Re: Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chogyam Trungpa by Diana Mu
Posted: Tue Aug 06, 2019 4:44 am
ELEVEN
In the Summer of 1976, Gesar and I returned to Boulder to visit Rinpoche, who had just moved into town from Pine Brook Hills. Later that year, we would move into our new home on Mapleton Hill. While the new house was being renovated, Rinpoche was living in a rental at the corner of Seventh Street and Aurora, in an area of Boulder called "the Hill." The house had been owned by Scott Carpenter, who made the second manned spaceflight orbiting the earth in 1962. He named his spacecraft Aurora 7 -- based on the address of his house in Boulder. Rinpoche referred to the house as Aurora 7 in several poems that he wrote that summer.
Rinpoche had asked one of his students, John Perks, to help him put together a household at Aurora 7 modeled, somewhat loosely, on an English court or perhaps the house of an English lord. John himself was English, and he had been a footman and a bar boy in England, so he had a background in English service. More than that, however, he had a great flair for the theatrical and for large, somewhat ostentatious undertakings. He had also worked in several alternative schools in America and taught experiential education at Naropa Institute in 1974 and 1975. John was a colorful character and the perfect person to help Rinpoche create the Kalapa Court. For the next five years, John was intimately involved in Rinpoche's life and in the life of our family. He, was immensely helpful and loyal. However, in the 1980s, around the time that His Holiness the Karmapa passed away, John found it difficult to continue working with Rinpoche at the Court. Problems developed, and finally Rinpoche had to ask John to stop teaching and doing certain other things, which had gotten out of hand, and Johnnie moved away from Boulder and psychologically distanced himself from us.
In this era, however, he was very much in tune with what Rinpoche wanted to do. Together they were creating an Uplifted household atmosphere where many of Rinpoche's students could have direct contact with him by being involved in various areas of our domestic life. John became Rinpoche's butler and the head of his household. Now that I was not planning to live in Boulder year-round, Rinpoche had the freedom to expand the household and to invite more and more people in. He didn't have to worry as much about my reaction to ill of that, and frankly, for short periods of time, I found it quite bearable, enjoyable, and often entertaining. It was theater and pageantry, and I could also see that it was good training in mindfulness and devotion for Rinpoche's students.
The Court approach was certainly influenced by the success of the households that were organized for His Holiness the Karmapa, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and other major Tibetan teachers. Rinpoche's students loved having this kind of intimate contact with a teacher's everyday life, and it was quite natural to begin to extend that model to Rinpoche. He still was working with somewhat of a corporate model in terms of his office and office staff, but on the home front, the nearest Western model on which to base a Shambhala household seemed to be the courts of European monarchs, with a touch of Asia thrown in the mix; I suppose that if he wanted a more homegrown approach, Rinpoche could have suggested organizing his life around the model of the American White House, which is really another take on a European court, but he was not attracted to this bastion of democracy as a role model for himself or his students.
The situation at the Aurora 7 house was a bit toned down from the more elaborate scenes that would develop at the Court on Mapleton Avenue in the fill. Rinpoche and John were still experimenting with how to set the whole thing up. Rinpoche had asked Max King to come out from California and be his cook. I think Max was the first full-time cook we had. During the month he spent in California, Rinpoche had been very impressed with Max's talent as a chef and had started calling him "Cookie Divine." Cookie Divine was also a graduate student getting his Ph.D. in psychology, but he put that aspect of his life aside to move to Boulder to cook for Rinpoche.
With Max able to cook almost any meal from the Oriental or Western repertoire that Rinpoche might desire, it was a small step to organizing many dinner parties and setting up a rota for kitchen assistants, servers, and dishwashers. People signed up for these jobs because they got to hang out at the house and witness what unfolded, and on many occasions, Rinpoche would draw them into the action in some way or other. When he met somebody, he instantly connected with them, and he never forgot a face. This I think was because he wasn't just superficially getting to know people, but instantaneously he could see into the deepest parts of a person. A server at the house might have just a small exchange with him while putting a potato on his plate, but it meant a tremendous amount to him or her. The scene was often playful and magical, I must say.
There were dinners in the backyard served by candlelight. John Perks would direct people to move the dining room table and chairs, plus candelabras and good china, and set a beautiful table on the back patio. Sometimes, Rinpoche would have a bed made up in the backyard and he would sleep out there. Osel was home for the summer, and he remembers sleeping under the stars in the backyard with his father.
Earlier in the summer, Rinpoche had invited David Rome, who was now his secretary, to move into the house. David had at first resisted the idea. In response, Rinpoche asked some people to go over to David's house while he was out and turn all the furniture in the whole house upside down. When David came home, he could only think of one person who would pull this practical joke, and he took it as a message that he should agree to live in Rinpoche's house.
Starting in New York earlier in the year, Rinpoche had developed some spontaneous theater, shall we say, in connection with taking his evening pill to control his blood pressure. (He had developed high blood pressure in the early 1970s.) This ritual reached new heights that summer. At the end of an evening at Aurora 7, whoever was there when Rinpoche was getting ready to retire, which often included the servers, would be invited into the living room to witness a spontaneous play. The drama always revolved around Rinpoche taking his medicine. He would speak in what sounded like Japanese, although he didn't know Japanese, and David would tell the audience what he was supposedly saying. The point of the play was that, when Rinpoche would swallow the pill, it was supposed to be committing seppuku, or ritual suicide, as in the Japanese samurai films. Instead of using a sword, Rinpoche would die by the pill. When he actually swallowed the pill, he would fall down on the floor, writhing in what seemed like genuine agony, and sometimes a little saliva would leak out of the corner of his mouth. Then he would fall silent, his eyes would roll up in his head, and frankly, he looked like he was dead. Then he would revive himself and laugh heartily about the whole thing. The first time I witnessed this, I thought we should call an ambulance.
This was the kind of thing that went on at the house, and the excitement around such everyday events was why many people wanted to serve at the house. It is a bit like people signing up to usher at the theater so that they can see the show.
I had witnessed early on in our married life that Rinpoche did not like having paid servants, which he considered demeaning to both them and him. He was never comfortable with the hired help that Marty Franco provided to us. The situation at the emerging Court was quite different. Being around Rinpoche in this intimate, everyday environment was really part of what I would cial the love affair that so many of his students had with him. It was mutual: Rinpoche loved his students tremendously, each one of them, and he wanted to spend time with so many people up close. Being at the Court was a learning experience for people and a way to express their devotion.
That summer, after Osel came home from school in Ojai, we decided that he should stay in Boulder permanently with his father and me, when I was there. He had really gotten all that he needed out of the boarding school situation, and Rinpoche· wanted to spend time with him and also let him spend more time with friends in Boulder. A few years later, some of Rinpoche's students started a private day school called Vidya School in Boulder, which aimed to provide both a good Western education and an education in Buddhism and meditation for the students. Osel went to Vidya for several years while he also was pursuing meditation and Buddhist studies directly with his father.
I don't think I realized at this time how far Rinpoche would go with the whole Court idea. In some ways, it was more organized and less chaotic at the Aurora 7 house than our family life had been before. John was extremely sweet and helpful during this era, and there was a measure of privacy for us at this time. David Rome had almost been a member of our family for years anyway, since he had been helping at the house at Boulder Heights and driving Rinpoche to the office and doing all manner of things for him since late 1973. I suppose I also wasn't so heavily invested in the household being a certain way, because I was just visiting with Gesar that summer. At the end of the summer, I was going to be on my way back to California to continue working with Charles.
Naropa Institute was into its third summer, and Rinpoche taught two major seminars there that year. In June, at the first session, Rinpoche taught a seminar on "Viewing and Working With the Phenomenal World," which was an overview of the Buddhist path, and during the second session he taught a seminar on the "Yogic Songs of Milarepa." There were plans to have Naropa expand from a summer institute into a year-round program, offering degree programs in psychology, Buddhist studies, poetry, and other disciplines. Several times a week, Rinpoche taught in the evenings there, and throughout the summer, he was involved in meetings to discuss the expansion of the institute.
