in all the realms: god realms, animal, hungry ghost, and hell realms. In fact, we experience this psychologically even during the course of a day, in which we experience the anger and panic of the hell realms, the pride and pleasure of the god realms, the hunger and sense of deprivation of the hungry ghost realms, or the stupidity, sloth, and fear of the animal realms.

Dharma is a Sanskrit word which has a number of different meanings, but here it refers first to the Buddhist teachings: the “truth” about who we are and what confusion and wisdom are, the path to realize enlightenment and release from suffering. In addition, “dharma” refers to the true action of an enlightened individual, a buddha. Dharmakaya, then, from the earliest teachings refers to the “teachings” body of the buddha: the instructions he gave to his students to help them see what is real and tread the path. Additionally, it refers to the buddha’s capacity to act in accord with what is true and real.

Sambhogakaya is a term that appeared in a later period of history and which is usually translated “enjoyment body” of the buddha. It refers to the idea that, when one has the eyes to see, there is a world of celestial beings, buddhas and bodhisattvas, dharma protectors, teachers, and embodiments of energy, enlightened and not. This world is present here, and in truth we are in the midst of the Akanistha (Above All) Heaven, but the Sambhogakaya realm is hidden in plain sight from the unenlightened, who may become aware of it only in glimpses, if at all. It is a world of beauty, power, and meaningfulness and, it is completely available to individuals who have left confusion behind, bodhisattvas on the “grounds” or stages of the path and enlightened beings or “buddhas.”

But there is another subtler way to understand the trikaya, and it is this understanding that Trungpa Rinpoche taught to us that winter day in 1971. He did it in this way.

Stepping to the blackboard, he picked up a piece of chalk and drew the figure on the right: Then he stepped back and asked:

“What is this a picture of?”

Of course, no one wanted to say the obvious, and there was an extended silence, until finally some fellow raised his hand and said, “It’s a picture of a bird.” Rinpoche replied,

“It’s a picture of the sky,”

and in those six words he taught the entire trikaya.

Rinpoche was introducing us to the most profound Buddhist description of reality, as it arises in the only place and time it ever arises: here and now. It is not a metaphysical explanation of reality; it is simply a description of what arises in the moment, now, the only time we ever have.

The past and future are mental constructs. Even the present can be conceptualized, but it can also be experienced. In fact, we choicelessly experience it all the time. It is merely a matter of whether we emerge from our dreams about the past, present, and future long enough to notice and see it clearly, truly.

And in the present the six types of phenomena—sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and mental events—the six knowables—arise and pass away, a constantly appearing and disappearing display, like a movie, like images passing through a mirror. These “things” do not endure, even for an instant, in the present moment, as we turn our head, as our attention shifts, as the light changes and things move, the display is constantly in motion, changing so completely and continuously that we cannot even point to something that has changed. It is a continual “presencing” as they say in the dzogchen texts, a presencing of what we call phenomena. And this display has three aspects.

First, the dharmakaya aspect. All phenomena seem to arise from and pass back into nothing. Where did that sound go? That precise visual experience with the light and the angle of view? That thought? That odor? They arose from nowhere, appeared in the midst of a concatenation of conditions, and finally disappeared into nowhere. That fertile “nowhere” is, in this first pass at a definition, a meaning of the dharmakaya, absolute reality and the “womb” from which all appearances arise and the charnel ground into which they pass away.

And yet, some thing seems to appear and pass away. This “thing” aspect is the nirmanakaya. There is a “presencing” of phenomena (the six knowables appear). That presencing is the fact of seeming appearance, the “thingness” of appearances, and it is all that confused sentient beings know, because they are not paying attention to the present moment, not noticing that nothing truly exists but is a mere “presencing.”

Confused sentient beings see the phenomenal world through the veil of static thought: one sees a chair, a person, hears a piece of music, and one is consumed with the pastness and futureness of it all, one is in relationship to it, an I/other proposition, fraught with past and future significance for “my” well being. As long as we (literally) think that other things and I exist, life must be experienced as a series of I/other problematic relationships. If the other is antipathetic to us, causes us pain and unhappiness, then we want to push it away from us: hatred. If it promises pleasure, happiness, security, etc., then we wish to pull it to us: desire. And if the other promises neither benefit nor harm, then we don’t care about it: indifference. In Buddhist doctrine, these are called “the three poisons,” and you can find them depicted at the center of the Wheel of Life, a heuristic depiction of confusion, as a snake, rooster, and pig, respectively.

But seen stripped of concept, nakedly in the present moment, in reality beyond even the present moment which can be a concept in itself, then the nirmanakaya is an aspect of the presencing, of the display, its seeming “thingness,” and it is described as the display of compassion, because it can communicate with us in the form of a teacher (an actual human being or simply life experiences which move us along our path).

And finally, there is the sambhogakaya, which refers to the aspect that, as these “things” arise and pass away, they communicate to us what they are: the redness of red, the sweetness of sugar, the cold of ice, the sadness of sorrow. It is precisely because all phenomena are arising out of nowhere and passing away into it again, because they are utterly transitory, that they can and must express their qualities, so vividly and beautifully and meaningfully. This is the sambhogakaya, and it is the realm of magic: not magic in the sense of walking through walls or reading minds (although there may be that, too), but magic in the sense of the extraordinary beauty and meaningfulness and value of this world seen nakedly, stripped of the false, ego-centered and emotion-laden thoughts/dreams through which confused sentient beings see their lives. Sambhogakaya is the world of deity — sacred world. In confused world things are of greater or lesser value in terms of what they can do for or to me. In sacred world things are of value for no reason at all; this life has intrinsic worth.

And so, seen in the present moment, a bird is utterly insubstantial: a constantly changing presentation, a presencing from the ground of nothingness, coming into being and passing away so totally every instant that we cannot even find any “thing” that is coming into being or passing away. In fact, we cannot distinguish between the bird and the nothing (symbolized here by the sky), which is its womb and grave. So when Trungpa Rinpoche said that he had drawn a picture of the sky, there were two ways to take his assertion:

First pass: We are so focused on the thing that we do not pay attention to the background (temporal as well as spatial) from which it arises. Look! The bird is also a picture of the sky! Lost in concept, seeing the world through the veil of discursive thought, we have been ignoring the ground from which phenomena arise and into which they disappear. In fact, this is one meaning of the Sanskrit word avidya (usually translated as “ignorance”), the fundamental error which produces unenlightenment or confusion. Trungpa Rinpoche said that avidya means “ignoring” or not seeing (the literal meaning of a-vidya) the ground, focusing only on the figure and its significance for or against me.

Second pass: the bird and sky seem different and yet we cannot find the dividing line between them. They create each other and are each other. The bird, as it moves through the sky, is merely a recoloring of the sky in an infinite number of locations. The difference between them is merely seeming, just like an image in a mirror. In the highest tantric teachings the word “sky” is often a code word for and interchangeable with “space,” which signifies the unity of the three kayas.

In vajrayana (tantric Buddhist) practice one often recites this two-line formula, or some variation on it: “Things arise, and yet they do not exist; they do not exist, and yet they arise!” The first is what Buddhists call the “absolute truth”; the second is what Buddhists call the “relative truth.”

Finally and always, the three kayas are merely different aspects of the same thing, which is what is meant when in the texts we find the assertion that the three kayas are one. The nirmanakaya and sambhogakaya, often lumped together and called the “rupakaya” or “form body of the buddha,” are in union with the dharmakaya, the absolute body, from which — in the present moment, here and now — everything seems to arise and pass away.

