Part 2 of 2
The ecdysis of Persis McMillen Persis McMillen was one of those first stripped at the Halloween party. Early in the evening Persis met Trungpa and he told her that he was going to take off people's clothes. She thought he was kidding, didn't take it very seriously. After talking to her, Trungpa disappeared for an extended period of time.
-- Interview with Persis McMillen (Santoli) 7/1/77
Regarding the actual stripping, Persis McMillen recalled, "It happened so fast." She remembers the guards surrounding her, and it took them two minutes to take off her clothes. She was shocked: she didn't resist. The guards hoisted her while nude, aloft. Being a dancer, at first she took a poised dance pose, but after a few seconds felt differently: felt, in her words, "really trashed out." She ran upstairs. In her own words, she "felt sick," and "literally stripped," and " ... very, very upsetting." -- Interview with Persis McMillen (Santoli) 7/1/77
After she went upstairs, Persis McMillen later put on her longest dress and came back down to the party.
-- Interview with Persis McMillen (Santoli) 7/1/77
Alan Marlowe pointed out that Rinpoche was "in the process of stripping everybody" when the issue of Merwin coming down to the party came up. So, in that context, Merwin was not singled out for ecdysis.
-- Interview with Alan Marlowe (Sanders) 6/26/77
"This stuff was happening with Persis McMillen. They were passing her around, and somebody else, I can't remember ... They took off all her clothes and they were passing her around." -- Barbara Meier (Faigao) 6/29/77
THE Jataka Tales, stories of the previous incarnations of Shakyamuni Buddha, as men, women, animals, in the long climb of the Bodhisattva to Buddha, are usually considered simply folk stories. They are more than that, they are a philosophy of history. They always end, "Monks, the wicked hunter was Devadatta, the helpless child was Ananda, and the kindly tiger, monks, was no other than myself."
Devadatta is the counter Buddha, sometimes considered his brother, who always goes about seeking whom he may devour with ignorance and trying to destroy the Buddha word. In some texts he is the actual leader of an anti-Buddha sect in the days of the historic Shakyamuni. He is always with us, spokesman for illusion.
Many believe Chogyam Trungpa has unquestionably done more harm to Buddhism in the United States than any man living. He has identified the Buddha Word with a gospel of illusions. But he will pass, as Devadatta passes, always a failure, through the Jataka Tales.
I do not believe in invoking the State, a deity of illusion, least of all against its own hallucinations.
The CIA giveth, the CIA taketh away. But the powers that be would be well advised, to deport Trungpa to his native land, where after due reprocessing he might be given a hoe and sent to a commune in Northwest Tibet.
One Aleister Crowley was enough for the Twentieth century. No matter, all passes. The Buddha Dharma alone endures.
-- KENNETH REXROTH, from "The Great Naropa Poetry Wars: With a copious collection of germane documents assembled by the author, by Tom Clark
The ecdysis of Trungpa, Rinpoche According to an interview with Alan Marlowe, Trungpa himself was nude for a while, apparently early in the party. Marlowe, it will be recalled, came nude to the party in the first place. Marlowe mentioned that he, Marlowe, was wearing Persis McMillen's red scarf tied around his membrum virile, while he and a woman named Diane Moberg lifted the nude Trungpa upon their shoulders.
-- Interview with Alan Marlowe (Sanders) 6/26/77
Trungpa earlier in the evening was carried nude over people's heads.
-- Interview with Richard Assally (Faigao and Santoli) 6/27/77
The ecdysis of Jack Niland Jack Niland relates that he came to the party dressed as Enlightenment, wrapped in aluminum foil, with a burning candle atop his head. His costume tended to cause him to heat up, so, prior to the arrival of Trungpa, Niland removed it, and was sitting in the lobby by the fire. Then Trungpa arrived.
"All of a sudden Rinpoche walks in: and he walks in like Vajra Cop -- he walks in with four guards .... He looked at me, and said, 'You're not wearing a costume.'
''I'm sitting there (in the lobby) and all of a sudden I see this woman (Persis McMillen) come running out of the dining room stark naked .... She was giggling like mad ... Then a few other people came out and said, 'hey, somebody else is naked in there....'
"Then Rinpoche comes down the hallway again, and he said, 'Jack, you're not wearing a costume.' And I said. 'I told you Rinpoche, I had this great costume, and you missed it. It got too hot and I took it off.' ... He said. 'As long as you 're not going to wear a costume, you 're really not going to wear a costume. I have this great costume for you.' He said,
'Boys, do it,' and these four boys came over and grabbed me, and started to unbutton my clothes. I said, 'Wait a minute, what's going on?'
"... Then I said, wait a minute, this is a unique experience ... The only way to combat something like this is to go overboard into -- more than other people want you to. So I said. 'Wait a minute: you're not going to take my clothes off; I'm going to do a strip tease in the lobby ... I command you all to pick me up and take me into the dining room,' which was what they had in mind anyway.
"So the four guys pick me up, and they proceed to race me into the dining room ... They were bored because I wasn't resisting ... They finally just grabbed me and took me outside and threw me in the pool, which luckily was heated. All these people kept coming out and kidding me ... and I would reach up and pull them into the pool. So, there were people with wigs on and these costumes, in the pool, and everyone was just going crazy."
-- Interview with Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
After Trungpa arrives at the party "I had a whole interchange with Rinpoche. I can't remember the order. I think it must have happened before ... He called me up to him. He saw me, and ... we got into this whole thing. He was picking up on my costume. The whole aggression. (She was in costume as a biker.) We started sort of like making out. I mean it was very lavish, and all these people were dancing, and sitting around (laughs), and we just started doing this whole thing. And he was being so brutal. He was being so physically brutal, and like, clawing my arm, and just, biting my lip, just so vicious. And then he did this whole thing with my cheek (bit into the skin, leaving tooth marks), and I was in this state of mind -- well, if that's what he wants, that's what I'll give him too. And I just came back with it. And we're in this intense, you know (makes unh-ing sound) like this you know, very tense, very, very tense ... Somebody else came up or something and I managed to get away. But it was very nonverbal, direct, powerful, intense brutal communication. I didn't know what to make of it at all."