One of the reasons that I came back to spend time in Boulder that summer was that my sister Tessa was getting married at the end of July. She was marrying Douglas Penick, who was a delightful man whom Rinpoche and I were both very fond of. She had had a few difficult and unsuccessful relationships, so we were both very happy about her marriage to Douglas.That summer Rinpoche presided over the weddings of many of his oldest and closest students. There must have been a wedding a week. The ceremonies were held in the shrine room at 1111 Pearl Street, and then most of the receptions were in someone's backyard. This was an era in which many people were settling down into long-term relationships and thinking about starting families. Over the next few years, many children. were born into the Buddhist community, which is one reason that Vidya School got started. There was also a lot of interest in starting a preschool, and in 1976 Alaya Preschool, started by community members, opened in north Boulder.
A major event that summer was the empowerment of Thomas Rich as the Vajra Regent Osel Tendzin. The ceremony took place at the end of August in the main shrine room at 1111 Pearl Street, and the hall was packed beyond capacity. More than six hundred people attended. It was a landmark event in the community. Rinpoche decided to hold the Regent's empowerment at the end of a gathering of Vajrayana students, which he called a Vajra Assembly. Students came from all over North America to practice together and to hear Rinpoche lecture on the principles of lineage. The last night, the Regent's empowerment was held. As I mentioned earlier, it was very important to Rinpoche to be able to fully transmit the teachings of his lineage to Westerners. Having a Western regent and dharma heir to preserve his teachings was crucial in his mind. He wanted as many people as possible to witness this event. Everyone had great hopes for the Regent. As part of the ceremony, the Regent took an oath to uphold the Kagyu lineage and the teachings of Buddhism, and he drank what is called oath water, or samaya water, to mark taking this oath. This is a common feature of taking on commitments in the Vajrayana path of Buddhism. According to the tradition, if you uphold your oath, the water you drink will be an aid and act almost like a magic potion to enhance your accomplishment. If you break the oath, it is said that the water will turn to molten lead in your veins and destroy you. It is a heavy-handed commitment, to say the least.
Rinpoche was well aware that the Regent needed training and mentoring over a long period of time if he was going to fully step into the role for which he was being groomed. Rinpoche had already been working with the Regent for a number of years, but they both knew that much more was needed. So while Rinpoche expressed his appreciation for what the Regent had already accomplished, Rinpoche also put a great deal of thought into how to work further with his educational process. Rinpoche told me that he wanted Osel Tendzin and his family to move into the house with us on Mapleton Avenue, the future home of the Kalapa Court. He wanted to have intimate, day-to-day contact with the Regent as part of their work together.
The Regent and Lila had their second son, Anthony, earlier that summer. Rinpoche and I were both at the hospital the night he was born. We were in the waiting room when the Regent came out to say that they had another son and that it had been a difficult birth. The four Riches -- the Regent, Lila, Vajra, and Anthony -- would be joining Rinpoche, Osel, Gesar, and me at the Kalapa Court on Mapleton. I didn't see this as a problem at that time. Again, I was planning to be away a fair amount of time each year until my dressage training was completed. I realized that making the decision to pursue my own career was good not only for my discipline, but for my greater sanity, given the expansion of our personal life into a bigger and bigger scene.
Rinpoche also let people know that summer that he was planning to take almost the entire next year, 1977, as a year of retreat. He was going to spend the year in a house near Charlemont, Massachusetts, where he had done other short retreats in the early seventies. Jean-Claude van Itallie, the playwright, had offered Rinpoche the use of the house. Rinpoche was going to take John Perks and Max King into retreat as his staff, and various people would visit throughout the year. However, he would not be teaching at Naropa the following summer, and he was going to turn over the running of the administration to Osel Tendzin. Rinpoche said, among other things, that by leaving for a year both he and his students would get a much better idea of what had actually been transmitted and where further work was needed. While he was away from Boulder, I didn't expect to spend that much time in town, so for that reason also I was not worried about having other people living in our home. In fact, I thought it would be a good idea if the house were not left empty with both of us away.
At the end of the summer, Rinpoche went to Rocky Mountain Dharma Center and I headed to Charles's new location in southern California. The fourth Vajradhatu Seminary took place that fall in Land O'Lakes, Wisconsin, at the King's Gate Hotel. This year there were close to two hundred students attending the seminary. Rinpoche had a suite of rooms in the hotel that he lived in toward the end of the seminary, but which he initially used mainly to hold meetings and to prepare his talks. His actual residence was a tiny little trailer on a lake about a half-hour's drive from the hotel. Max went to the seminary as Rinpoche's cook and lived in the second bedroom in the trailer. Various people from the seminary would come over to help with the cooking, cleaning, and driving, but Rinpoche had a very modest domestic situation, almost retreatlike in its simplicity.
This seminary was notable in that Rinpoche began to present the Shambhala teachings on warriorship and enlightened society while he was there. During the Vajrayana section of that seminary, he gave a number of teachings about the meaning of Shambhala and its importance for the modern age. Since he had left Tibet in 1959, the only terma teaching that he had received was the Sadhana if Mahamudra, which he discovered when he did his retreat in Bhutan in 1969. He had found a number of terma in Tibet as a young man, but he hadn't received anything else since the experience in Bhutan. At Land O' Lakes, he received the first Shambhala terma that he discovered in the West, and this was really a turning point in both the content and the style of his teaching in America.
While he was at Land O' Lakes, Rinpoche first received a symbol of the Shambhala teachings as terma, rather than a written teaching. While he was staying in that tiny cabin on the lake, one night he stayed up all night after giving a talk, and sometime before dawn, he started doing calligraphy with large Japanese brushes, using sumi ink on white paper. He kept doing the same calligraphy stroke over and over. It didn't have a name, but Rinpoche felt that it meant something important. He shared it with David Rome, who was teaching a course at the seminary, and with a few other students, but he didn't want it generally distributed to anyone. A few days later, a Shambhala text, called the Golden Sun of the Great East, arose in his mind. It described the stroke and its significance and gave it a name: the stroke of Ashe, The text talked about how to overcome the spiritual, psychological, and political obstacles and the degeneration of the current era by connecting with human dignity and manifesting the confidence and strength embodied in the Ashe symbol.
About a week later, Rinpoche left the seminary to teach a course at Karme Choling, and while he was there, he wrote a long commentary on the text he had received. Together, these writings constitute what I would call almost a manual of political and psychological strategy for working with conflict and aggression. This text is often referred to as the "root text," because it is the root of so many Shambhala teachings that Rinpoche transmitted. He felt that only a few of his students were ready to receive these teachings directly at that point, and he and David worked together to decide how to share this material. A few days after Rinpoche received the stroke of Ashe and the root text, the Vajra Regent visited the seminary, and Rinpoche gave him and a few other people transmission in doing this calligraphy stroke as a practice.
A program of study eventually was developed, called Shambhala Education, to present the groundwork to people so they could understand and apply the teachings in the text. Further Shambhala texts unfolded over the next two years, a whole cycle of Shambhala terma, which Rinpoche said came not directly from Padmasambhava, but from Padmasambhava as he manifested in the form of King Gesar of Ling and from the mind of the Rigden kings, the rulers of the Shambhala kingdom. These discoveries would have a huge and intimate effect on our lives, perhaps not so much immediately, but more and more as time went on. The Shambhala teachings became the driving force for Rinpoche in the last ten years of his life.
One of the correlations between the teachings and our personal lives was that this text and all the subsequent texts used the language and the symbolism of monarchy and a royal existence. This is also very much the language that is often used in the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition. Rinpoche talked a great deal about ruling your life as part of the Shambhala teachings. In Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom if Shambhala, he said:
He was not referring here to some system of building up confidence in yourself in, say, the fashion of self-improvement or the human potential movement, which he really detested because he felt these approaches make false promises and do not address the fundamental, underlying issues. He was talking about a much more complete process of transformation, by seeing your life as a whole and realizing that you can conquer the obstacles you encounter, not through aggression or bravado but through the application of gentleness, intelligence, and fearlessness-the fundamental qualities of the Shambhala warrior. He truly believed that every human being could do this.