Things arise from and pass back into nothingness: dharmakaya. Things arise from and pass back into nothingness: nirmanakaya. And as those things arise and pass away, they communicate their unique, brilliant, emotionally moving individuality: sambhogakaya.

To quote a line from Trungpa Rinpoche’s Sadhana of Mahamudra, “Good and bad, happy and sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky.”

“It’s a picture of the sky.”

This article is presented in celebration of a collaboration between Naropa University and the University of Colorado on a Buddhist Studies Lecture Series in honor of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. The annual lecture brings scholars of alternating years by Naropa and CU Boulder.

John Makransky of Boston College delivered the second annual Chögyam Trungpa Lecture in Buddhist Studies at Naropa on September 12, 2014.

John Baker

John Baker has been a student Buddhism since July 1970. A close disciple of Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, he co-founded Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, serving as its CEO for the first three years of its existence, teaching Buddhism there for five and later serving on its board of directors. He also co-founded and co-directed the Karma Dzong Meditation Center in Boulder for the first five years of its existence. He is the co-editor of Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism and The Myth of Freedom and author numerous articles. After 23 years in private business, he retired in 2000. During this time he continued teaching Buddhist thought and meditation practice throughout North America, delivering lectures, weekend programs, and multi-month courses. Today he is a senior teacher in the North American Buddhist community at the Westchester Buddhist Center and New York Buddha Dharma in Manhattan, both of which he co-founded. Between 1999 and 2007 he led month-long meditation programs at Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado and Karme Chöling Meditation Center in Vermont and taught at the Vajradhatu Seminary. He is currently on the boards of directors of Light of Berotsana Translation Group, New York Buddha Dharma, and the Westchester Buddhist Center. He has practiced psychotherapy and led Buddhist/Modern Analytic psychotherapy groups for fifteen years in Manhattan. He currently enjoys working as a life and executive coach. You can see his complete bio at http://www.johnbakercoaching.com. John lives in Manhattan where he has a daughter, Olivia, age 13. He also has a grown daughter Cara, son-in-law Vajra Rich, and a granddaughter Stella who live in Boulder, CO.

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In Memoriam: Professor Emeritus Robert Lester
by University of Colorado Boulder Religious Studies
Accessed: 7/21/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Robert C. Lester

The Department of Religious Studies is saddened to report the passing of Professor Emeritus Robert Lester on December 13, 2013. Founder, former chair and colleague, benefactor, and lifelong friend of the Department, Professor Lester was responsible for the founding and shaping of religious studies as an academic discipline at the University of Colorado Boulder. A specialist in the religions of India, he conducted fieldwork, published and taught widely in these areas, authoring several books including Ramanuja on Yoga, Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia, and Buddhism: The Path to Nirvana. He taught at CU for nearly 30 years, during which he served two terms as chair of the department and sagely guided its formation during its first three decades, and profoundly influenced countless students. Upon his retirement from CU in 1998, the department established an annual lectureship in his honor, the Lester Lecture, which provides a prestigious venue for leading scholars in religious studies to report on current issues in the field. The Lester Lecture, now in its second decade and including a long list of accomplished scholars, remains a lasting legacy of his commitment to excellence in scholarship in the field of religious studies. Professor Lester will be deeply missed but his impact on his students, colleagues, and the department will be long remembered.

Details of his obituary and one of his final poems, a mature statement of his philosophy of life, are provided below.

In Memoriam Robert C. Lester
February 1, 1933 - December 13, 2013

Robert Lester died in Santa Barbara, CA, following a fall that resulted in a severe spinal injury. An astute student of the religions of India, Professor Lester received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1963 and taught at Cornell and American universities before joining the faculty of the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1970 with a mandate to establish a program in the study of religion. The program became a Department in 1980 and he served as chair from 1980-82 and 1988-91. He taught in the area of Southeast Asian religions and was highly regarded by his students. At his retirement party students who had studied with him gathered from across the country to pay him tribute. For his contributions to the University he received the University Medal in 1982. His contributions to the discipline of religious studies were focused on the study of the religions of India, including publications on Ramanuja and Sri Vaishnavism, Theravada Buddhism, and an introduction to the study of Buddhism. His social scientific approach to the study of religion led him to make several extended research trips to India under the sponsorship of NEH, Univ. of Colorado, Fulbright-Hays, and Ford Foundation grants to provide the foundation for his work. At his retirement in 1998 the Department established the Lester Lectureship in his honor which continues to provide an annual assessment of current issues in the academic study of religion by a leading scholar in the field. Professor Lester will be remembered with the greatest appreciation by his colleagues and students. Memorial contributions in his name may be made to the Robert C. Lester Lectureship, Dept. of Religious Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder CO 80309-0292 or to the Arboretum, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High St., Santa Cruz, CA 95064.

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Fulbright-Hays Program
by Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs: Promoting Mutual Understanding
United States Department of State
Accessed: 7/21/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

The Fulbright-Hays Program -- a Fulbright Program funded by a Congressional appropriation to the United States Department of Education-- awards grants to individual U.S. K-14 pre-teachers, teachers and administrators, pre-doctoral students and postdoctoral faculty, as well as to U.S. institutions and organizations. Funding supports research and training efforts overseas, which focus on non-Western foreign languages and area studies.

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Fulbright Program
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/21/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs whose goal is to improve intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills. It is one of the most prestigious and competitive fellowship programs in the world. Via the program, competitively-selected American citizens including students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists and artists may receive scholarships or grants to study, conduct research, teach, or exercise their talents abroad; and citizens of other countries may qualify to do the same in the United States of America. The program was founded by United States Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946 and is considered to be one of the most widely recognized and prestigious scholarships in the world.[1] The program provides 8,000 grants annually.[2]

The Fulbright Program is administered by cooperating organizations such as the Institute of International Education and operates in over 160 countries around the world.[3] The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State sponsors the Fulbright Program and receives funding from the United States Congress via annual appropriation bills. Additional direct and in-kind support comes from partner governments, foundations, corporations, and host institutions both in and outside the U.S.[4] In 49 countries, a bi-national Fulbright Commission administers and oversees the Fulbright Program. In countries without a Fulbright Commission but that have an active program, the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy oversees the Fulbright Program. More than 370,000 people have participated in the program since it began; 59 Fulbright alumni have won Nobel Prizes; 82 have won Pulitzer Prizes.[5][6]

History

The Fulbright Program aims to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs and thereby increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship.[7]

— Senator J. William Fulbright

In 1945, Senator J. William Fulbright proposed a bill to use the proceeds from selling surplus U.S. government war property to fund international exchange between the U.S. and other countries. With the crucial timing of the aftermath of the Second World War and with the pressing establishment of the United Nations, the Fulbright Program was an attempt to promote peace and understanding through educational exchange. The bill devised a plan to forgo the debts foreign countries amassed during the war and in return for funding an international educational program. It was through the belief that this program would be an essential vehicle to promote peace and mutual understanding between individuals, institutions and future leaders wherever they may be.[8]

On August 1, 1946, President Harry S. Truman signed the bill into law, and Congress created the Fulbright Program in what became the largest education exchange program in history.

Since it began, the program has operated on a bi-national basis; each country active in the Fulbright Program has entered into an agreement with the U.S. government. The first countries to sign agreements were China in 1947 and Burma, the Philippines, and Greece in 1948.[8]

Program

Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations.[9]

— Senator J. William Fulbright

The Fulbright Program works two ways: U.S. citizens may receive funding to go to a foreign country (U.S. Student Program, U.S. Scholar Program, Teacher Exchange Program, etc.) and non-U.S. citizens may come to the U.S. (Foreign Student Program, Visiting Scholar Program, Teacher Exchange Program, etc.).