-- Interview with Barbara Meier (Faigao) 6/29/77
The Party and Vajra Feast Tradition "They were just having a ball. It was this dynamite party: fantastic costumes. And then Rinpoche shows up and said he wanted to give us a talk about Vajrayana. And unmasking, and the idea of dancing and the vajra master. There's a very famous thing about vajra feasts in the old days in Tibet -- thousands upon thousands of people would have it in cemeteries ... and he was just having a mini-version of this.
"It's sort of a challenge to how enlightened or cool you are -- that you can get totally drunk and still know what you're doing. It's a very definite Tantric teaching that you can get as drunk as you want: you can still do it with dignity and awareness. That was a kind of teaching -- that you have to be able to handle the wildest kind of energy and still maintain your awareness." -- Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
"Is everybody here?" "... Rinpoche sat down, very dark room: this plate glass picture window is behind him, starry sky, snowy, moonlit landscape of snow -- very beautiful .... It started out simply, (Rinpoche) saying he wanted to give us a little talk, congratulate us all, talk about becoming a Vajrayana; and then he started saying, 'is everyone here?' ... Well, so and so isn't here. 'Knock on the door: go get them .... ' Very simple.
"Then it got down to 'who else isn't here?' -- 'Well, I noticed the Merwins (sic) aren't here.' 'All right, knock on the door: say that Rinpoche has invited you to the
Vajra Dance, to the
Vajra Feast ...
' It should be the ultimate privilege in our lifetime to go to something like this..." -- Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
Demands from Trungpa for Merwin and Naone to come back to the Party. We got ready for bed. Knock on the door. McKeaver (whom neither of us knew) saying that Rinpoche wanted us to come to the party. We talked it over, and answered that we'd been there, and now were going to bed. He said Rinpoche wanted to talk with us. We repeated that we were going to bed, and suggested that talking could wait until the next day. McKeaver insisted. Neither of us wanted to go down, but we said ok, we'd come. He left.
We dressed and went down, peered in at the door, and thought it looked as bad as ever. We had no more wish to stay than before, and we went upstairs again. We thought they might not leave it at that, in the mood that seemed to prevail in the dining room, and that we'd do better to drive into town. As we were getting ready to go, another knock at the door. This time it was an order to come down. We said we'd been, and weren't coming down again. The pause that followed was full of McKeaver's shock. As he left I looked down the hall after him and saw heads peering around the corner. Guards, I suppose, or eager spectators, or both. McKeaver came back to say he had orders to take us down.
We had locked the door, then, and I locked the big glass door onto the balcony. A crowd could be heard in the hall. Then threats began: they were going to break down the door if we didn't open it, and come in and get us, etc. Attempts at the lock, and at persuasion at the same time. 'Why didn't we want to come down?' We said we could see no reason to come down when neither of us wanted to. Laughs; jeers. The hall evidently pretty crowded. More threats. Who did I think I was, setting myself up to protect Dana?
Sound of pass-keys being inserted. I held the button locked. Kicks and battering at the door. We moved a long chest of drawers against it -- the only piece of furniture that was much to the purpose. The telephones, by the way, had been disconnected in the rooms. Figures appeared on the balcony, tried the glass door. We turned off the lights.
Then a long session of alternate and mixed threats and coaxing us to open up, come down, "get it over with" -- the overall tone menacing, angry, contemptuous. I said that we didn't mean to open the door to them: that there were only two of us, and heaven knew how many of them, and that if they did break the door down to come in and get us, I would hurt the first ones in, if I could. There was a case of empty beer bottles in the bathroom, near the door. Loring Palmer, a former student of Suzuki Roshi's, and a friend, came to the door and asked me to let him in, to talk about it. I said I couldn't, with that crowd behind him. I begged him to keep out of it.
Carl Springer, a Naropa director (whom we didn't know) came and pled at the door, very emotional, saying that he was our friend, and that this was our last chance: urging us to open the door for him (and the crowd) and come down.
-- from letter, W.S. Merwin to Trupp, Pickering, Pope, 7/20/77
Negotiations Alan Marlowe recalls that negotiations with Merwin and Dana to get them to come to the party began circa 9 p.m., and went on and on, maybe for a couple of hours, with the stripping incident not occurring until around midnight. -- Interview with Alan Marlowe (Sanders ) 6/23/77
"Oh, Merwin says that he's very tired and he and Dana would like to go to sleep so they can get up early the next morning and sit. Rinpoche saying, would you please tell them the Vajra Master has extended an invitation to Mr. Merwin to attend the Vajra Dance...
"Merwin says that he's definitely gone to sleep, and he definitely was at the dance: there's no reason for coming back, and he's already in bed, and that's it.
"Rinpoche going back and saying that this is part of the thing, and he's not only requested, he's sort of required to come ... that Rinpoche wants him there.
"Coming back down: Merwin: Rinpoche cannot tell him when he goes to bed: Rinpoche can tell him when to sit, and when to study, but no one is going to tell him when to go to bed.
"Then things got heavier and heavier. Rinpoche would start out by giving a talk, saying, 'I really admire Merwin's poetry, and I'm a great fan of his, and I think he's doing really well, but there's a certain kind of resistance going on, and he's under the idea that he wants to study Vajrayana and he really wants to practice Buddhism, and I want you to realize that I'm really going to insist that Merwin come down here no matter what, or what it takes.'
"... Everyone was getting very tired by then: it was getting late, around midnight. People were exhausted, drunk ... My own particular take was, God, Merwin, the worst that could happen is you get your clothes taken off ... 'OK, tell Merwin we're going to break down the door if he doesn't want to come down.