He also felt that the teacher in this situation has to set the example for the students, as is true throughout the Buddhist teachings. In presenting the Shambhala teachings of enlightened society, he felt that his own life should be an example, his life should be an open book, or an open court, I guess. In some way, this had always been true, but clearly this was moving to another level.
As mentioned earlier, in Tibet Rinpoche's teacher Jamgon Kongtrul talked to him about how a monk might have to become a king for the teachings of the Buddha to survive in the modern world. At first, Rinpoche seemed to think that this mainly meant that the presentation of Buddhism in the West would need to be more secular, less monastic. Beginning in this era, however, he began to see this as more literal advice. I think he felt that he was to be a messenger for the Rigden kings as well as their servant; he felt that he had to embody the enlightened energy of Shambhala as best as he could. And the model for that, in terms of everyday life, was the court of the king and queen. Voila the Kalapa Court. Voila its occupants: Rinpoche and me.
Previously I mentioned that, around 1974, the people at Karme Choling had purchased an old farmhouse about a ten-minute drive from the main building for Rinpoche and our family. The name he gave it, Bhumipali Bhavan, means "the dwelling place of the female earth protector." The Sanskrit word Bhumipali in Tibetan is Sakyong Uilngmo. At the 1976 seminary, Rinpoche gave a talk about Bhumipala, the male earth protector, as the guardian of the dharma. He assumed the tide of Sakyong, the Tibetan for Bhumipala, within the year. In Tibetan mythology, the Sakyong is the messenger or the representative of the Rigden kings on earth, since they are now supposed to be in a celestial realm. A few years later, Rinpoche and I would both take a formal empowerment as Sakyong and Sakyong Wangmo, or Bhumipala and Bhumipali, depending on whether you use the Tibetan or the Sanskrit. His Holiness· Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche conferred this empowerment on us. But back in 1974, when we were just at the end of living a semi-hippie life, Rinpoche already was employing the term Bhumipali to refer to me.
He also referred to me as the Sakyong Wangmo in a poem he wrote while I was home in the summer of 1976. He wrote: "She is the only Sakyong Wangmo / ... She deserves to be coronated in the midst of Shambhala kingdom as the only monarch who exists as Vajra queen." At the time, I didn't pay much attention to these references. Little did I know what was in store for me.
I returned to Boulder in early December 1976, somewhat uncertain about the future of my riding career now that things had fallen apart with Charles. I came home to move into our new home with Rinpoche et al, to spend the holidays together as a family and to give Gesar and myself some time with Rinpoche before he left for his long retreat.
I knew that our new home was to be called the Kalapa Court and I knew that Rinpoche was moving in the direction of a much grander lifestyle that would include many more people being and working in our home, but I wasn't prepared for what I encountered. While Rinpoche was concluding the seminary that fall, John had been busy creating a rather over-the-top courtlike situation to receive him. The house had been furnished in the style of an upper-class English manor house, not unlike what the Ham Manor of my childhood had been like, but with the addition of a lot more brocade. Additionally, there was the influence of an Oriental and often specifically Japanese aesthetic, at this point more in the little touches than in the furniture or layout as a whole. In consultation with Rinpoche, John had arranged for a young couple to join the household staff: Bob Vogler and his fiancee Shari. They had been living at Karme Choling but moved to Boulder to live and work at the Court. Bob was to be the butler working under John, and Shari was in charge of housekeeping and worked in the kitchen under Max. While Rinpoche was away in 1977, they would be the main staff for the Regent and his family. John also had assembled a cadre of volunteers to serve at the house, and he had created uniforms for them. The women who worked in the kitchen wore red aprons; those serving in the rest of the house wore white aprons with very ostentatious white shoulders over a black dress. We began referring to them as "the penguins." There were people arranging flowers, polishing brass doorknobs, greeting you at the door, taking your coat, bringing you something to drink, setting the table, and performing all manner of household functions.
John, Shari, and Bob all lived in rooms in the basement. On the main floor, there was a library off the large entry hall as well as a living room with a large mantle and fireplace, behind which was the formal dining room. There was a lot of dark wood paneling in this house. The kitchen was also on the main floor. Rinpoche and I had a bedroom with a sitting room upstairs, and Osel's room was on the second floor. Gesar lived on the top floor with Pat Adducci. It was very good for him that he had the continuity of his relationship with Pat throughout all the changes in our life at this time. The Regent, Lila, and their children had their rooms on the second floor as well. The so-called servants could be found on all floors at all hours of the day and night performing all manner of tasks.
When Rinpoche arrived, he was delighted by the Court, and he immediately began to have receptions, dinners, and other social gatherings at the house, inviting as many members of the sangha as he could into our home. You might be invited as a guest one night and return as a servant the next. People were anxious to be around the house as much as possible since this was where people felt it was all "happening" at this time. The word spread that casual dress was out. Men came to dinner in suits and ties; women in cocktail dresses and high heels. The dress code had been changing for some time, but many still looked uncomfortable in their new apparel, with the men's hair shortened, the ladies' carefully coiffed. People also began to practice their table manners before going to dinner at the Court. There were, infact, classes on both serving and proper guest etiquette offered to members of the sangha.
During this period, I had to buy a lot of clothes. I was trying to find a happy medium between frumpy and fashionable, and I bought a black jacket that I thought was attractive. Rinpoche told me, "It's not tailored that well for you." It was the first time that Rinpoche had been critical of my dress. So then I said to John Perks, "Well, don't you think that this looks good?" John replied, "Well, madam, although anything you wear looks wonderful on you, I think that you could have a more tailored jacket." I believe I dumped the jacket and bought something else.
The evening gatherings at the Mapleton Court often led to sessions of calligraphy practice late at night, usually held in the entryway, where Rinpoche would demonstrate the new Shambhala practice and initiate students on the spot. These proceedings usually were accompanied by readings from the new Shambhala text. There were rumors about all this flying throughout the community, and there was tremendous curiosity about the Shambhala teachings that Rinpoche had received and was now beginning to present. In fact, people's curiosity and desire to be included were whetted by the fact that the whole thing was supposed to be a big secret, but everyone had heard something about it.
Rinpoche was, at this stage, introducing people to this new material in small informal gatherings. Within a few months, classes and study groups were organized at Karma Dzong, but for now, most of the transmissions took place at our home. Many nights that December and January, if you drove down Mapleton Avenue, you would see lights blazing at number 550. From the street, you might see a throng of people at three A.M. congregated in the front hallway. I'm sure our neighbors wondered what we Were up to. The guests were usually either practicing calligraphy or watching others. As part of this practice, at one point, the person performing the stroke touches the brush to the tip of the tongue. Frequently, especially in the early days, people overdid this part of the practice and ended up with a quantity of black sumi ink on their tongue and teeth. Later, if someone smiled at you, he or she often revealed a distinct black stain on the inside of the mouth. It could be a bit ghoulish.
A week before Christmas, the community held the official opening of Dorje Dzong, which means "indestructible fortress." This event marked the community's move into a new building at 1345 Spruce Street, which remains the headquarters in Boulder today. The new location was a three-story stone office building. It was acquired early in 1976, and throughout most of the year, renovations had been going on. The top floor was turned into a beautiful shrine room, with twenty-foot ceilings. The room could hold many more people than the old location, which we had completely outgrown at this point. The thangka of the Buddha, which the queen of Bhutan had given to Rinpoche so many years ago, was installed as the centerpiece of the new shrine. On either side of it were banners designed by Rinpoche bearing the logos for Vajradhatu that he had created. A few years later, Rinpoche would invite Sherab Palden Beru to come over from Scotland to paint a huge new thangka of the Buddha Vajradhara especially for the shrine room. During his last visit to America, His Holiness the Karmapa placed his handprint in ink on the back of this thangka to consecrate this beautiful and powerful image.