Candidates recommended for Fulbright grants have high academic achievement, a compelling project proposal or statement of purpose, demonstrated leadership potential, and flexibility and adaptability to interact successfully with the host community abroad.

Fulbright grants are offered in almost all academic disciplines except clinical medical research involving patient contact. Fulbright grantees' fields of study span the fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics, natural and physical sciences, and professional and applied sciences.[10]

Student grants

• The Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers fellowships for U.S. graduating seniors, graduate students, young professionals and artists to research, study, or teach English abroad for one academic year.
• The Fulbright Foreign Student Program enables graduate students, young professionals and artists from abroad to conduct research and study in the United States. Some scholarships are renewed after the initial year of study.
• The Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Program provides opportunities for young English teachers from overseas to refine their teaching skills and broaden their knowledge of American culture and society while strengthening the instruction of foreign languages at colleges and universities in the United States.
• The International Fulbright Science and Technology Award, a component of the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, supports doctoral study at leading U.S. institutions in science, technology, engineering or related fields for outstanding foreign students. This program is currently on hiatus.
• The Fulbright-mtvU Fellowships award up to four U.S. students the opportunity to study the power of music as a cultural force abroad. Fellows conduct research for one academic year on projects of their own design about a chosen musical aspect. They share their experiences during their Fulbright year via video reports, blogs and podcasts.
• The Fulbright-Clinton Fellowship provides the opportunity for U.S. students to serve in professional placements in foreign government ministries or institutions to gain hands-on public sector experience in participating foreign countries.[11]

Scholar grants

• The Fulbright Distinguished Chair Awards comprise approximately forty distinguished lecturing, distinguished research and distinguished lecturing/research awards ranging from three to 12 months. Fulbright Distinguished Chair Awards are viewed as among the most prestigious appointments in the U.S. Fulbright Scholar Program. Candidates should be eminent scholars and have a significant publication and teaching record.
• The Fulbright Bicentennial Chair in American Studies at the University of Helsinki brings scholars of various disciplines to Finland.
• The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program sends American faculty members, scholars and professionals abroad to lecture or conduct research for up to a year.
• The Fulbright Specialist Program sends U.S. academics and professionals to serve as expert consultants on curriculum, faculty development, institutional planning, and related subjects at overseas institutions for a period of two to six weeks.
• The Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program and Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence Program bring foreign scholars to lecture or conduct post-doctoral research for up to a year at U.S. colleges and universities.[11]
• The Fulbright Regional Network for Applied Research (NEXUS) Program is a network of junior scholars, professionals and mid-career applied researchers from the United States, Brazil, Canada, and other Western Hemisphere nations in a year-long program that includes multi-disciplinary, team-based research, a series of three seminar meetings, and a Fulbright exchange experience.

Teacher grants

• The Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program supports one-to-one exchanges of teachers from K–12 schools and a small number of post-secondary institutions.
• The Distinguished Fulbright Awards in Teaching Program sends teachers abroad for a semester to pursue individual projects, conduct research, and lead master classes or seminars.[11]

Grants for professionals

• The Hubert H. Humphrey Program brings outstanding mid-career professionals from the developing world and societies in transition to the United States for one year. Fellows participate in a non-degree program of academic study and gain professional experience.
• The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program sends American scholars and professionals abroad to lecture or conduct research for up to a year.
• The Fulbright Specialist Program sends U.S. faculty and professionals to serve as expert consultants on curriculum, faculty development, institutional planning, and related subjects at overseas academic institutions for a period of two to six weeks.
• The Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers fellowships for U.S. graduating seniors, graduate students, young professionals and artists to study abroad for one academic year. The Program also includes an English Teaching Assistant component.
• The Fulbright Foreign Student Program enables graduate students, young professionals and artists from abroad to conduct research and study in the United States. Some scholarships are renewed after the initial year of study.[11]

Fulbright–Hays Program

• A portion of the Fulbright Program is a Congressional appropriation to the United States Department of Education for the Fulbright–Hays Program.
• These grants are awarded to individual U.S. K through 14 pre-teachers, teachers and administrators, pre-doctoral students and post-doctoral faculty, as well as to U.S. institutions and organizations. Funding supports research and training efforts overseas, which focus on non-western foreign languages and area studies.[12]

Administration

The program is coordinated by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the U.S. Department of State under policy guidelines established by the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board (FSB), with the help of 50 bi-national Fulbright commissions, U.S. embassies, and cooperating organizations in the U.S.[4]

The United States Department of State is responsible for managing, coordinating and overseeing the Fulbright program. Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is the bureau in the Department of State that has primary responsibility for the administration of the program.

The Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board is a twelve-member board of educational and public leaders appointed by the President of the United States that determines general policy and direction for the Fulbright Program and approves all candidates nominated for Fulbright Scholarships.

Bi-national Fulbright commissions and foundations, most of which are funded jointly by the U.S. and partner governments, develop priorities for the program, including the numbers and categories of grants. More specifically, they plan and implement educational exchanges, recruit and nominate candidates for fellowships; designate qualified local educational institutions to host Fulbrighters; fundraise; engage alumni; support incoming U.S. Fulbrighters; and, in many countries, operate an information service for the public on educational opportunities in the United States.[13]

In a country active in the program without a Fulbright commission, the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy administers the Fulbright Program, including recruiting and nominating candidates for grants to the U.S., overseeing U.S. Fulbrighters on their grant in the country, and engaging alumni.

Established in 1919 in the aftermath of World War I, the Institute of International Education was created to catalyze educational exchange. In 1946, the U.S. Department of State invited IIE to administer the graduate student component and CIES to administer the faculty component of the Fulbright Program—IIE's largest program to date.[14]

The Council for International Exchange of Scholars is a division of IIE that administers the Fulbright Scholar Program.

AMIDEAST administers Fulbright Foreign Student grants for grantees from the Middle East and North Africa (except Israel).

LASPAU: Affiliated with Harvard University[15] LASPAU brings together a valuable network of individuals, institutions, leaders and organizations devoted to building knowledge-based societies across the Americas. Among other functions, LASPAU administers the Junior Faculty Development Program, a part of the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, for grantees from Central and South America and the Caribbean.

World Learning administers the Fulbright Specialist Program.[16]

American Councils for International Education (ACTR/ACCELS) administers the Junior Faculty Development Program (JFDP), a special academic exchange for grantees from the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Southeast Europe.

The Academy for Educational Development administers the Fulbright Classroom Teacher Exchange Program and the Distinguished Fulbright Awards in Teaching Program.

Related organizations

The Fulbright Association is an organization independent of the Fulbright Program and not associated with the U.S. Department of State. The Fulbright Association was established on Feb. 27, 1977, as a private nonprofit, membership organization with over 9,000 members. The late Arthur Power Dudden was its founding president. He wanted alumni to educate members of the U.S. Congress and the public about the benefits of advancing increased mutual understanding between the people of the United States and those of other countries. In addition to the Fulbright Association in the U.S., independent Fulbright Alumni associations exist in over 75 countries around the world.

The Fulbright Academy is an organization independent of the Fulbright Program and not associated with the U.S. Department of State. A non-partisan, non-profit organization with members worldwide, the Fulbright Academy focuses on the professional advancement and collaboration needs among the 100,000+ Fulbright alumni in science, technology and related fields. The Fulbright Academy works with individual and institutional members, Fulbright alumni associations and other organizations interested in leveraging the unique knowledge and skills of Fulbright alumni.