"... And no one wanted to do it; nobody wanted to do it. No one knows how to break down a door. And then ... loads of people are saying. 'Drop it, Rinpoche.'" -- Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
"This one guard in particular [Ron Barnstone] ... people were worried about breaking the door because it had been bad enough trashing out the hotel with the fire hoses (the night of the snowball fight) ... people started really freaking out. What is Rinpoche trying to do? ... endless discussion ... if you guys want to stay here and study vajrayana you have to attend, or split immediately. Rinpoche saying, 'I want that door broken down.'"
-- Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
The Breaking-in of Bill Merwin's and Dana Naone's door "They went down and told Rinpoche, 'Merwin's barricaded himself and there is no way to break down the door, can't we drop it?' Rinpoche says, 'Break through the plate glass window' ... So the guards ... decided to simultaneously break through the door and enter the plate glass window." -- Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
In an interview, Randy Blair asked Ron Barnstone about Niland's story that Barnstone may have intervened with Rinpoche, asking him not to order Merwin's door broken down. Barnstone laughed, and said, "No, that's not true."
-- Interview with Ron Barnstone (Blair) 6/24/77
"All these tough guys trying to decide who's going to do it. So finally they decided on a plan of action. Merwin had a balcony. It was a three or four foot leap from the next balcony. People said, we'll never be able to break down this door, so let's leap over there and see if we can get through the sliding glass door ... They could see through the sliding glass door that not only had Merwin locked it, but he had barricaded himself in the room with huge amounts of furniture piled against the door." -- Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
The Glass Storm"David Darwent -- he was the person who broke in through the glass window -- it was three stories up, and he climbs over, broke the window ... This whole thing about a 'glass storm.' I remember that vision, that image, very powerful -- A rain, a rain of glass, shattered glass."-- Interview with Barbara Meier (Faigao) 6/29/77
"... The first guy to break through the plate glass window [David Darwent] throws a chair through it and cuts himself up."
"... People were worried about breaking the door, because it had been bad enough trashing out the hotel with the fire hoses .... People started really freaking out -- What is Rinpoche trying to do? ... Endless discussion ... 'If you guys want to stay here and study Vajrayana, you have to attend, or split immediately: Rinpoche saying, 'I want that door broken down.'"
-- Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
William S. Merwin cuts some faces Although a long time member of the American pacifist community, Merwin, striking with beer bottles, caused them to break, and cut several people who were entering his room, creating wounds, one of which reportedly required 18 stitches, and the other 12, to close.
"Loring [Palmer, the first to enter] was this totally gentle guy, ex-Zenny ya know, just the most gentle guy in the world, I mean just so sweet ... He was the cook there, into organic foods, and he went and tried to have a long talk ... So once the door was broken down, the furniture pushed aside,
Loring was the first one in: luckily the first two guys in wore glasses, cause Merwin came out with a broken beer bottle and went straight for their eyes. Loring got some really bad cuts." -- Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
"Loring gets cut up, and Loring was on the trip of 'hey, I'm your friend!' and he just got cut, really badly around the eye, chin, cheek, and this guy is one of these guys that's very delicate looking, so it really shows up."
-- Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
"The next guy in, after Loring, was this very macho guy that prides himself on his karate knowledge,
Ron Barnstone. So he went charging in ... So Barnstone got cut as if the beer bottle went around the eye like he was aiming so exactly, you know; the circle went like this. If he'd been an inch off, someone would have been eyeless, but he was so exact in his aim."
-- Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
After entering the room "When I went into the room, he was quite berserk and came at me with a broken beer bottle, and I said again, sort of to indicate where the aggression was coming from,
I just stood there and I said, 'Bill, I'm your friend. Why don't you come down?' And he said, just kind of went berserk ... And I said, 'If you're going to hit me, go ahead.' And he stopped for a minute, but then a minute later he gave me a good punch in the eye. And I had a black eye for a while." -- Interview with William McKeever (LaHaye) 6/27/77
"So apparently they just grabbed him and the word got back that Rinpoche had sent out the word ... that Merwin was not to be harmed at all, because by then people were getting pissed. And the word was out that no matter what Merwin does to anyone, he is not to be harmed, except for physically subduing him. So, by then the guys charged in -- the story we were getting back was that Merwin, ya know, they got the beer bottle out of his hand, and a bunch of guys grabbed him and did a hammerlock on him. He started ranting and raving that he basically was trying to protect his girl friend, and that became his central theme ..."
-- Interview with Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
"He (Merwin) did say that when he saw the blood dripping out of Loring's eye, he realized that he had to [inaudible -- let go of?] something but it was only in as much as he would go downstairs, and stop putting up a fight."
-- Interview with Barbara Meier (Faigao) 6/29/77
At the party while waiting for the couple to be brought down "... And then Rinpoche went into the thing, before Merwin got down, about this is obviously Vajrayana -- the idea here is to unmask. Before we study Vajrayana we have to be willing to expose every bit of our neurosis ... and it's all very symbolic and obvious: that exposing yourself sometimes means literally doing it, and that you can't hope to deal with your neuroses if you're not going to admit them to anyone .... -- Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
Breaking, Cutting, Resisting, Surrendering Then someone announced, with satisfaction, that Rinpoche had sent an order to bring us down "at any cost". Evidently it was just what some had been waiting for. They started to smash at the door in unison with something heavy; I never saw what it was, but I'd heard something earlier about getting a beam from somewhere. We pushed as hard as we could, but finally the lock (a brass knob) was forced through the wood, and that door gave way. As the first hand came through I hit it with a bottle, and as the opening widened I reached around and struck down, hitting something I couldn't see. The bottle broke. I passed the broken top of it to my left hand, took another, reached through and struck downward again, not seeing who or what I was hitting at, and again the bottle broke. At that point Dana shrieked, and there was a loud crashing as the big glass balcony door was smashed, by McKeaver, among others, with another heavy object -- a large rock, I think. It was taken away afterwards before I had a chance to look closely. I crossed the room and started to beat the remnants of the glass door outward onto the balcony, pushing with the broken bottles, but meanwhile the crowd forced its way into the room behind us, from the hall. Dana was shouting, "Police! why doesn't somebody call the police?" but they laughed at her, women too, and Trungpa later mocked her for that, in one of his lectures.