On the second floor of the new building, Rinpoche had a suite of offices, called "A Suite," and the Regent was given a suite on the other end of the floor, called "B Suite." Classrooms and other offices were located mainly in the basement and on the main floor. Almost the entire Boulder community attended the opening of the building, which was held in the shrine room. The room was packed. The ceremony was very similar to one held in 1972 to mark the opening of 1111 Pearl Street: Rinpoche lit the candles on the main shrine and then, from one of those candles, he lit another candle which he passed to the Regent, who lit his candle, and then the light was passed from one person to another. Each person was holding a candle, so that by the end, there were close to a thousand lights glimmering in the room.
In late December, at our house, we were preparing to celebrate Christmas. I had always enjoyed this holiday: I loved to have a tree and exchange gifts. Rinpoche was not so keen on Christmas because of its obvious Christian connotations. (Two years later he inaugurated the celebration of Children's Day on the winter solstice as an alternative festival.) However, this year he didn't object to my decorating the house and buying gifts for the children, and we planned to have a nice family Christmas dinner together in our new home.
I had not seen my mother since the day she. had recoiled from touching her grandchildren; I had heard stories from my sister that Mother was spending what was left of her funds on private detectives to keep tabs on me. At one point, earlier this year, a story had spread that my mother had taken out a contract on Rinpoche's life. This probably wasn't true, but the danger seemed very real at the time. At one point, the vajra guards, the Dorje Kasung, were told to be on alert against this possibility. Frankly, I think Rinpoche probably enjoyed having a threat like this to heighten the awareness of the Dorje Kasung.
In any case, I thought that I might never see my mother again. I certainly had no plans to reconcile with her, especially now that she seemed to be trying to get my husband killed! She had somewhat made peace with Tessa, and to my great surprise, she decided to come to Boulder to have Christmas with Tessa and Douglas. We knew that she was in town, but I planned to ignore her completely.
Then, seemingly out of the blue and certainly not to my liking, Rinpoche announced on Christmas Day that he would like to invite my mother to dinner with Douglas and Tessa. I was astounded. I thought that there was not a chance that she would accept. So I said, "Go ahead."
Rinpoche asked his kasung to drive the Mercedes over to Tessa's house, which was only about a five-minute drive from our home. He asked the kasung to deliver an invitation to Mrs. Pybus, my mother, to come for Christmas dinner. The kasung dutifully went with the invitation, but returned empty-handed. Mrs. Pybus had replied that she would only accept the invitation if Rinpoche would come himself and beg her forgiveness on bended knee for having stolen her daughter away.
Rinpoche was so excited. He was already dressed to the nines for dinner, and he immediately asked for his coat and hat and went off with the driver. He went to Tessa's house, where he went down on his knees and apologized to Mrs. Pybus for taking he; daughter and invited her back to Christmas dinner. She was, I think, completely disarmed by his willingness to humble himself in this manner. She accepted the invitation.
They arrived back at the house together, with Tessa and Douglas in tow as well. I was somewhat in shock. Rinpoche, however, was beaming. As you can imagine, my mother was thoroughly impressed with the house, the dinner, the service -- the whole thing. It was quite different from our lifestyle a few years earlier. In addition to our family, the Regent and Lila and their family joined us for dinner, and I believe there were several other guests, nicely dressed and on their very best behavior. My mother made charming chitchat with people, and she herself was clearly charmed. She and Rinpoche had a long conversation about the history of European architecture over drinks. By the end of the evening, she was completely won over. Rinpoche sent his car to take her home, the perfect crowning touch.
We saw her almost every day during the rest of her visit in Boulder. She couldn't get enough of Rinpoche or the Court. A few days later, Rinpoche arranged to have a formal reception for her at the fanciest hotel in Boulder, which at this time was the Harvest House. He rented the largest ballroom there, and told all his students to wear formal attire. Women came in long dresses and white gloves; men rented tuxedos. Handel's Water Music, which Rinpoche loved, was playing over the sound system as people arrived and were introduced. There was a receiving line where each person was formally presented to Mrs. Pybus, who was clearly being showcased as something equivalent to the Queen Mother in our world. If there was a contract out on Rinpoche, my mother certainly cancelled it at that point. She was utterly enthralled at this point with her son-in-law and the world in which he was living, as well as her potential position in that world.
Rinpoche was enormously pleased with himself for having won her over. That first evening, after she went home from Christmas dinner, we sat up for awhile in the living room talking about what had happened. At one point, he turned to me with a huge smile on his face and said, "If I can conquer your mother, I can conquer the whole world!" At that moment, I had to agree with him. The next day he wrote a poem to celebrate his victory:
In the Summer of 1976, Gesar and I returned to Boulder to visit Rinpoche, who had just moved into town from Pine Brook Hills. Later that year, we would move into our new home on Mapleton Hill. While the new house was being renovated, Rinpoche was living in a rental at the corner of Seventh Street and Aurora, in an area of Boulder called "the Hill." The house had been owned by Scott Carpenter, who made the second manned spaceflight orbiting the earth in 1962. He named his spacecraft Aurora 7 -- based on the address of his house in Boulder. Rinpoche referred to the house as Aurora 7 in several poems that he wrote that summer.
Rinpoche had asked one of his students, John Perks, to help him put together a household at Aurora 7 modeled, somewhat loosely, on an English court or perhaps the house of an English lord. John himself was English, and he had been a footman and a bar boy in England, so he had a background in English service. More than that, however, he had a great flair for the theatrical and for large, somewhat ostentatious undertakings. He had also worked in several alternative schools in America and taught experiential education at Naropa Institute in 1974 and 1975. John was a colorful character and the perfect person to help Rinpoche create the Kalapa Court. For the next five years, John was intimately involved in Rinpoche's life and in the life of our family. He, was immensely helpful and loyal. However, in the 1980s, around the time that His Holiness the Karmapa passed away, John found it difficult to continue working with Rinpoche at the Court. Problems developed, and finally Rinpoche had to ask John to stop teaching and doing certain other things, which had gotten out of hand, and Johnnie moved away from Boulder and psychologically distanced himself from us.
In this era, however, he was very much in tune with what Rinpoche wanted to do. Together they were creating an Uplifted household atmosphere where many of Rinpoche's students could have direct contact with him by being involved in various areas of our domestic life. John became Rinpoche's butler and the head of his household. Now that I was not planning to live in Boulder year-round, Rinpoche had the freedom to expand the household and to invite more and more people in. He didn't have to worry as much about my reaction to ill of that, and frankly, for short periods of time, I found it quite bearable, enjoyable, and often entertaining. It was theater and pageantry, and I could also see that it was good training in mindfulness and devotion for Rinpoche's students.
The Court approach was certainly influenced by the success of the households that were organized for His Holiness the Karmapa, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and other major Tibetan teachers. Rinpoche's students loved having this kind of intimate contact with a teacher's everyday life, and it was quite natural to begin to extend that model to Rinpoche. He still was working with somewhat of a corporate model in terms of his office and office staff, but on the home front, the nearest Western model on which to base a Shambhala household seemed to be the courts of European monarchs, with a touch of Asia thrown in the mix; I suppose that if he wanted a more homegrown approach, Rinpoche could have suggested organizing his life around the model of the American White House, which is really another take on a European court, but he was not attracted to this bastion of democracy as a role model for himself or his students.
Most people think of Charles II as the ‘merry monarch’, with his perky Cockney mistress, Nell Gwyn (perhaps the Barbara Windsor of her day), at the centre of a court remarkable for its gaiety, extravagance, and amorous entanglements. The poet John Dryden, always agreeable to the ruling classes, described it as a “laughing, quaffing and unthinking time”, but it is clear that there was widespread disapproval of this ‘brave new world’, as is suggested by the title of poet Samuel Butler’s Satire upon the Licentious Age of Charles the Second.For those who heretofore sought private holes,
Securely in the dark to damn their souls,
Wore vizards of hypocrisy, to steal
And slink away in masquerade to hell,
Now bring their crimes into the open sun,
For all mankind to gaze their worst upon,
As eagles try their young against his rays,
To prove if they're of gen'rous breed or base;
Call heav'n and earth to witness how they've aim'd,
With all their utmost vigour, to be damn'd,
And by their own examples, in the view
Of all the world, striv'd to damn others too.