Notable alumni

Fulbright alumni have occupied key roles in government, academia, and industry. Of the 325,000+ alumni:

• 84 have received the Pulitzer Prize[5]
• 72 have been MacArthur Fellows[5]
• 59 have received a Nobel Prize[5]
• 37 have served as head of state or government[5]
• 10 have been elected to US Congress
• 1 has served as secretary general of the United Nations

The following list is a selected group of notable Fulbright grant recipients:

• William D. "Bro" Adams, university administrator and NEH Chair (2014–2017)
• Edward Albee, recipient (three times) of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
• Karim Alrawi, recipient of the Samuel Beckett Award for the Performing Arts
• Francis Andersen, Australian Hebrew and biblical studies scholar
• John Ashbery, American poet[17]
• Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Egyptian politician and Secretary-General of the United Nations, 1992-1996
• Kyle Carey, Celtic American musician[18]
• Bob Carr, Australian politician[19]
• Ron Castan, Australian Constitutional law barrister[20]
• Lenora Champagne, playwright, performance artist and director[21]
• Dante R. Chialvo, scientist.[22]
• Dale Chihuly, glass sculptor and entrepreneur.[23]
• Nathan Collett, filmmaker[24]
• Aaron Copland, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music
• Leah Curtis, Australian composer[25]
• Myanna Dellinger, Danish-American law professor
• Arthur Deshaies, artist, printmaker, professor and head of the graphic workshop, Florida State University [26]
• Rita Dove, U.S. Poet Laureate and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
• Eugenia Del Pino, developmental biologist, Ecuadorian
• Eric Foner, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for History
• John Hope Franklin, historian
• Gabrielle Giffords, United States Representative for Arizona's 8th congressional district
• Wendy Greengross (1925–2012), general practitioner and broadcaster[27]
• Nigel Healey, Vice Chancellor, Fiji National University
• Robert Hess (1938-1994), President of Brooklyn College
• John Honnold (1915-2011), American law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School
• Rahul M. Jindal, Indian-American transplant surgeon at Uniformed Services University.
• Suzanne Klotz, painter and sculptor[28]
• John Lithgow, actor
• Dolph Lundgren, actor
• Robert Nozick,[29] American political philosopher
• Linus Pauling, awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the Nobel Peace Prize
• Sylvia Plath, poet, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1982
• Ian Rankin, author
• Theodore Roethke, poet, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1954 and the National Book Award for Poetry in 1959 and 1965
• Philip Schultz poet[30]
• Jane Smiley, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
• Robert S. Summers, law professor
• Eudora Welty, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
• C. Vann Woodward, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for History
• Charles Wright, American poet[30]
• James Wright, American poet[31]
• Muhammad Yunus, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding

The J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, established in 1993, is awarded by the Fulbright Association to recognize individuals or organisations which have made extraordinary contributions toward bringing peoples, cultures, or nations to greater understanding of others.

The recipients are listed below.

Person / Year / Country

Nelson Mandela 1993 South Africa
Jimmy Carter 1994 United States
Franz Vranitzky 1995 Austria
Corazon Aquino 1996 Philippines
Václav Havel 1997 Czech Republic
Patricio Aylwin 1998 Chile
Mary Robinson 1999 Ireland
Martti Ahtisaari 2000 Finland
Kofi Annan 2001 Ghana
Sadako Ogata 2002 Japan
Fernando Henrique Cardoso 2003 Brazil
Colin Powell 2004 United States
Bill Clinton 2006 United States
Desmond Tutu 2008 South Africa
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 2010 United States
Médecins Sans Frontières 2012 France
Hans Blix 2014 Sweden
Richard Lugar 2016 United States
Angela Merkel 2018 Germany

See also

• Academic mobility
• Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF)
• Chevening Scholarship
• Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation
• EducationUSA
• Erasmus Programme
• Fulbright Austria
• German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst)
• Goodwill Scholarships
• Harkness Fellowship
• ITT International Fellowship Program
• Jürgen Mulert
• Marshall Scholarship
• Monbukagakusho Scholarship
• Rhodes Scholarship
• Yenching Scholarship
• Jardine Scholarship

References

1. "Get Noticed Through Prestigious Scholarships". U.S. News & World Report. November 25, 2011.
2. "Fulbright Scholar Program: About Us". Comparative and International Education Society.
3. "IIE Programs". Institute of International Education.
4. "Fulbright Program Fact Sheet" (PDF). U.S. Department of State.
5. "Notable Fulbrighters". U.S. Department of State.
6. Morello, Carol (June 8, 2017). "That knock on a congressman's door could be a Fulbright scholar with a tin cup". The Washington Post.
7. "J. William Fulbright Quotes". Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
8. "Fulbright: The Early Years". U.S. Department of State.
9. "Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs: About Fulbright". U.S. Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
10. "Fields of Study/Project Topics". U.S. Department of State.
11. "Which Grant Is Right For Me? – Fulbright – International Educational Exchange Program". eca.state.gov. 2008-01-31. Retrieved 2012-06-11.
12. "Archived: International Education Programs Service – Fulbright–Hays Programs: The World is Our Classroom". ed.gov. Retrieved 2012-06-11.
13. "Fulbright Commissions". U.S. Department of State.
14. "History | Who We Are | Institute of International Education". Iie.org. Retrieved 2012-06-11.
15. "LASPAU". Harvard University.
16. fulbrightspecialist.worldlearning.org/
17. Piccinnini, Douglas (2009). "Ashbery in Paris: Out of School". Jacket 2. Retrieved 8 October 2015.
18. "Featured Fulbrighter – Kyle Carey". Fulbright Canada.
19. Adams, Vanessa (August 29, 2017). "Announcing our Inaugural Conference Keynote - Professor the Hon Bob Carr". Fulbright Australia.
20. "ADJOURNMENT".
21. "Traps by Lenora Champagne". Old Stone House.
22. "CHIALVO NAMED FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY". Northwestern University.
23. Lewis, Jo Ann (February 23, 1996). "GLASS THAT'LL BOWL YOU OVER". The Washington Post.
24. "2006 Fellowship Recipients". University of Southern California.
25. "'New' alumnus wins prestigious Fulbright postgraduate award". New College, University of New South Wales. New College, University of New South Wales. Retrieved 28 October 2012.
26. "Arthur Emillien Deshaies". Spartanburg Herald-Journal. Spartanburg, South Carolina. 2011-08-03. p. 4.
27. Bayfield, Tony. "Greengross [married name Katz, later Kates], Wendy Elsa (1925–2012)". ONDB. OUP. Retrieved 26 November 2017.
28. Klotz, Suzanne. "Fulbright Scholar". Fulbright Scholar Program. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
29. Juntin Wintle, Makers of modern culture, Routledge 2002.
30. "Fulbrighters & Pulitzer Prize Winners". U.S. Department of State.
31. Gray, Jeffrey (2005). Mastery's End: Travel and Postwar American Poetry. Athens, GA: UGA Press. p. 145. Retrieved 12 October 2015.

External links

• U.S. Department of State Fulbright Website, the program's sponsor
• Fulbright–Hays information, U.S. Department of Education
• Fulbright Student Program Homepage
• Fulbright Scholar Program, grants for university and college faculty, administrators and professionals
• Fulbright Teacher Exchange Programs, K–12 Teacher Exchange
Directories of past grantees
• Fulbright Scholar Directory
• US Student Program
• Foreign Student Program

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National Endowment for the Humanities
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/21/19

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National Endowment for the Humanities
Agency overview
Formed September 29, 1965
Jurisdiction Federal government of the United States
Headquarters Constitution Center (400 7th St SW, Washington, D.C.), Washington, D.C.
Employees 159 (2010)
Annual budget $153 million (0.004% total federal budget) USD (2008)
Agency executive
Jon Parrish Peede, Chairman
Website http://www.neh.gov

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 (Pub.L. 89–209), dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is housed at 400 7th St SW, Washington, D.C.[1] From 1979 to 2014, NEH was at 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. in the Nancy Hanks Center at the Old Post Office.