They surrounded us. Dana was backed into a corner. They kept away from the broken bottles I was holding out. It was then that McKeaver asked if I wanted to kill him. As I remember, my answer was to tell him to keep his distance. If I'd "gone berserk", or hit him, as he claims, he'd probably have scars. The way he'd just made his way into the room, for one thing, would seem inconsistent with his statement that "all physical damage" was my doing. If he told me at that moment that he was my friend, as he says he did, I may not have taken the statement very seriously. Another disciple of Trungpa's, Richard Assally (?), was trying to edge along the wall toward Dana, meanwhile coaxing us both, sentimentally, to come and "dance with the energies" -- a phrase that was getting a lot of use. It was at this point that they led my (in fact) friend Loring up in front of me, and I saw that his face had been cut by a bottle at the door, and was streaming blood. At the sight, I suddenly fell helpless, put my arms out, and let them take the bottles.
They bent my arms back and piled onto me, and as they did, Dana started to fight. It was she who dealt out the black eye -- or eyes. (We thought there was only one: a tall man named Hirsch. Neither of us remembers that McKeever got one. Oh well.)
-- W.S. Merwin, letter to Pope, Pickering, and Trupp, 7-20-77
Were Bill Merwin and Dana Naone dragged downstairs to the party? Randy Blair asked guard Ron Barnstone if the couple were dragged downstairs. Barnstone replied that they went under their own power.
-- Interview with Ron Barnstone (Blair) 6/24/77
Persis McMillen said that Merwin and Dana were definitely dragged down. -- Interview with Persis McMillen (Santoli) 7/1/77
What was Trungpa's costume? At this point you and I are in costume. He wore what he usually was wearing ... At this time this was jeans, and suspenders, and a checkered flannel shirt."
-- Interview with Richard Assally (Faigao) 6/27/77
Tableau for the Confrontation "Here's Rinpoche, here's the other door, and they brought them in like this. Merwin and Dana are standing here like this and I was right here ... Maybe like three people between me and Rinpoche. And then this whole crowd of people like this. I felt almost very 'on stage' myself. And the other stairway was over here. I can remember feeling -- had no idea what was going on, I had no idea.
I got a whiff of Rinpoche's power, and I realized that like anything could happen, anything. And my mind started going crazy. I started having, like, hallucinations in terms of what could happen. Meanwhile, this is all going just more and more intense.
"And Merwin's calling Rinpoche names. Like, I think even names like 'charlatan' and 'why do you have to drag people out of their rooms -- what is this -- who do you think you are -- I don't have to -- you're not my teacher, you're not my guru.' Meanwhile, Dana is screaming, and I responded much more powerfully to her than to him."
-- Interview with Barbara Meier (Faigao) 6/29/77
Dana Naone describes being brought down "... We were let up, and walked down to the dining hall escorted by guards.
"Everyone in the dining hall (a number of people had gone to bed earlier) was ranged in a semi-circle around Trungpa. As we entered the circle, I said they were all "a bunch of cowards."
There was a terrific argument with Trungpa -- angry and heated, though neither of us shouted. He said we had not accepted his invitation, and talked about our aggressions and violent acts." -- Dana Naone, letter dated July 25, 1977, to Trupp, Pickering, Tom Pope
The Putative Orientality Rap Allegations have been made that Trungpa spoke to Dana, when she was brought before him, of her orientality.
"Rinpoche talking to Dana, said, 'You're oriental; you're smarter than this. You might be playing slave to this white man but you and I know where it's at. We're both oriental ... we know where it's at.' Then he started to talk about 'my country being ripped out from under me, and it was the Chinese communists who did it ... If there's one thing I want to see in my lifetime, it's to see my country back. Only one oriental to another can understand that.' He said, 'I know your background, Dana ... '
He kept doing this super racist thing ... very cutting, and her only response was, 'You're a Nazi, you're a Nazi,' and 'Someone call the police.' She was completely freaking out."
-- Interview with Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
Trungpa told Dana that he wanted Tibet back. In an interview Persis McMillen stated she had the feeling Trungpa was saying 'you are oriental, you shouldn't be opposing ...' in "seductive manner."
-- Interview with Persis McMillen (Santoli) 7/1/77
"He started commenting on her orientalness."
-- Interview with Paul Shippee (Sanders) 6/30/77
Dana Naone remembers the rap "William characterized his use of guards and physical force as fascistic; 'What about the people who instigate wars?' I asked.
His response was the Chinese communists had ripped off his country, and he wanted to rip off theirs. Leaning forward, over me (he was seated in a chair, and we were sitting on the floor in front of him), he said that he and I understood each other, and could talk to each other, but that William was a white man.
We had something between us because of our ancestry, which excluded William, he repeated, and I felt he was trying to use that as a seductive argument to divide William and me. I told him that he was barking up the wrong tree. Several times we were asked. 'What's your secret? 'No secret,' we said."
-- Dana Naone, letter dated July 25, 1977 to Trupp, Pickering, and Pope.
W.S. Merwin recalls being taken down to the Party, the orientality rap, the "lion's mouth" discussion, and a brief exchange regarding fascism, plus the stripping. They piled onto Dana, too, until someone, probably Tom Reikan, told them to lay off, and they let us go. We said we'd go down by ourselves, if they kept their hands off us. Tom told us they would, and we went down. The hall was crowded with onlookers.