-- Satire Upon the Licentious Age of Charles II, by Samuel Butler
Samuel Pepys recorded the king dancing to a popular tune of the time, ‘Cuckolds All A-Row’, which well suggests the cheery, heartless, amoral world of the royal court....
A series of courtiers’ young wives loyally laid themselves down for their (prospective) king, with a view to present or future rewards; Charles was always generous to those who did him service, even when he could not really afford it. These young women, like most of the women in Charles’s life, would have been generally dismissed as ‘buttered buns’ – that is, as women who had been recently possessed by other men, and not to be taken seriously....
Charles had many mistresses in both France and England. One of his servants, Thomas Chiffinch, used to bring them up to him via the back stairs to his room. Charles also had liaisons with many actresses: Mistress Knight, Mistress Weaver; and one, Moll Davis, was given a house; a pension of £1,000 a year; and an expensive ring....
By the end of Charles’s reign, there was an increasing sense of weariness and disgust at what was seen as a degenerate court. In 1683, even one of the previously most debauched libertine courtiers, Charles Sackville, wrote a lengthy satire, or diatribe – beginning:...Go on, my muse, and with bold voice proclaim
The vicious lives and long detested fame
Of scoundrel lords, and their lewd wives’ amours,
Pimp statesmen, canting priests, Court bawds and whores…
Certainly the court had devoted itself to pleasure and selfishness, superficial gaiety covering corruption. A good time was had, but it was not really a good time. The intrigues and liaisons were often regarded even then as scandalous.
-- Sex, scandals and betrayals: Charles II and his court: It is said to have been one of the most hedonistic courts in English history – a sexual merry-go-round of flirtation, seductions and infidelities, by History Extra: The official website for BBC History Magazine, BBC History Revealed and BBC World Histories Magazine
The situation at the Aurora 7 house was a bit toned down from the more elaborate scenes that would develop at the Court on Mapleton Avenue in the fill. Rinpoche and John were still experimenting with how to set the whole thing up. Rinpoche had asked Max King to come out from California and be his cook. I think Max was the first full-time cook we had. During the month he spent in California, Rinpoche had been very impressed with Max's talent as a chef and had started calling him "Cookie Divine." Cookie Divine was also a graduate student getting his Ph.D. in psychology, but he put that aspect of his life aside to move to Boulder to cook for Rinpoche.
With Max able to cook almost any meal from the Oriental or Western repertoire that Rinpoche might desire, it was a small step to organizing many dinner parties and setting up a rota for kitchen assistants, servers, and dishwashers. People signed up for these jobs because they got to hang out at the house and witness what unfolded, and on many occasions, Rinpoche would draw them into the action in some way or other. When he met somebody, he instantly connected with them, and he never forgot a face. This I think was because he wasn't just superficially getting to know people, but instantaneously he could see into the deepest parts of a person. A server at the house might have just a small exchange with him while putting a potato on his plate, but it meant a tremendous amount to him or her. The scene was often playful and magical, I must say.
On our way back to Tail [July, 1970] we stopped off in New York for the weekend. Rinpoche gave several public talks, one entitled “Meditation in Action” and another called “Tibetan Alchemy.” It was now early July, and his seminars at Tail of the Tiger were due to start in another week. Even now, a mere two months after arriving in the United States, everywhere Rinpoche went he attracted new students. When we came back through New York, there were many more people around all the time. An important and absolutely chance meeting was running into the poet Allen Ginsberg. Allen was with his father, who was quite old and in poor health, and they were trying to hail a taxicab, the same cab we thought we were hailing. We were with someone, perhaps Richard Arthure, who introduced us to Allen. When he learned who Rinpoche was, Allen held his hands in anjali (hands at the heart in a gesture of respect or reverence), bowed, and said “OM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM,” which is the mantra of Padmasambhava, the syllables that invoke the essence of his energy. We all decided to share the cab. After dropping of Allen’s father, we went to Allen’s place, where he and Rinpoche talked for hours about poetry, Buddhism, politics, sex – everything. They wrote poetry together that night, and it was the beginning of a deep dharmic and poetic friendship. Later, when they knew each other better, Allen asked Rinpoche what he thought of being greeted by Padmasambhava’s mantra. Rinpoche told him that at the time he had wondered whether Allen understood what he was saying. Rinpoche had started writing poetry in English while he was in England. He had studied English poetry at Oxford, and his early poems tended to be more formal, with allusions to Christian themes and Greek mythology as well as to Buddhist deities. He also had encountered Japanese haiku in India, which had given him a different idea, a sense of how one might compose poetry that was a more direct reflection of the mind. This was similar to the training he had received from his guru in Tibet in composing dohas, or spontaneous songs of spiritual realization. Allen introduced Rinpoche to the possibility of even greater freedom of expression and a kind of poetry that was as fresh, wild, and evocative as our experience of America. It was the first chapter in a long and important association with American poets and poetics, which had its intense ups and downs. Interestingly enough, this was not the first time that Rinpoche and Allen had met. After Rinpoche’s death, while going through photographs from a visit to India in the early sixties, Allen saw a picture of himself taken at the Young Lamas Home School in Dalhousie. A young monk was showing him around. He looked closely at the photograph and realized that it was Rinpoche who had taken him on that tour, ten years before they met in New York. Neither one of them realized this when they ran across each other in America.
-- Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chogyam Trungpa, by Diana J. Mukpo with Caroloyn Rose Gimian
There were dinners in the backyard served by candlelight. John Perks would direct people to move the dining room table and chairs, plus candelabras and good china, and set a beautiful table on the back patio. Sometimes, Rinpoche would have a bed made up in the backyard and he would sleep out there. Osel was home for the summer, and he remembers sleeping under the stars in the backyard with his father.
Earlier in the summer, Rinpoche had invited David Rome, who was now his secretary, to move into the house. David had at first resisted the idea. In response, Rinpoche asked some people to go over to David's house while he was out and turn all the furniture in the whole house upside down. When David came home, he could only think of one person who would pull this practical joke, and he took it as a message that he should agree to live in Rinpoche's house.
Starting in New York earlier in the year, Rinpoche had developed some spontaneous theater, shall we say, in connection with taking his evening pill to control his blood pressure. (He had developed high blood pressure in the early 1970s.) This ritual reached new heights that summer. At the end of an evening at Aurora 7, whoever was there when Rinpoche was getting ready to retire, which often included the servers, would be invited into the living room to witness a spontaneous play. The drama always revolved around Rinpoche taking his medicine. He would speak in what sounded like Japanese, although he didn't know Japanese, and David would tell the audience what he was supposedly saying. The point of the play was that, when Rinpoche would swallow the pill, it was supposed to be committing seppuku, or ritual suicide, as in the Japanese samurai films. Instead of using a sword, Rinpoche would die by the pill. When he actually swallowed the pill, he would fall down on the floor, writhing in what seemed like genuine agony, and sometimes a little saliva would leak out of the corner of his mouth. Then he would fall silent, his eyes would roll up in his head, and frankly, he looked like he was dead. Then he would revive himself and laugh heartily about the whole thing. The first time I witnessed this, I thought we should call an ambulance.
My beloved daughter had no chance against this wicked person, who I believe is a Nazi sympathizer as per his Facebook profile post (see video). As a result of Katsura Kan’s manipulations my daughter is dead, and he is promoting Hitler.
Amazingly, but not surprisingly, he was considered good enough to be hired by Naropa University in Boulder, CO, which is an accredited higher learning institution, where we believe he taught his students without any proper teachings credentials, the destructive dance of Butoh and its philosophy in the classroom which promoted pain, suffering, and death. We will look into what I believe is the undeserved accreditation of this university.