History and overview

The NEH provides grants for high-quality humanities projects to cultural institutions such as museums, archives, libraries, colleges, universities, public television, and radio stations, and to individual scholars.

NEH was created in 1965 under the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities, which included the National Endowment for the Arts and later the Institute for Museum Services, as a move to provide greater investment in culture by the federal government.[2] NEH was based upon recommendation of the National Commission on the Humanities, convened in 1963 with representatives from three US scholarly and educational associations, the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and the Council of Graduate Schools.[2][3]

The agency creates incentives for excellent work in the humanities by awarding grants that strengthen teaching and learning in the humanities in schools and colleges across the nation, facilitate research and original scholarship, provide opportunities for lifelong learning, preserve and provide access to cultural and educational resources and to strengthen the institutional base of the humanities. As part of its mandate to support humanities programs in every US state and territory, the agency supports a network of private, nonprofit affiliates, the 56 humanities councils in the states and territories of the United States.

The ninth NEH Chair was Jim Leach. President Obama nominated the former Iowa congressman, a Republican, to chair the NEH on June 3, 2009;[4] the Senate confirmed his appointment in August 2009.[5] Leach began his term as the NEH Chair on August 12, 2009 and stepped down in May 2013. Between November 2009 and May 2011, Leach conducted the American "Civility Tour" to call attention to the need to restore reason and civility back into politics, a goal that in his words was "central to the humanities." Leach visited each of the 50 states, speaking at venues ranging from university and museum lecture halls to hospitals for veterans, to support the return of non-emotive, civil exchange and rational consideration of other viewpoints. According to Leach, "Little is more important...than establishing an ethos of thoughtfulness and decency of expression in the public square. Words reflect emotion as well as meaning. They clarify—or cloud—thought and energize action, sometimes bringing out the better angels in our nature, sometimes lesser instincts."[6] Since the completion of Leach's Civility Tour, rallies for reasoning politics like Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity and grassroots initiatives for pluralistic rationalism in public discourse, have reflected Leach's call for civil, non-emotive and reasoning language between those with disparate religious or political ideologies.[7]

The tenth Chair of the NEH was William 'Bro' Adams, who served from 2014 to 2017. President Obama nominated Adams on April 4, 2014;[8][9][10] Adams was confirmed by the Senate in a voice vote on July 9, 2014.[11] Adams appointed Margaret (Peggy) Plympton as the Deputy NEH Chair in January 2015.[12]

Before Adams's appointment, the NEH was headed by Acting Chair Carole M. Watson. Adams resigned his appointment on May 23, 2017, when he cited accomplishments under the "Common Good" initiative and the appointment of new administration officials.[13]

Structure

The Endowment is directed by the NEH Chair. Advising the Chair is the National Council on the Humanities, a board of 26 distinguished private citizens who are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.[14] The National Council members serve staggered six-year terms.

The NEH Chair

The Endowment is directed by a Chair, who has legal authority to approve all recommendations and award grants and cooperative agreements. The Chair is nominated by the President and confirmed with the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate. The Chair's decisions are informed by recommendations from the National Council on the Humanities, peer-reviewers who are selected to read each project proposal submitted to the Endowment, as well as by the Endowment's staff.

Major program offices

The NEH has six grant-making divisions and offices:[15]

• The Division of Preservation and Access awards grants to preserve, maintain, and improve access to primary sources in the humanities, in both digital and analog form.
• The Division of Public Programs supports projects that bring the humanities to large audiences through libraries and museums, television and radio, historic sites, and digital media.
• The Division of Research makes awards to support the publication of books in and outside the humanities.
• The Division of Education works to support and strengthen teaching of the humanities.
• The Office of Federal/State Partnership collaborates with 56 state and territory humanities councils to strengthen local programs.
• The Office of Digital Humanities advises on use of technology in the humanities and coordinates.

The Office of Challenge Grants, dissolved in 2017, administered grants intended to support capacity building and encourage fundraising in humanities institutions. The Division of Preservation and Access now offers a grant program that is similar to previous programs in the Challenge Grants office.

Special initiatives

These are special priorities of the endowment that indicate critical areas of the humanities as identified by the NEH Chair. They differ from the divisions of the endowment in that they do not sponsor or coordinate specific grant programs.

Bridging Cultures initiative

Bridging Cultures was an NEH initiative that explored ways the humanities promote understanding and mutual respect for people with diverse histories, cultures, and perspectives. Projects supported through this initiative focused on cultures globally as well as within the United States.[16]

Standing Together

This initiative, launched in 2014, marks a priority to make awards that promote understanding of the military experience and to support returning veterans.[17]

We the People

We the People was an NEH special funding stream initiated by NEH Chair Coles, using dedicated funds available to each Chair of the NEH, which was designed to encourage and enhance the teaching, study, and understanding of American history, culture, and democratic principles.[18] The initiative supports projects and programs that explore significant events and themes in American nation's history, which advance knowledge of the principles that define America.[19]

According to NEH, the initiative led a renaissance in knowledge about American history and principles among all US citizens. The initiative was launched on Constitution Day, September 17, 2002 and active through 2009.[20]

Noteworthy projects

Since 1965, the NEH has sponsored many projects, including:

• "Treasures of Tutankhamen," the blockbuster exhibition seen by more than 1.5 million people.[21]
• The Civil War, the landmark 1990 documentary by Ken Burns seen by 38 million Americans.[22]
• Library of America, editions of novels, essays, and poems celebrating America's literary heritage.[23]
• United States Newspaper Project, an effort to catalog and microfilm 63.3 million pages of newspapers dating from the early Republic. The program is now digitizing newspapers and making them freely available online as part of Chronicling America.[24]
• Fifteen Pulitzer Prize–winning books, including those by James M. McPherson, Louis Menand, Joan D. Hedrick, and Bernard Bailyn.[25]
• EDSITEment, a Web project bringing the "best of the humanities on the web" to teachers and students, started in 1997.[26]
• Reference archives, in Athens and Boston, of archaeological photographs taken by Eleanor Emlen Myers.[27]
• The Valley of the Shadow, an innovative digital history website created by Edward L. Ayers and William G. Thomas III on the experience of Confederate Civil War soldiers in the United States.[28]
• What's on the Menu, digitization and community-sourced transcription of New York Public Library's historic restaurant menu collection.[29]

Awards

Jefferson Lecture

Main article: Jefferson Lecture

Since 1972 the NEH has sponsored the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, which it describes as "the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities." The Jefferson Lecturer is selected each year by the National Council on the Humanities. The honoree delivers a lecture in Washington, D.C., during the spring, and receives an honorarium of $10,000. The stated purpose of the honor is to recognize "an individual who has made significant scholarly contributions in the humanities and who has the ability to communicate the knowledge and wisdom of the humanities in a broadly appealing way."[30]

National Humanities Medal and Charles Frankel Prize

Main article: National Humanities Medal

The National Humanities Medal, inaugurated in 1997, honors individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities, broadened citizens' engagement with the humanities, or helped preserve and expand Americans' access to important resources in the humanities. Up to 12 medals can be awarded each year. From 1989 to 1996 the NEH awarded a similar prize known as the Charles Frankel Prize.[31] The new award, a bronze medallion, was designed by David Macaulay, the 1995 winner of the Frankel Prize. Lists of the winners of the National Humanities Medal[32] and the Frankel Prize[33] are available at the NEH website.