Dana shouted again. "Why doesn't somebody call the police?" One of the women insulted her, told her to shut up. One of the male disciples threw a glass of wine in her face. I didn't see it, and she said nothing about it until afterwards.
In the dining-room, Trungpa seated in a chair: a ring of subdued party-goers sitting on the floor. As we walked in, Dana looked around and said loudly, "You're all a bunch of cowards."
Trungpa called us to come over in front of him, looked up at me, and said. "I hear you've been making a lot of trouble." Grabbed my free hand to try to force me down, saying, "Sit down." (The other hand had been bleeding a lot and was wrapped in a towel.) When he let go, we sat down on the floor. He said we hadn't accepted his invitation. I said that if we had to accept it it wasn't an invitation. He insisted that it was an invitation. An invitation, I said, allowed the other person the privilege of declining. We pushed that around a bit.
The way he saw it, no force seemed to have been used, except by us. I reminded him that we'd never promised to obey him. He said, "Ah, but you asked to come." Then, dramatically, "into the lion's mouth!" I said that they'd developed big corkscrews, new, for forcing coyotes out of their burrows, and that maybe he ought to get one, to do his job more easily. He said he wasn't interested.
Cross. That he wanted us to join in his celebration. I said that we'd thought it was lugubrious, and that as I understood it, one couldn't be forced to celebrate, if it was to mean anything. In one of these exchanges
he got angry and threw his glass of sake in my face. "That's sake," he told me. He turned to Dana and said. "You and I can understand each other better. You're an Asiatic." And more on that tack. I think Dana should recount what their conversation consisted of. She was very clear, and she I turned him off that one. In an exchange with us both
the subjects of fascism came up. I said I thought his use of a gang, and of intimidation, was fascistic. He said the Chinese had ripped off his country, and that he wanted to rip off theirs.
The whole question of violence, then. How violent we were. Dana asked him, "And what about the people who start violence and wars in the first place?"
He said, "What's the matter with wars?" And in the pause that followed that, he changed the subject, said he wanted us to join in the dance and celebration and take our clothes off." At that point; then and there, we both refused, saying that it was one more non-invitation. He asked, "Why not? What was our secret? Why didn't we want to undress?" To Dana he said, "Are you afraid to show your pubic hair?" We said there was no secret: we didn't dig his party, weren't there at our own choice, and didn't feel like undressing.
He said that if we wouldn't undress, we'd be stripped, and he ordered his guards to do the job. They dragged us apart, and it was then that Dana started screaming. Several of them on each of us, holding us down.
Only two men, Dennis White and Bill King, both of whom were married, with small children there at the seminary, said a word to try to stop it, on Dana's behalf. Trungpa stood up and punched Bill King in the face, called him a son-of-a-bitch, and told him not to interfere. The guards grabbed Bill King and got him out of there. One of the guards who'd stayed out of it, went out and vomited, as we heard later. When I was let go I got up and lunged at Trungpa. But there were three guards in between, and all I could swing at him, through the crowd, was a left, which was wrapped in the towel, and scarcely reached his mouth. It didn't amount to much, and I was dragged off, of course.
"See?" Trungpa said, "It's not so bad, is it?" When I asked, "Why us?" I meant not just the stripping, but
why had we been chosen, out of all the others who'd retired early from the "celebration." But I dropped the subject -- what was the point? Everybody rushed and took their clothes off, as though that was all it was really about. It must have been a relief. Some of them said it was: that they'd shared the whole thing with us.
I asked if he was ready to call off his dogs and let us go. He said yes, and as we started out he came after us, saying something about how he really loved us. We went up to the room, where a few people were starting to pick up the broken glass and stretch plastic over the balcony door. (Laura Kaufman, whom we know only slightly, meticulously cleaned the whole bathroom.) And from there a friend drove us to the hospital.
-- William S. Merwin letter to Pope, Pickering, and Trupp, 7/20/77
The stripping Niland recalls Trungpa saying "You still have to be stripped." Niland relates: "That's when Merwin said, 'all along I've just been trying to protect my woman. No one's going to see her naked body ... ' So first they said, 'O.K. Merwin, take your clothes off.' He said, 'I refuse, you'll have to take them off ...' So he (Trungpa) said, 'Guards, take his clothes off ...'
And he passively let people undress him." After Merwin, Niland recalls Rinpoche saying, "Now Dana." Then, Niland relates: "He (Merwin) said, 'No, not Dana.' (Rinpoche began) talking to him in his own terms about poetry ... that any poet worth his salt has to be willing to take his clothes off, even sometimes literally.
Rinpoche was saying, 'I mean you no harm, I really like you.' ... He was in a position to be very gracious at that point. "Merwin wasn't buying any of it. He was screaming: 'Hitler, bastard, Nazi, cop!' Then they went to strip Dana . . . and she fought back! .. . Then Dana was standing there, perfectly pretty girl, no scars, everyone 's wondering, does she have scars or something? A long discourse went down about art and poetry and Vajrayana and Rinpoche assuring them ...."
-- Interview with Jack Niland (Santoli ) 6/23/77
The stripping The only nude people during the Trungpa and Merwin confrontation were two nude people who came to the party that way -- standing next to Trungpa.
-- Interview with Richard Assally, (Faigao & Santoli) 6/27/77
Richard Assally, who removed her clothing,
recalled her as being rather passive while her clothes were taken off. He asked her to relax.
-- Interview with Richard Assally (Faigao & Santoli) 6/27/77
Barbara Meier watched the incident, standing on a nearby table "We (Dana and she) were just trying to become slight friends.
She was hysterical and she was looking around the room. 'What's the matter with you? Won't anybody help me? Won't someone help me? Won't someone call the police? Please, please call the police, somebody stop, stop this.'