Thank you for watching,
Tibor Stern
On Behalf of the Sharoni Stern Estate
President of F.A.C.T., Inc.
This was the kind of thing that went on at the house, and the excitement around such everyday events was why many people wanted to serve at the house. It is a bit like people signing up to usher at the theater so that they can see the show.
I had witnessed early on in our married life that Rinpoche did not like having paid servants, which he considered demeaning to both them and him. He was never comfortable with the hired help that Marty Franco provided to us. The situation at the emerging Court was quite different. Being around Rinpoche in this intimate, everyday environment was really part of what I would cial the love affair that so many of his students had with him. It was mutual: Rinpoche loved his students tremendously, each one of them, and he wanted to spend time with so many people up close. Being at the Court was a learning experience for people and a way to express their devotion.
That summer, after Osel came home from school in Ojai, we decided that he should stay in Boulder permanently with his father and me, when I was there. He had really gotten all that he needed out of the boarding school situation, and Rinpoche· wanted to spend time with him and also let him spend more time with friends in Boulder. A few years later, some of Rinpoche's students started a private day school called Vidya School in Boulder, which aimed to provide both a good Western education and an education in Buddhism and meditation for the students. Osel went to Vidya for several years while he also was pursuing meditation and Buddhist studies directly with his father.
I don't think I realized at this time how far Rinpoche would go with the whole Court idea. In some ways, it was more organized and less chaotic at the Aurora 7 house than our family life had been before. John was extremely sweet and helpful during this era, and there was a measure of privacy for us at this time. David Rome had almost been a member of our family for years anyway, since he had been helping at the house at Boulder Heights and driving Rinpoche to the office and doing all manner of things for him since late 1973. I suppose I also wasn't so heavily invested in the household being a certain way, because I was just visiting with Gesar that summer. At the end of the summer, I was going to be on my way back to California to continue working with Charles.
Naropa Institute was into its third summer, and Rinpoche taught two major seminars there that year. In June, at the first session, Rinpoche taught a seminar on "Viewing and Working With the Phenomenal World," which was an overview of the Buddhist path, and during the second session he taught a seminar on the "Yogic Songs of Milarepa." There were plans to have Naropa expand from a summer institute into a year-round program, offering degree programs in psychology, Buddhist studies, poetry, and other disciplines. Several times a week, Rinpoche taught in the evenings there, and throughout the summer, he was involved in meetings to discuss the expansion of the institute.
One of the reasons that I came back to spend time in Boulder that summer was that my sister Tessa was getting married at the end of July. She was marrying Douglas Penick, who was a delightful man whom Rinpoche and I were both very fond of. She had had a few difficult and unsuccessful relationships, so we were both very happy about her marriage to Douglas.That summer Rinpoche presided over the weddings of many of his oldest and closest students. There must have been a wedding a week. The ceremonies were held in the shrine room at 1111 Pearl Street, and then most of the receptions were in someone's backyard. This was an era in which many people were settling down into long-term relationships and thinking about starting families. Over the next few years, many children. were born into the Buddhist community, which is one reason that Vidya School got started. There was also a lot of interest in starting a preschool, and in 1976 Alaya Preschool, started by community members, opened in north Boulder.
A major event that summer was the empowerment of Thomas Rich as the Vajra Regent Osel Tendzin. The ceremony took place at the end of August in the main shrine room at 1111 Pearl Street, and the hall was packed beyond capacity. More than six hundred people attended. It was a landmark event in the community. Rinpoche decided to hold the Regent's empowerment at the end of a gathering of Vajrayana students, which he called a Vajra Assembly. Students came from all over North America to practice together and to hear Rinpoche lecture on the principles of lineage. The last night, the Regent's empowerment was held. As I mentioned earlier, it was very important to Rinpoche to be able to fully transmit the teachings of his lineage to Westerners. Having a Western regent and dharma heir to preserve his teachings was crucial in his mind. He wanted as many people as possible to witness this event. Everyone had great hopes for the Regent. As part of the ceremony, the Regent took an oath to uphold the Kagyu lineage and the teachings of Buddhism, and he drank what is called oath water, or samaya water, to mark taking this oath. This is a common feature of taking on commitments in the Vajrayana path of Buddhism. According to the tradition, if you uphold your oath, the water you drink will be an aid and act almost like a magic potion to enhance your accomplishment. If you break the oath, it is said that the water will turn to molten lead in your veins and destroy you. It is a heavy-handed commitment, to say the least.
Rinpoche was well aware that the Regent needed training and mentoring over a long period of time if he was going to fully step into the role for which he was being groomed. Rinpoche had already been working with the Regent for a number of years, but they both knew that much more was needed. So while Rinpoche expressed his appreciation for what the Regent had already accomplished, Rinpoche also put a great deal of thought into how to work further with his educational process. Rinpoche told me that he wanted Osel Tendzin and his family to move into the house with us on Mapleton Avenue, the future home of the Kalapa Court. He wanted to have intimate, day-to-day contact with the Regent as part of their work together.
The Regent and Lila had their second son, Anthony, earlier that summer. Rinpoche and I were both at the hospital the night he was born. We were in the waiting room when the Regent came out to say that they had another son and that it had been a difficult birth. The four Riches -- the Regent, Lila, Vajra, and Anthony -- would be joining Rinpoche, Osel, Gesar, and me at the Kalapa Court on Mapleton. I didn't see this as a problem at that time. Again, I was planning to be away a fair amount of time each year until my dressage training was completed. I realized that making the decision to pursue my own career was good not only for my discipline, but for my greater sanity, given the expansion of our personal life into a bigger and bigger scene.
Rinpoche also let people know that summer that he was planning to take almost the entire next year, 1977, as a year of retreat. He was going to spend the year in a house near Charlemont, Massachusetts, where he had done other short retreats in the early seventies. Jean-Claude van Itallie, the playwright, had offered Rinpoche the use of the house. Rinpoche was going to take John Perks and Max King into retreat as his staff, and various people would visit throughout the year. However, he would not be teaching at Naropa the following summer, and he was going to turn over the running of the administration to Osel Tendzin. Rinpoche said, among other things, that by leaving for a year both he and his students would get a much better idea of what had actually been transmitted and where further work was needed. While he was away from Boulder, I didn't expect to spend that much time in town, so for that reason also I was not worried about having other people living in our home. In fact, I thought it would be a good idea if the house were not left empty with both of us away.
At the end of the summer, Rinpoche went to Rocky Mountain Dharma Center and I headed to Charles's new location in southern California. The fourth Vajradhatu Seminary took place that fall in Land O'Lakes, Wisconsin, at the King's Gate Hotel. This year there were close to two hundred students attending the seminary. Rinpoche had a suite of rooms in the hotel that he lived in toward the end of the seminary, but which he initially used mainly to hold meetings and to prepare his talks. His actual residence was a tiny little trailer on a lake about a half-hour's drive from the hotel. Max went to the seminary as Rinpoche's cook and lived in the second bedroom in the trailer. Various people from the seminary would come over to help with the cooking, cleaning, and driving, but Rinpoche had a very modest domestic situation, almost retreatlike in its simplicity.
This seminary was notable in that Rinpoche began to present the Shambhala teachings on warriorship and enlightened society while he was there. During the Vajrayana section of that seminary, he gave a number of teachings about the meaning of Shambhala and its importance for the modern age. Since he had left Tibet in 1959, the only terma teaching that he had received was the Sadhana if Mahamudra, which he discovered when he did his retreat in Bhutan in 1969. He had found a number of terma in Tibet as a young man, but he hadn't received anything else since the experience in Bhutan. At Land O' Lakes, he received the first Shambhala terma that he discovered in the West, and this was really a turning point in both the content and the style of his teaching in America.