Humanities magazine

Starting in 1969, the NEH published a periodical called Humanities; that original incarnation was discontinued in 1978. In 1980, Humanities magazine was relaunched (ISSN 0018-7526). It is published six times per year, with one cover article each year dedicated to profiling that year's Jefferson Lecturer. Most of its articles have some connection to NEH activities. The magazine's editor since 2007 has been journalist and author David Skinner.[34] From 1990 until her death in 2007, Humanities was edited by Mary Lou Beatty (who had previously been a high-ranking editor at the Washington Post).[35][36]

See also

• United States portal
• Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities
• List of state humanities councils
• Institute of Museum and Library Services
• National Endowment for the Arts
• National Science Foundation
• Smithsonian Institution
• National Gallery of Art

References

1. "Visiting NEH". National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
2. "How NEH Got Its Start". National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
3. https://www.neh.gov/about/history/timeline
4. Robin Pogrebin, "Obama Names a Republican to Lead the Humanities Endowment", New York Times, June 4, 2009.
5. Robin Pogrebin, "Rocco Landesman Confirmed as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts", New York Times, August 7, 2009.
6. "E.J. Dionne Welcomes Jim Leach's Call for Civility". The Washington Post. 30 November 2009. Retrieved 3 November 2012.
7. "St. Paul's atheists are coming out of the closet," Bob Shaw, St. Paul Pioneer Press, August 4, 2014. Retrieved August 5, 2014.
8. "President Obama Announces his Intent to Nominate Dr. William "Bro" Adams as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities". Retrieved 11 April 2014.
9. "Obama nominates William 'Bro' Adams to be next head of National Endowment for the Humanities". Minneapolis Star Tribune. 10 April 2014. Retrieved 11 April2014.
10. "Adams Tapped by President Obama". Colby College. Retrieved 14 April 2014.
11. "Senate confirms head of US Humanities Endowment". The Washington Post. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
12. "Deputy Chair". National Endowment for the Humanities. Archived from the original on 14 March 2015. Retrieved 25 February 2015.
13. "NEH Chairman William D. Adams Announces Resignation". Washington, D.C.: National Endowment for the Humanities. May 22, 2017. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
14. "National Council on the Humanities". National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
15. "Information about the Divisions and Offices that Administer NEH Grant Programs". National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved 11 April 2014.
16. "About the Bridging Cultures Initiative". Retrieved 25 July 2014.
17. "NEH Veterans Initiative". Retrieved 2 August 2014.
18. "We the People". Retrieved 13 July 2014.
19. "The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau". March 2, 2010. Archived from the originalon 2010-03-02.
20. "About We the People". Archived from the original on 2016-04-03.
21. "King Tut Comes to America". Archived from the original on 2017-01-24. Retrieved 2017-01-27.
22. "Ken Burns The Civil War". Archived from the original on 2017-01-24. Retrieved 2017-01-27.
23. "Library of America". National Endowment for the Humanities. Archived from the original on 2017-01-24. Retrieved 2017-01-27.
24. "Newspapers: The First Draft of History". National Endowment for the Humanities. Archived from the original on 2017-01-24. Retrieved 2017-01-27.
25. "NEH & Books". Archived from the original on 2016-09-26. Retrieved 2017-01-27.
26. "Edsitement". National Endowment for the Humanities. Archived from the original on 2017-01-24. Retrieved 2017-01-27.
27. Myers, J. Wilson. "Eleanor Emlen Myers, 1925–1996" (PDF). Breaking Ground: Women in Old World Archaeology. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 February 2015. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
28. "Valley of the Shadow". National Endowment for the Humanities. Archived from the original on 2017-01-24. Retrieved 2017-01-27.
29. "What's on the menu?". National Endowment for the Humanities. Archived from the original on 2017-01-24. Retrieved 2017-01-27.
30. Jefferson Lecturers at NEH Website (retrieved January 22, 2009).
31. Awards and Honors at NEH Website (retrieved January 23, 2009).
32. National Humanities Medals Archived 2011-07-21 at the Wayback Machine at the NEH website (retrieved January 23, 2009).
33. Winners of the Charles Frankel Prize at NEH Website (retrieved January 23, 2009).
34. "Editor's Note, September/October 2007". National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved 2016-08-21.
35. "Editor's Note, March/April 2007". National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved 2016-08-21.
36. Sullivan, Patricia (2007-02-09). "Mary Lou Beatty; Editor at NEH, Post". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2016-08-21.

External links

• Official website
• National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities in the Federal Register
• NEH EDSITEment: The Best of the Humanities on the Web
• GrantSocial: NEH Grant Browser 1970-present

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Rāmānuja on the yoga (Adyar Library series)
by Robert C Lester (Author)
Amazon.com
Accessed: 7/21/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Product details

Series: Adyar Library series
Unknown Binding: 185 pages
Publisher: Agents, Theosophical Pub. House (1976)
Language: English

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Osel Tendzin [Thomas Rich]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 7/21/19

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Letters of The Current Situation, by The Chronicles

The end of 1971 was also an important time for another dharmic relationship in Rinpoche's life. In December, he spent another week at Tail teaching while I remained in Boulder. At that time, he met privately with Narayana and asked him to become his Vajra Regent and dharma heir, the primary inheritor of his spiritual lineage. In Rinpoche's tradition, the continuity of the teachings from one generation to the next is expressed through the teacher's handing down the oral teachings and the responsibility for maintaining the purity of the teachings to one or more dharma heirs. There is usually a primary dharma heir, as well as potentially many secondary heirs. In some situations, usually when a teacher has an established organization, he gives the position of regent to one student, who is expected to act on behalf of the teacher and the lineage after the teacher's death, until, in the case of many tulku lineages in Tibet, the teacher's next incarnation is old enough to assume his or her position. This idea of a regent who assumes power between one generation and the next has also been used in many monarchies, so regency is not purely an Asian concept.

For Rinpoche, it was extremely important to give the complete teachings of his lineage to a Westerner. In fact, I think he felt that he was giving many unique transmissions to his Western students, and he did not want them to feel that they were playing second fiddle to the Tibetans. So this appointment was a very important step. It showed that a Westerner could be trusted with the complete teachings and with the responsibility for the future of those teachings.

Rinpoche told Narayana to make plans to move to Boulder, so that Rinpoche could work closely with him, observing him and giving him proper training. Rinpoche had already told me that he was planning to do this. He often shared these kinds of plans and decisions with me. He would say, "This is a great person. I've brought him (or her) in. This is what he can do, and this is where we're going with it." Rinpoche asked Narayana to keep this future appointment secret for the time being. Rinpoche did not feel it was time yet to make this appointment public. With Rinpoche's permission, however, Narayana told his wife, his heart friend Krishna, and Helen. Indeed, this choice would have many implications for the future. I felt that Narayana was an excellent choice, although I didn't have Rinpoche's insight into his character. I thought he was quite charismatic and he had a special quality, a kind of intensity and brightness that were unique.

-- Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chogyam Trungpa, by Diana J. Mukpo with Carolyn Rose Gimian

Ösel Tendzin (Tibetan: འོད་གསལ་བསྟན་འཛིན་, Wylie: ‘od gsal bstan ‘dzin) (1943–1990) was a western Buddhist. He was Chögyam Trungpa's principal student. On August 22, 1976, Chögyam Trungpa empowered Ösel Tendzin as his Vajra Regent and first Western lineage holder in the Karma Kagyu and Nyingma schools of Tibetan Buddhism.[1] On August 25, 1990, Ösel Tendzin died of HIV/AIDS in San Francisco, California.[2] His wife, Lila Rich, and a group of his students continue to live in Ojai, California.

History

Early life

Tendzin was born Thomas Frederick Rich, Jr. on June 28, 1943 in Passaic, New Jersey. He graduated in 1965 from Fordham University, initially working as a physical therapist in New York and Los Angeles. Before joining Vajradhatu he studied with Satchidananda Saraswati, who gave him the name Narayana.[1][3]

Vajradhatu

Tendzin first met Trungpa in February 1971 in Boulder, Colorado.[4] According to Tendzin, Trungpa revealed his intention to make Tendzin his successor not long after their initial meeting.[5] Starting in 1973 Tendzin held various roles in the management of Vajradhatu. He served on the initial board of directors and as an executive vice-president of the organization. In April 1976, Tendzin's Regency was announced to the community for the first time. Trungpa recounted the moment in a later edition of his memoir, writing "to ensure that everything will not stop at my death, it is necessary to have one person as an inheritor, someone whom I can train and observe over a period of many years. For a long time it was in my mind to appoint Narayana to this role, and in the summer of 1976 I did so, empowering him as Dorje Gyaltsap, Vajra Regent."[6]

In his foreword to the Tendzin's 1987 book Buddha in the Palm of Your Hand, Trungpa elaborated on his decision:

As a student and child of mine, Ösel Tendzin has developed his natural ability to respond to the teachings of egolessness. He not only intellectually comprehends these teachings, but he has actually practiced and trained himself in this way. Although I would not say Ösel Tendzin is an enlightened person, he is one of the greatest examples of a practitioner who has followed the command of the Buddha and his guru and the tradition of the Practice Lineage.

Many Oriental advisors have said to me, 'Do not make an Occidental your successor; they are not trustworthy.' With the blessings of His Holiness the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, and through working with Ösel Tendzin as my Regent, I have come to the conclusion that anybody who possesses tathagatagarbha is worthy of experiencing enlightenment. Moreover, Ösel Tendzin is my prime student. He has been able to commit himself and learn thoroughly the teachings of vajrayana. I have worked arduously in training him as my best student and foremost leader, and His Holiness Karmapa has confirmed his Regency. With His Holiness' blessing, Ösel Tendzin should hold his title and the sanity of the enlightened lineage. He is absolutely capable of imparting the message of buddhadharma to the rest of the world.[7]

Tendzin assumed leadership of the organization in 1987 with the death of Chögyam Trungpa.[1][3]

Satdharma

In 1989 Tendzin moved to Ojai, California with some of his students. After his death, those students led by Patrick Sweeney — whom Tendzin had chosen as his lineage holder and successor[1] — created an organization called Satdharma. It was formally incorporated in 1992 to continue Tendzin's lineage, separate from Vajradhatu.[8]

Controversy

Among the controversial actions of Tendzin was his rejection of the recommendation of senior Kagyu lineage holder the Tai Situpa that he take over leadership of Vajradhatu in conjunction with Chögyam Trungpa's half brother, Damchu Tenphel, who resided in Tibet.[9] This was "regarded by members as a serious slight to lineage authorities and was construed as the Regent's attempt to secure his position of control."[9]

Also controversial was the fact that Tendzin "took further action to buttress his centrality by denying students permission to seek teachings from other Kagyu Tibetan teachers, claiming that only he possessed the special transmission, materials and knowledge unique to the Trungpa lineage. Students were told that if they wanted to practice within the community, they would have to take spiritual instruction from the Regent."[10]

Other behavior was troubling as well. As one scholar who has studied the community noted, Tendzin was "bisexual and known to be very promiscuous" and "enjoyed seducing straight men" but the community "did not find [this behavior] particularly troublesome."[11] Not all his partners were unwilling; one scholar noted "it became a mark of prestige for a man, gay or straight, to have sex with the Regent, just as it had been for a woman to have sex with [Trungpa] Rinpoche."[12] However, at least one student reported that Tendzin had raped him.[13] As a former Vajradhatu member attested, "a chilling story had recently been reported by one of . . . [the] teachers at the Buddhist private school [for the Vajradhatu community]. This straight, married male was pinned face-down across Rich's desk by the guards [the Dorje Kasung] while Rich forcibly raped him."[14]

It was revealed in 1989 that Ösel Tendzin had contracted HIV and for nearly three years knew it, yet continued to have unsafe sex with his students without informing them.[15][16] He transmitted it to a student who later died of AIDS.[17][18][19] Others close to Tendzin, including the board of directors of Vajradhatu, knew for two years that Tendzin was HIV-positive and sexually active but kept silent.[20] As one student reported at the time,

I was very distressed that he and his entourage had lied to us for so long, always saying he did not have AIDS. I was even more distressed over the stories of how the Regent used his position as a dharma teacher to induce "straight" students to have unprotected sex with him, while he claimed he had been tested for AIDS but the result was negative.[11]

Stephen Butterfield, a former student, recounted in a memoir:

Tenzin offered to explain his behavior at a meeting which I attended. Like all of his talks, this was considered a teaching of dharma, and donations were solicited and expected. So I paid him $35.00 to hear his explanation. In response to close questioning by students, he first swore us to secrecy (family secrets again), and then said that Trungpa had requested him to be tested for HIV in the early 1980s and told him to keep quiet about the positive result. Tendzin had asked Trungpa what he should do if students wanted to have sex with him, and Trungpa's reply was that as long as he did his Vajrayana purification practices, it did not matter, because they would not get the disease. Tendzin's answer, in short, was that he had obeyed the guru.[21]

To prepare for the birth of our child, just like any other young couple, Rinpoche and I went to Denver together to take birthing classes. Rinpoche was very supportive and involved. He came to almost all the classes. We had decided that we wanted to use natural childbirth, which was a relatively new, progressive trend in those days. Dr. Robert Bradley, who founded the Bradley method of natural childbirth, was in Denver, so we signed up for his course. Dr. Bradley preached that childbirth should be painless. He said that if you had the proper training, you wouldn’t have any pain at all. Rinpoche and I were convinced that this must be true.

My son was due at the end of February, but he came almost two weeks late. On the night of March 8, Rinpoche returned after giving a lecture at the Wesley Foundation, and we both went to bed. I was awakened by pain, and after lying in bed awake for some time, I woke Rinpoche up and I said, “There’s something wrong with me. I’m having a lot of pains. Do you think I’m in labor?” He responded, “Oh no, Dr. Bradley said that childbirth isn’t painful. I’m sure it will pass.” I sat up for a while waiting for the pains to subside, but in fact they were growing more and more intense. For some reason, we were convinced that I wasn’t in labor. We were both so naïve about this, Rinpoche with his monastic background and me with my alienated English upbringing. Finally, I got into a hot bath, which I thought might alleviate the pain. I never drank at this point in my life, but I had a couple of shots of Johnnie Walker that night, hoping it might help.