"And she'd say, 'Joseph! what's the matter with you? Help me!' And she'd look at somebody else. 'Help me! Who are you? What kind of a friend are you? How can you let them do this to us; you're all cowards! You're all cowards! ... ' Well, that was very powerful. It was very heavy -- I just -- my feminine button was pushed. I just really wanted to go out there and help her and I swear to God, I mean, I was just -- just on the verge of like, you know, doing something ... and
the next thing, man, her clothes were off, and Merwin's clothes were off and she's screaming and ... kicking, and flailing around, and there's like sort of an instant circle of guards around them. I mean, everybody's bristled like that.
"And the things that were going through my mind ... Oh my God, I don't believe this. I just really can't believe this is happening; what's gonna happen next. I had just had this whole thing with Rinpoche too -- which was incomprehensible to me. I just didn't understand what was going on.
It was like his vajra anger somehow. His wrath, like all of a sudden he was a Mahakala, he was a wrathful deity ... And somehow the whole 'take' on it was that this was an expression of our own lack of ... this was how our frivolity and indulgence was met. And was thrown back at us. And I had no idea how far it had to go, for us ... to realize it, and I really regretted getting so stoned ... because I did realize something very powerful and potent was going on.
-- Interview with Barbara Meier (Faigao) 6/29/77
Cursing the vajra master "She's screaming, Rinpoche and Merwin are fighting, arguing, and Rinpoche is sitting up in his chair like this; I'd never seen him like that before; but I'd never seen him come back so fast from these name callings.
I'd never heard anyone call him names before. Insults. I'd never heard that -- I was shocked.-- Barbaro Meier (Bataan Faigao) 6/29/77
Did somebody come to Dana Naone's assistance? "I think, well, Ricky (Richard Assally), I think, started to, and then Rinpoche hit him in the face ... Richard Assally, Rinpoche hit him in the face, and said, 'strip her,' -- Oh, maybe he said 'strip her' and then Richard hesitated for a minute. I think he was, I'm pretty sure he was hit, and then he just like, 'snap', and did it. He said it was very 'powerful: like a heavy thing to do, you know, he felt close to her. I mean he was relating with her, and so it was very hard to 'obey' the guru. There was like this twist happening. So at a certain point he just did it,
he (Assally) just cut through his own attachment and did it. -- Interview with Barbara Meier (Faigao) 6/29/77
Dana Naone's account of the stripping "Trungpa said we were invited to take our clothes off, or have them taken off for us. Neither of us felt it was an invitation, and the guards were ordered to do the job. I tried to hang on to William but we were pulled apart, and I lunged at Trungpa and twisted my fingers in his belt. Guards dragged me off and pinned me to the floor. I could see William struggling a few feet away from me. I fought, and called to friends, men and women, whose faces I saw in the crowd -- to call the police. No one did. Only one man, Bill King, broke through to where I was lying at Trungpa's feet, shouting. "Leave her alone" and "Stop it." Trungpa rose above me, from his chair, and knocked Bill King down with a punch, swearing at him, and ordering that no one interfere. He was dragged away. (Dennis White was the only other person in the crowd who tried to protest: he appealed to Trungpa -- during the argument William and I were having with him -- to leave me out of it, but Trungpa told him to shut up.) Richard Assally was stripping me, while others held me down. Trungpa began punching Assally in the head, and urging him to do it faster. The rest of my clothes were torn off." -- Dana Naone, letter dated July 25, 1977 to Trupp, Pickering, and Pope
Dana called out to Landy [Landon] Mallery for help, while in front of Trungpa. Mallery informed Al Santoli in an interview that he wouldn't help her because he knew Rinpoche "well enough." A few people, recalled Mallery, did try to help.
-- Interview with Landy [Landon] Mallery (Santoli) 6/30/77
Bill King tried to help her, but three guys pulled him away.
-- Interview with Paul Shippee (Sanders) 6/30/77
Bill King was hit. Phil Richmond was also hit. -- Interview with Barbara Meier ( Faigao) 6/29/77
According to Allen Ginsberg, Merwin's version of the seminary incident included this verbal exchange between Merwin and Trungpa:
Merwin: "I didn't make any promises to you."
Trungpa: "You put your head in the lion's mouth."
-- Interview with Allen Ginsberg, 6/24/77 (Dorskind, Fryberger, Nager)
Ginsberg said Merwin's view or the "upshot" was: "'I respect Trungpa a great deal.' 'I love Trungpa a great deal,' or something like: 'I've learned a great deal from him, and I never want to see him again.'" -- Interview with Alan Ginsberg, 6/24/77 (Dorskind, Fryberger, Nager)
"The next thing after that I remember is that Merwin and Dana are standing together, facing Rinpoche, just completely huddled around each other. (They are nude.) Very beautiful. Adam and Eve. They are (laughs) gorgeous bodies ... The whole thing, just visually, was very elegant somehow. It was like a melodrama ... He's protecting her, and she's sobbing, and she's yelling. 'How could you do this to us?' And he's saying something about. 'Well, I'm not ashamed,' and then the next thing I can remember, is him saying something about 'Well, if we have the guts to do it, what's the matter with the rest of you cowards?' At which point, it was just amazing, without any hesitation whatsoever, everyone else, a hundred other people in that room, took off their clothes ... The music went back on, they left the room, and people started dancing again." -- Interview with Barbara Meier (Faigao) 6/29/77
Pan-Party Ecdysis "... Then Merwin said, 'Why us? ... Why are we the only two people in this room standing here naked in front of you?' ... Someone in the audience cried out, 'OK Merwin, we're all going to be naked.' And every fucking person in the place took their clothes off. The music went back on. Rinpoche said. 'let's dance'.
-- Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
Text of Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche letter to seminarians, placed in mail boxes morning after Halloween party:"Evening of October 31, 1975
Dear friends.