While he was at Land O' Lakes, Rinpoche first received a symbol of the Shambhala teachings as terma, rather than a written teaching. While he was staying in that tiny cabin on the lake, one night he stayed up all night after giving a talk, and sometime before dawn, he started doing calligraphy with large Japanese brushes, using sumi ink on white paper. He kept doing the same calligraphy stroke over and over. It didn't have a name, but Rinpoche felt that it meant something important. He shared it with David Rome, who was teaching a course at the seminary, and with a few other students, but he didn't want it generally distributed to anyone. A few days later, a Shambhala text, called the Golden Sun of the Great East, arose in his mind. It described the stroke and its significance and gave it a name: the stroke of Ashe, The text talked about how to overcome the spiritual, psychological, and political obstacles and the degeneration of the current era by connecting with human dignity and manifesting the confidence and strength embodied in the Ashe symbol.
About a week later, Rinpoche left the seminary to teach a course at Karme Choling, and while he was there, he wrote a long commentary on the text he had received. Together, these writings constitute what I would call almost a manual of political and psychological strategy for working with conflict and aggression. This text is often referred to as the "root text," because it is the root of so many Shambhala teachings that Rinpoche transmitted. He felt that only a few of his students were ready to receive these teachings directly at that point, and he and David worked together to decide how to share this material. A few days after Rinpoche received the stroke of Ashe and the root text, the Vajra Regent visited the seminary, and Rinpoche gave him and a few other people transmission in doing this calligraphy stroke as a practice.
A program of study eventually was developed, called Shambhala Education, to present the groundwork to people so they could understand and apply the teachings in the text. Further Shambhala texts unfolded over the next two years, a whole cycle of Shambhala terma, which Rinpoche said came not directly from Padmasambhava, but from Padmasambhava as he manifested in the form of King Gesar of Ling and from the mind of the Rigden kings, the rulers of the Shambhala kingdom. These discoveries would have a huge and intimate effect on our lives, perhaps not so much immediately, but more and more as time went on. The Shambhala teachings became the driving force for Rinpoche in the last ten years of his life.
One of the correlations between the teachings and our personal lives was that this text and all the subsequent texts used the language and the symbolism of monarchy and a royal existence. This is also very much the language that is often used in the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition. Rinpoche talked a great deal about ruling your life as part of the Shambhala teachings. In Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom if Shambhala, he said:
Royalty in the Shambhala world is not based on creating a Shambhala elite or a class system. In that case, I wouldn't share the Shambhala vision with everybody. I wouldn't be telling you about this at all. I would probably have selected ten or twenty people to hear about the universal monarch who joins heaven and earth rather than discussing this openly. Why should I tell you these things? One of our topics, gentleness and opening up, has something to do with it. Every one of you can join heaven and earth. You could be a king or queen-every one of you. That's the switcheroo, the great switcheroo. That's why the entire vision is shared with everyone. That is a very important point.1
He was not referring here to some system of building up confidence in yourself in, say, the fashion of self-improvement or the human potential movement, which he really detested because he felt these approaches make false promises and do not address the fundamental, underlying issues. He was talking about a much more complete process of transformation, by seeing your life as a whole and realizing that you can conquer the obstacles you encounter, not through aggression or bravado but through the application of gentleness, intelligence, and fearlessness-the fundamental qualities of the Shambhala warrior. He truly believed that every human being could do this.
He also felt that the teacher in this situation has to set the example for the students, as is true throughout the Buddhist teachings. In presenting the Shambhala teachings of enlightened society, he felt that his own life should be an example, his life should be an open book, or an open court, I guess. In some way, this had always been true, but clearly this was moving to another level.
As mentioned earlier, in Tibet Rinpoche's teacher Jamgon Kongtrul talked to him about how a monk might have to become a king for the teachings of the Buddha to survive in the modern world. At first, Rinpoche seemed to think that this mainly meant that the presentation of Buddhism in the West would need to be more secular, less monastic. Beginning in this era, however, he began to see this as more literal advice. I think he felt that he was to be a messenger for the Rigden kings as well as their servant; he felt that he had to embody the enlightened energy of Shambhala as best as he could. And the model for that, in terms of everyday life, was the court of the king and queen. Voila the Kalapa Court. Voila its occupants: Rinpoche and me.
Previously I mentioned that, around 1974, the people at Karme Choling had purchased an old farmhouse about a ten-minute drive from the main building for Rinpoche and our family. The name he gave it, Bhumipali Bhavan, means "the dwelling place of the female earth protector." The Sanskrit word Bhumipali in Tibetan is Sakyong Uilngmo. At the 1976 seminary, Rinpoche gave a talk about Bhumipala, the male earth protector, as the guardian of the dharma. He assumed the tide of Sakyong, the Tibetan for Bhumipala, within the year. In Tibetan mythology, the Sakyong is the messenger or the representative of the Rigden kings on earth, since they are now supposed to be in a celestial realm. A few years later, Rinpoche and I would both take a formal empowerment as Sakyong and Sakyong Wangmo, or Bhumipala and Bhumipali, depending on whether you use the Tibetan or the Sanskrit. His Holiness· Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche conferred this empowerment on us. But back in 1974, when we were just at the end of living a semi-hippie life, Rinpoche already was employing the term Bhumipali to refer to me.
He also referred to me as the Sakyong Wangmo in a poem he wrote while I was home in the summer of 1976. He wrote: "She is the only Sakyong Wangmo / ... She deserves to be coronated in the midst of Shambhala kingdom as the only monarch who exists as Vajra queen." At the time, I didn't pay much attention to these references. Little did I know what was in store for me.
I returned to Boulder in early December 1976, somewhat uncertain about the future of my riding career now that things had fallen apart with Charles. I came home to move into our new home with Rinpoche et al, to spend the holidays together as a family and to give Gesar and myself some time with Rinpoche before he left for his long retreat.
I knew that our new home was to be called the Kalapa Court and I knew that Rinpoche was moving in the direction of a much grander lifestyle that would include many more people being and working in our home, but I wasn't prepared for what I encountered. While Rinpoche was concluding the seminary that fall, John had been busy creating a rather over-the-top courtlike situation to receive him. The house had been furnished in the style of an upper-class English manor house, not unlike what the Ham Manor of my childhood had been like, but with the addition of a lot more brocade. Additionally, there was the influence of an Oriental and often specifically Japanese aesthetic, at this point more in the little touches than in the furniture or layout as a whole. In consultation with Rinpoche, John had arranged for a young couple to join the household staff: Bob Vogler and his fiancee Shari. They had been living at Karme Choling but moved to Boulder to live and work at the Court. Bob was to be the butler working under John, and Shari was in charge of housekeeping and worked in the kitchen under Max. While Rinpoche was away in 1977, they would be the main staff for the Regent and his family. John also had assembled a cadre of volunteers to serve at the house, and he had created uniforms for them. The women who worked in the kitchen wore red aprons; those serving in the rest of the house wore white aprons with very ostentatious white shoulders over a black dress. We began referring to them as "the penguins." There were people arranging flowers, polishing brass doorknobs, greeting you at the door, taking your coat, bringing you something to drink, setting the table, and performing all manner of household functions.
John, Shari, and Bob all lived in rooms in the basement. On the main floor, there was a library off the large entry hall as well as a living room with a large mantle and fireplace, behind which was the formal dining room. There was a lot of dark wood paneling in this house. The kitchen was also on the main floor. Rinpoche and I had a bedroom with a sitting room upstairs, and Osel's room was on the second floor. Gesar lived on the top floor with Pat Adducci. It was very good for him that he had the continuity of his relationship with Pat throughout all the changes in our life at this time. The Regent, Lila, and their children had their rooms on the second floor as well. The so-called servants could be found on all floors at all hours of the day and night performing all manner of tasks.
When Rinpoche arrived, he was delighted by the Court, and he immediately began to have receptions, dinners, and other social gatherings at the house, inviting as many members of the sangha as he could into our home. You might be invited as a guest one night and return as a servant the next. People were anxious to be around the house as much as possible since this was where people felt it was all "happening" at this time. The word spread that casual dress was out. Men came to dinner in suits and ties; women in cocktail dresses and high heels. The dress code had been changing for some time, but many still looked uncomfortable in their new apparel, with the men's hair shortened, the ladies' carefully coiffed. People also began to practice their table manners before going to dinner at the Court. There were, infact, classes on both serving and proper guest etiquette offered to members of the sangha.