Very early in the morning, around six o’clock, I went upstairs to John Baker’s room and knocked on his door. I said, “John, I think there’s something wrong with me. I think something’s terribly the matter.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, I’m getting these pains, and they’re coming every five minutes.” Within three minutes, I would say, he was up and had his clothes on and the car keys in his hand, and he told me, “Okay, we’re going to the hospital.” He drove me as fast as he could to Dr. Bradley’s office in Denver. I was already six centimeters dilated at that point. They took me over to Porter Memorial Hospital which was a Seventh-day Adventist hospital and put me in the labor room there. After John got me checked in, he phoned the house and asked someone to bring Rinpoche down right away. While I was lying there alone, I remember feeling quite afraid. During the latter phases of my pregnancy, it had been haunting me that I had no idea what to do with a baby. There was a forty-year-old woman in one of my childbirth classes who was having her fifth child. I asked her, “What do you do with a baby?” She answered, “You, you just change them when they’re dirty, feed them when they’re hungry, and hold them when they cry.”....

Rinpoche was surprised that our first child was a son. There's a rather chauvinistic Tibetan tradition that if a lama marries and the first child is a daughter, this proves that he made a mistake in disrobing. If the first child is a son, it was the right decision. Rinpoche was convinced we were having a daughter. He didn't think our marriage was a mistake, but he didn't expect to get any breaks, as far as these beliefs were concerned. We hadn't even picked out a name for a boy. We were going to call our daughter Dechen, which means "Great Bliss."....

As a baby, Gesar slept in the room with us. Rinpoche said that Tibetans would never have a separate bed for the baby, but I always thought we should have the baby in a bassinette or a crib. When Gesar was just a few days old, I put him to bed in his crib with a windup mobile. Whenever the mobile stopped moving, Gesar would start screaming. This continued until around two A.M., when Rinpoche insisted that we put him in bed with us. He said that if Gesar were in the middle, between us, he would be content and fall asleep. I told Rinpoche that I was afraid one of us would roll over on him in our sleep. Rinpoche said, "A father's instinct would never allow this." I gave in. About two hours later, I awoke to small muffled cries. In his sleep, Rinpoche had rolled on top of Gesar and was basically suffocating him. I started screaming to wake Rinpoche up, "Get off him! Get off him!" After that, if I put Gesar in bed with us, he slept on my side of the bed.

-- Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chogyam Trungpa, by Diana J. Mukpo, with Carolyn Rose Gimian

For about half a year in 1980, I went to live in Rajpur, across the street from Sakya Trinzin. I asked him for teachings on my meditation practice and he convinced me he had a vision of him and me yab yum and that it was important for him to act on it with me. Not only was it the most pathetic sex act of my entire life, it was such a total farce. It was about as enlightening as a mosquito bite, less even, if that's possible. And when it seemed impossible that he could get beyond his Ganesh sized belly to have sex, I offered him oral gratification. He was worried that would get me pregnant.

-- Randy Sogyal Rinpoche, Best-Selling Lecher, The Writings of Am Learning

Butterfield noted,

Tendzin's account of his conversations with Trungpa was challenged by other senior disciples, who claimed Trungpa would never have led anyone to believe that the laws of nature could be suspended by practice."[22] Butterfield also wrote, "it was a difficult dilemma: if you chose to believe Tendzin, then Trungpa had simply been wrong in telling him he could not transmit the disease . . but what then became of the axiom that the guru cannot make a mistake? But if you chose to disbelieve Tendzin, then Trungpa may have been wrong in allowing him to remain Regent, or perhaps in choosing him at all...[22] I heard Tendzin's illness explained by his servants in this way: it was not a consequence of any folly or self-indulgence on his part, but the karma of his infected partners, that he had deliberately imbibed for them. In what way they benefitted was never made clear to me, although one could safely assume the benefits did not include physical cure.[23]

According to Diana Mukpo, wife and widow of Trungpa, he ultimately became disillusioned with Tendzin as his heir, and during his final illness he called Tendzin "terrible" and "dreadful", and indicated that he would have gotten rid of Tendzin had he a suitable candidate with whom to replace him.[24] Rick Fields, the editor of Vajradhatu's publication the Vajradhatu Sun, wrote that he resigned from his editorial position after Ösel Tendzin and the Board of Directors stopped him from publishing news of the events.[25]

Bibliography

• Buddha in the Palm of Your Hand, Shambhala Publications. Boston, 1982. 0-87773-223-X
• Space, Time and Energy, Vajra Regent Ösel Tendzin, Satdharma Publications, 2000.
• Like Water Poured into Water, Vajra Regent Ösel Tendzin, Foreword by Lady Lila Rich; Introduction by Patrick Sweeney, Satdharma Publications, 2006.

Notes

1. "Satdharma biography of Tendzin".
2. Dewitte Lindsey (2003). Tibet to Texas: A Grassroots History of Karma Kagyu Buddhism in the Lone Star State. Sunbelt Eakin. ISBN 978-1-57168-691-6. Thomas Rich would die three years later from HIV, a disaster for both his unsuspecting partners and the entire Vajradhatu community.
3. "Shambhala teachers biography for Tendzin". Archived from the original on 2009-10-11.
4. Midal, Fabrice. Chögyam Trungpa: His Life and Vision. Shambhala, 2004. ISBN 1-59030-098-X pg 437
5. Midal, Fabrice. Chögyam Trungpa: His Life and Vision. Shambhala, 2004. ISBN 1-59030-098-X pg 440
6. Born in Tibet, 4th edition, by Chogyam Trungpa. Shambhala Publications: 2000. pg 263
7. Buddha in the Palm of Your Hand by Osel Tendzin, Shambhala Publications: 1987. ISBN 0-87773-223-X pgs xii-xiii
8. "Sweeney biography on Satdharma".
9. Eldershaw 2004, p. 229
10. Eldershaw 2004, p. 230
11. Eldershaw 2004, p. 226
12. Kane, Stephanie. AIDS Alibis: Sex, Drugs, and Crime in the Americas. Temple University Press, 1998. p. 154
13. Eldershaw 2004, pp. 228, 230
14. Steinbeck 2001, p. 311
15. New York Times (1989)
16. Hayward (2007) p. 407-409
17. Butterfield (1994)
18. Dart (1989)
19. Steinbeck 2001, pp. 279, 311
20. Coleman 2001, p. 170
21. Butterfield p. 183
22. Jump up to:a b Butterfield p. 184
23. Butterfield p. 186
24. Mukpo p. 378
25. Fields (1992) p. 366

References

• Butterfield, Stephen T. (1994). The Double Mirror: A Skeptical Journey into Buddhist Tantra. ISBN 1-55643-176-7
• Coleman, James William. The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition (2001) Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-513162-2
• Dart, John (1989). "Buddhist Sect Alarmed by Reports that Leader Kept his AIDS a Secret", The Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1989 link
• Eldershaw, Lynn P. "Collective identity and the post-charismatic fate of Shambhala International", 2004 Ph. D. thesis, University of Waterloo; also, "Collective Identity and the Postcharismatic Fate of Shambhala International", an article drawn from this thesis published in Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, (2007) Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 72–102, doi:10.1525/nr.2007.10.4.72, ISSN 1092-6690
• Fields, Rick (1992). How the Swans Came to the Lake. ISBN 0-87773-631-6
• Hayward, Jeremy (2007). Warrior-King of Shambhala: Remembering Chogyam Trungpa ISBN 0-86171-546-2
• Mukpo, Diana (2006). Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chogyam Trungpa, ISBN 978-1-59030-256-9
• John Steinbeck IV and Nancy Steinbeck (2001). The Other Side of Eden: Life with John Steinbeck, Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-858-5
• Week in Review Desk, "HEADLINERS; A Church's Turmoil," The New York Times, February 26, 1989

External links

• Homepage of Satdharma, the organization founded by Ösel Tenzin's dharma heir Patrick Sweeney
• NY Times article on conflict in Trungpa's community due to Ösel Tendzin's transmission of AIDS to his students.