In order to present comprehensive communication between the students and myself, I have come to the conclusion that we need to break the ice of our personal concealment. It is time for us all to be honest. If you want to maintain your patterns of hiding your deception, you are invited to leave the seminary before the Vajrayana teachings begin. Since your neurosis is already an open secret, you could be braver in unmasking it. Without commitment to yourself, there is no ground to present the Vajrayana teachings to you. I invite you to be yourself, without trips. I would like to encourage you to make a proper relationship to the coming Vajrayana talks. This requires of you the understanding that we are not fooling each other. Since you are all pretty involved in the teachings, your attempt at deception is a useless hesitation.
In order to recognize your personal deceit, you must understand the umbilical cord between you and me. You must offer your neurosis as a feast to celebrate your entrance into the vajra teachings. Those of you who wish to leave will not be given a refund, but your karmic debt will continue as the vividness of your memory cannot be forgotten.
(signed)
Chogyam Trungpa, the Venerable Vajra, Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche."
(Text not paragraphed: text delivered via taped interview by Jack Niland, 6/23/77 to A. Santoli.)
[Hiroko Nagata] Toyama, why did you come to the mountain?
[Mieko Toyama] Why? I came for military training.
[Hiroko Nagata] No, I mean what feelings prompted you to come?
[Mieko Toyama] In order to advance the revolutionary war,
I understood that I would have to become a soldier.
In the enduring stage of conflict of the global revolutionary war,
we must develop the revolutionary war in advanced countries ...
[Hiroko Nagata] But you, why did you come here?
You haven't said a word about yourself.
Why did you come to the mountain?
[Mieko Toyama] What do you want me to say?
[Hiroko Nagata] We don't want to hear those kinds of things, but your actual feelings.
We want to know why you want to be a revolutionary soldier.
[Mieko Toyama] For the revolutionary war, we must take on a militant quality and ...
[Hiroko Nagata] No, that's not it. In more practical terms.
Because it is an extremely real situation we face.
Well,
why did you put on makeup this morning?
Why do you need makeup in the mountains?
Why are you growing your hair out?
[Mieko Toyama] Before, my hair was short, and the police knew that so
I decided to grow it in order to do underground activities.
[Hiroko Nagata] If that's the case, why not just use a wig?
I think there's another reason.
What is it?
[Kaneko] Toyama, why don't you take off your ring?
[Mieko Toyama] It's important. My mom gave it to me.
[Kaneko] Aren't you brushing your hair during meetings?
[Shindo] She just became a soldier, and we haven't addressed the female issues yet.
I accept responsibility for addressing the issue.
[Ozaki] This is probably a difference between city safe houses and mountain bases.
I think it's a difference in style between the RAF and the RLF.
[Hiroko Nagata] What have you all done since you came to the mountain?
You haven't done a thing.
The RAF doesn't understand anything.
You have this great mountain hut and plenty of food.
But living in a mountain base isn't so simple.
If things are like this,
all the work put in by the RLF will be meaningless
There's no way we can work together.
[Tsuneo Mori] We accept the RLF's criticisms of Toyama as general critiques of the RAF.
Though the RLF's group and self-criticisms emerged naturally,
evaluation from the perspective of the communist movement is also worthy.
We must address the relations between each revolutionary group from that perspective.
Through mutual critique, from each individual becoming communist
the all-out war can be won.
No objection!
Thus, until comrade Toyama criticizes her activities and becomes a communist,
we will not let her leave the mountain.
All of us will support comrade Toyama's self-critique.
She herself must work hard to go through critique.
Additionally, self-criticism is demanded of all others who require it.
Anyone leaving the mountain for something other than prescribed duty
will be executed.
No objection!
[Everyone] No objection!
-- United Red Army, directed by Koji Wakamatsu
William Merwin and Dana Naone decide to stay on at the seminary "He went and had a talk with Trungpa the next day, in which Rinpoche said he no longer had to attend classes because Merwin said he felt very self conscious. He stuck it out;
he showed up every time for Rinpoche's talks only. Otherwise he just stuck it out in his room, seemed to go for long drives in the country, and show up only in the evening."
Santoli asked Jack Niland if Merwin actually went through Vajrayana. Niland replied, "Absolutely -- Sat there every day."
-- Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
It is reported that William Merwin, during a meeting apparently subsequent to the stripping, gave Trungpa a present of a sheath knife.
-- Interview with Paul Shippee (Sanders) 6/30/77
Jack Niland, in the company of Persis McMillen, ran into Merwin in Aspen the next day. Niland recalls: "He (Merwin) said something about Rinpoche being drunk and really blowing it. He was on the trip that he was perfectly correct in his behavior and Rinpoche blew it, that he was just human. He said 'Rinpoche really made a fool of himself last night, didn't he?' This guy didn't get it at all." -- Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
Alan Marlowe saw William Merwin at lunch the next day, after the party, and Merwin expressed sorrow over the cutting up of Loring Palmer and sending him to the hospital.
-- Alan Marlowe (Sanders) 6/26/77
Persis McMillen also, like Merwin and Dana Naone, stayed on at the seminary after the stripping. In an interview McMillen recalled that Trungpa extended Merwin and Dana a personal invitation to stay. They stayed on nearly to the end of the seminary. Trungpa seemed open and tolerant to Merwin and Dana.
-- Persis McMillen (Santoli) 7/1/77
"The second from the last night of the seminary ... it was announced that they were going to have a ... party and show slides of the dance (Halloween party) ... Merwin split about an hour before the slide show and party."-- Jack Niland (Santoli) 6/23/77
"Joseph and I went up to their room, or they came into our rooms. They were talking about the invasion of their privacy. And the brutality, and the violence. And they were just appalled. They couldn't reconcile that experience with their conception of Buddhism, and meditation. It was just incomprehensible to them ... It was very difficult for me because I remembered the sort of bleary space that I'd been in that night, the impulse to want to help Dana, and I didn't want to apologize to them for not having helped, and they were really at fault at that, that no one had helped them, that no one had stood up for them, that we were all sheep, on and on ... just completely relentless in their version of the situation. But here we were, actually sitting down, talking; we had been friends, there was some notion that we might conceivably continue to be friends, and yet, this schism had occurred, and I really didn't want to cop out on any level.