During this period, I had to buy a lot of clothes. I was trying to find a happy medium between frumpy and fashionable, and I bought a black jacket that I thought was attractive. Rinpoche told me, "It's not tailored that well for you." It was the first time that Rinpoche had been critical of my dress. So then I said to John Perks, "Well, don't you think that this looks good?" John replied, "Well, madam, although anything you wear looks wonderful on you, I think that you could have a more tailored jacket." I believe I dumped the jacket and bought something else.
The evening gatherings at the Mapleton Court often led to sessions of calligraphy practice late at night, usually held in the entryway, where Rinpoche would demonstrate the new Shambhala practice and initiate students on the spot. These proceedings usually were accompanied by readings from the new Shambhala text. There were rumors about all this flying throughout the community, and there was tremendous curiosity about the Shambhala teachings that Rinpoche had received and was now beginning to present. In fact, people's curiosity and desire to be included were whetted by the fact that the whole thing was supposed to be a big secret, but everyone had heard something about it.
Rinpoche was, at this stage, introducing people to this new material in small informal gatherings. Within a few months, classes and study groups were organized at Karma Dzong, but for now, most of the transmissions took place at our home. Many nights that December and January, if you drove down Mapleton Avenue, you would see lights blazing at number 550. From the street, you might see a throng of people at three A.M. congregated in the front hallway. I'm sure our neighbors wondered what we Were up to. The guests were usually either practicing calligraphy or watching others. As part of this practice, at one point, the person performing the stroke touches the brush to the tip of the tongue. Frequently, especially in the early days, people overdid this part of the practice and ended up with a quantity of black sumi ink on their tongue and teeth. Later, if someone smiled at you, he or she often revealed a distinct black stain on the inside of the mouth. It could be a bit ghoulish.
A week before Christmas, the community held the official opening of Dorje Dzong, which means "indestructible fortress." This event marked the community's move into a new building at 1345 Spruce Street, which remains the headquarters in Boulder today. The new location was a three-story stone office building. It was acquired early in 1976, and throughout most of the year, renovations had been going on. The top floor was turned into a beautiful shrine room, with twenty-foot ceilings. The room could hold many more people than the old location, which we had completely outgrown at this point. The thangka of the Buddha, which the queen of Bhutan had given to Rinpoche so many years ago, was installed as the centerpiece of the new shrine. On either side of it were banners designed by Rinpoche bearing the logos for Vajradhatu that he had created. A few years later, Rinpoche would invite Sherab Palden Beru to come over from Scotland to paint a huge new thangka of the Buddha Vajradhara especially for the shrine room. During his last visit to America, His Holiness the Karmapa placed his handprint in ink on the back of this thangka to consecrate this beautiful and powerful image.
On the second floor of the new building, Rinpoche had a suite of offices, called "A Suite," and the Regent was given a suite on the other end of the floor, called "B Suite." Classrooms and other offices were located mainly in the basement and on the main floor. Almost the entire Boulder community attended the opening of the building, which was held in the shrine room. The room was packed. The ceremony was very similar to one held in 1972 to mark the opening of 1111 Pearl Street: Rinpoche lit the candles on the main shrine and then, from one of those candles, he lit another candle which he passed to the Regent, who lit his candle, and then the light was passed from one person to another. Each person was holding a candle, so that by the end, there were close to a thousand lights glimmering in the room.
In late December, at our house, we were preparing to celebrate Christmas. I had always enjoyed this holiday: I loved to have a tree and exchange gifts. Rinpoche was not so keen on Christmas because of its obvious Christian connotations. (Two years later he inaugurated the celebration of Children's Day on the winter solstice as an alternative festival.) However, this year he didn't object to my decorating the house and buying gifts for the children, and we planned to have a nice family Christmas dinner together in our new home.
I had not seen my mother since the day she. had recoiled from touching her grandchildren; I had heard stories from my sister that Mother was spending what was left of her funds on private detectives to keep tabs on me. At one point, earlier this year, a story had spread that my mother had taken out a contract on Rinpoche's life. This probably wasn't true, but the danger seemed very real at the time. At one point, the vajra guards, the Dorje Kasung, were told to be on alert against this possibility. Frankly, I think Rinpoche probably enjoyed having a threat like this to heighten the awareness of the Dorje Kasung.
In any case, I thought that I might never see my mother again. I certainly had no plans to reconcile with her, especially now that she seemed to be trying to get my husband killed! She had somewhat made peace with Tessa, and to my great surprise, she decided to come to Boulder to have Christmas with Tessa and Douglas. We knew that she was in town, but I planned to ignore her completely.
Then, seemingly out of the blue and certainly not to my liking, Rinpoche announced on Christmas Day that he would like to invite my mother to dinner with Douglas and Tessa. I was astounded. I thought that there was not a chance that she would accept. So I said, "Go ahead."
Rinpoche asked his kasung to drive the Mercedes over to Tessa's house, which was only about a five-minute drive from our home. He asked the kasung to deliver an invitation to Mrs. Pybus, my mother, to come for Christmas dinner. The kasung dutifully went with the invitation, but returned empty-handed. Mrs. Pybus had replied that she would only accept the invitation if Rinpoche would come himself and beg her forgiveness on bended knee for having stolen her daughter away.
Rinpoche was so excited. He was already dressed to the nines for dinner, and he immediately asked for his coat and hat and went off with the driver. He went to Tessa's house, where he went down on his knees and apologized to Mrs. Pybus for taking he; daughter and invited her back to Christmas dinner. She was, I think, completely disarmed by his willingness to humble himself in this manner. She accepted the invitation.
They arrived back at the house together, with Tessa and Douglas in tow as well. I was somewhat in shock. Rinpoche, however, was beaming. As you can imagine, my mother was thoroughly impressed with the house, the dinner, the service -- the whole thing. It was quite different from our lifestyle a few years earlier. In addition to our family, the Regent and Lila and their family joined us for dinner, and I believe there were several other guests, nicely dressed and on their very best behavior. My mother made charming chitchat with people, and she herself was clearly charmed. She and Rinpoche had a long conversation about the history of European architecture over drinks. By the end of the evening, she was completely won over. Rinpoche sent his car to take her home, the perfect crowning touch.
We saw her almost every day during the rest of her visit in Boulder. She couldn't get enough of Rinpoche or the Court. A few days later, Rinpoche arranged to have a formal reception for her at the fanciest hotel in Boulder, which at this time was the Harvest House. He rented the largest ballroom there, and told all his students to wear formal attire. Women came in long dresses and white gloves; men rented tuxedos. Handel's Water Music, which Rinpoche loved, was playing over the sound system as people arrived and were introduced. There was a receiving line where each person was formally presented to Mrs. Pybus, who was clearly being showcased as something equivalent to the Queen Mother in our world. If there was a contract out on Rinpoche, my mother certainly cancelled it at that point. She was utterly enthralled at this point with her son-in-law and the world in which he was living, as well as her potential position in that world.
Rinpoche was enormously pleased with himself for having won her over. That first evening, after she went home from Christmas dinner, we sat up for awhile in the living room talking about what had happened. At one point, he turned to me with a huge smile on his face and said, "If I can conquer your mother, I can conquer the whole world!" At that moment, I had to agree with him. The next day he wrote a poem to celebrate his victory:
The Kalapa Court: Conquering the Pybuses
Big mountains don't apologize to other mountains
All oceans are big oceans
Big mind sweeps away the little chitchat
Genuine surprise disperses dark corners
Proclamation of the lion's roar is different from the mouse's squeak
Seeing through, conquering, accomplishing beyond two nervous daughters and their neurosis
Eat big meal.
Drink large sake
And solve enormous problem
In the name of the tiger lion garuda dragon dignity
My love and gratitude to David Humphrey Pybus
(BOULDER, COLORADO, DECEMBER 26, 1976)2