I was trying to say, 'well, vajrayana teachings were ruthless; compassion takes many forms.' And they had some rapid fire answer to every statement, which in one way or another defended their sense of 'self' -- their sense of propriety. It was impenetrable.
"I actually burst into tears. I felt so frustrated ... The situation was so impossible." -- Interview with Barbara Meier (Faigao) 6/29/77
The reasons for staying on at the seminary Questions 9 & 10. About why we stayed on: whether he apologized.
The day after the happenings, as his letter was tacked up,
a verbal message came to us through the officers of the seminary, inviting us (yes) to stay on, "either as students or as guests". We sent back another, saying that we needed to know what he meant by those terms, and asking to see him. Several days later we were granted an interview. Quiet and polite. More on the subject of the invitation which we'd refused, and his disappointment. He asked us to stay on.
I said the decision must be Dana's, since I thought she had had much the worst of it. He urged her to please stay. Said there would be no more incidents: "one landmark was enough". We had talked it over, of course, and we did so again, in front of him. We'd come to study the whole course; we'd taken it (as he knew) seriously:
we wanted to finish what we'd begun, and not be scared off. The last lap, about to begin, was the famous Tantric teachings. We said that if we stayed, it would be with no guarantees of obedience, trust, or personal devotion to him. He said alright: so did we, and we shook hands. No apology on either side.
He said he was disappointed in our trying to hold ourselves together after the incident: going to class, talking to people as normally as possible. In his view we should have broken down, in some public way. I said I was appalled at what had happened, but that if the circumstances were to repeat themselves, I imagined that I would act in the same way. We stayed on until the end of the Tantric teachings, the last examination, three weeks later, attending his lectures, but going to other things irregularly. The day after the examinations, the prospect of another seminary party (including slides of Halloween) and of a coming blizzard forecast on the radio, that might keep us snowbound there for several more days, did not seem like things we wanted to hang around for, and we left.
-- W.S. Merwin, letter to Pope, Trupp, and Pickering, 7/20/77
Ed Sanders on Poetry, Crime and Culture A native of Kansas, youthful figure skating champion, collegiate classics scholar at New York University,
Ed Sanders first assaulted the world of contemporary culture and politics in the early 60's when he swam out to the Polaris nuclear submarine in a Connecticut harbor and boarded it illegally as a gesture of pacifist protest. This episode he celebrated in a work of verse, Poem From Jail. Soon thereafter he became editor of a seminal New York City mimeograph publication, Fuck You, A Magazine of the Arts: manager of the Peace Eye Bookshop; and
founder-composer-vocalist of The Fugs, a rock 'n roll group of legendary stature. He published Peace Eye Poems and gathered prosaic Lower East Side street data for his later Tales of Beatnik Glory. Moving west,
he spent a year covering the Charles Manson affair, first for the L.A. Free Press and later in an epic narrative, The Family: and made two albums of free-form country rock for Warners, Ed Sander's Truck Stop and Beer Cans on the Moon. Since then he has published 20,000 A.D., a book of poems manifesting his concerns with ancient history, and has done extensive investigative research in such fields as political assassinations, cattle mutilations and domestic intelligence. His current projects include the development of an "electronic pulse lyre" and the preparation of a performance piece called "The Karen Silkwood Cantata." He currently resides with his wife and daughter in Woodstock, NY., where he edits the Poetry, Crime and Culture Press.
But what I, and everyone else at the paper, could have done without was the Mansonoids.
Kirby had brought in poet and former Fug Ed Sanders from New York to cover the murder trial of Charlie Manson. As soon as he hit the tarmac at LAX, Ed was writing stuff about how the Establishment was railroading this innocent hippie tribe in order to crush the Counterculture.
Charlie and his Family loved the coverage. They loved the paper. They loved Ed. There were more of them on the loose than anybody not at the Freep realized. And as the trial progressed, every stoned-out nut in California seemed to want to join the Manson Family too...
The Mansonoids trusted Ed. They trusted him so much that they told him about all these other neat snuffs they had done that only their good buddies at the Free Press now knew about, hee, hee, hee....
So early on we all knew that Manson & Co. were indeed the crazed killers the wicked Establishment claimed they were, but Kirby had to keep on their good side, such as it was, the Freep had to hew to the Mansonsoid line, print Charlie's poems and manifestos, or the murderous creeps hanging around the paper might not like us any more....
-- Norman Spinrad: Autobiography, by Norman Spinrad
Report prepared and written by members of the Investigative Poetry Group, at the Naropa Institute, June 16-July 13, 1977, with additions in August & September, 1977.
The Investigative Poetry Group included members of the Investigative Poetry class, first session, Naropa Institute: Antler, Arnold Aprill, Randy Blair, Whitney Blauvellt, Glenn Dorskind, Philip Fryberger, Wayne Hall, Jan Johnson, Simon La Haye, Helen Luster, Matthew McCabe, Richard Nager, Brad Pearman, Mark Pickering, Tom Pope, Al Santoli, Mark Sargent, Alan Sobel, and Arthur Trupp, with special additional work by Balaan Faigao, Tasha Robbins, Miriam Sanders, and Simone Lazzeri.
Ed Sanders, investigative coordinator. Albert Santoli, associate. Title by Deirdre Sanders & Rick Nager.
The Party: A Chronological Perspective on a Confrontation at a Buddhist Seminary
© 1977 Poetry, Crime, & Culture Press
Box 729 Woodstock, N.Y. 12498
No portion of this report may be copied without written permission of Poetry, Crime & Culture Press. Illustrations by Glenn Eddy © 1973 Shambhala.