Initially, I was only going to be at home for my usual seven-week stint. (I was based in England at this time.) Rinpoche and I had been trying to have another child, and after I was home about six weeks, I found out that I was pregnant. I decided not to return to Europe. I arranged for one horse, Shambhala, to go to a facility run by Gunnar Ostergaard, a trainer on the East Coast of the United States, and I arranged for Warrior to go from England back to Herr Rehbein's facility, to be cared for until my child was born and I could take up my career again.
While I was trying to conceive a child with Rinpoche, I was still seeing Mitchell. We had slept together -- with contraception -- during the month that I got pregnant. (We had spent a night at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, which inspired the film The Shining.) When I found out that I was pregnant, I went into a bit of a panic, but I told myself that the baby had to be Rinpoche's. I mentioned my anxiety to Rinpoche, and he told me not to worry about it. I tried not to, but there was definitely a question mark in my mind. Mitchell and I joked that we were going to name the baby Isaac if it was his.
In the early stages of the pregnancy, Rinpoche and I decided to go to Mexico for a vacation. We invited Mitchell and Sarah to come along, and John Perks also came as the cook and butler. Beverley Webster, Rinpoche's private secretary, also accompanied us, and Ron Barnstone, who was originally from Mexico -- his mother was Marty Franco -- came along as driver and kusung. I was having a lot of morning sickness during this period, so the trip was physically difficult for me. I found it almost impossible to find appetizing food in Mexico. Sometimes I would wake up very hungry in the early morning, and there would be nothing to eat in the house. Someone would have to go to the market before we could have breakfast. John Perks did a lot of cooking. I remember being hungry one day and smelling duck from the kitchen. I went into the kitchen and lifted the pot with anticipation of getting myself some broth. There was a whole duck in the pot, with its beak, eyes, and feathers still on it. I felt very vulnerable at that time, so John's soup didn't amuse me.
While we were there, we listened to audiotapes that Louise and Roger Randolph, the owners of the Patzcuaro house, had left at the house. They had been to see a psychic who told them that Louise was the reincarnation of Nefertiti and Roger was Akhenaten. They had made a tape of the conversation with the psychic, which we found very entertaining.
I also had an encounter with a ghost there. Rinpoche always felt strongly that I should sleep on the left side of the bed, and he would sleep on the right. It had to do with how the feminine and masculine sides of the body are viewed in tantra. When we were first married, we had a picture of Vajrayogini hanging over the left side of our bed, and a picture of Guru Rinpoche on the right. I would sleep with Vajrayogini above my head, and Rinpoche would be on the right, with Padmasambhava above him. In Patzcuaro, we had a double bed that was not that big. It was a chilly evening, and I remember we lit the fire before we went to sleep. I woke up, and Rinpoche had crowded onto my side of the bed, so that I had only a few inches to sleep in, which was quite uncomfortable for me, especially being pregnant. I got up and I walked around to his side of the bed, where there was at least half the bed, and I thought, "Oh good, I can have some space." I fell asleep there. Suddenly, I was woken up. Rinpoche was screaming at me, "You can't sleep on my side of the bed. What are you doing here?" He was really nasty, and I was completely angry with him. I said to him, "Well then, fuck you. I'll just go and sleep by myself. Have the whole bed!" I walked out of our bedroom, and I fell asleep in the guest bedroom down the hall.
I woke up about an hour or two later. There was something in the room with me. I could almost make out the shape. It was a dark shape, and it was definitely a woman. It felt like very evil energy, and I was scared to death. I got out of bed and walked rapidly down the corridor to our bedroom. Rinpoche was sitting bolt upright in bed, with his legs crossed. The flames in the fireplace made designs on the walls of the room. Rinpoche slowly turned to me. I hadn't opened my mouth, but he said, "Don't worry, Sweetheart, she's just been here too. I've taken care of it." I returned to my allocated space in the bed and ceased all further complaints! We never saw her again.
This was, however, not the only encounter with negative energy that we had in patzcuaro. Over time, Rinpoche came to realize that there was a lot of black magic being practiced in that area. Once, when he went shopping in the downtown square, Rinpoche wanted to go into a little antique store. While he was there, he told his attendant, "These people practice black magic." The shopkeepers seemed very sweet and ordinary, apparently. However, at a certain point, he asked them to look for something in the back, and while they were gone, he pulled aside a curtain on one wall of the store. Behind it was an altar to the devil. He told me that it was quite creepy. The Randolphs had a lot of books in their house about Aleister Crowley, who was very involved in the dark arts. Rinpoche thought he was a malevolent person. We had some concern that the Randolphs might have gotten themselves into some of the black magic that was being practiced down there, although we didn't know for sure.
"It came out that the end of this sitting period we were going to have Vajrayana (they had gone through Hinayana and Mahayana). So ... Rinpoche ... not only did he command to have a Halloween party, but he also commanded that every one attend and wear a costume. It was very definitely set up as a kind of pre-Vajrayana feast, because the idea of Halloween, with all these bizarre costumes, and putting on masks -- it's kind of like admitting your neurosis -- like, who you come as, Halloween, on our scene, has been ... adopted as our Tantric holiday: because there's so many contradictions in it: the idea of unmasking and putting on masks, and dressing up: it's kind of getting totally samsaric, in other words.
"Vajrayana has a good deal to do with totally connecting with Samsara. So, the word was out, and everyone was quite shocked that we were going to have a party, that Rinpoche announced he was going to attend, that there was going to be very formal -- that Rinpoche had something in mind: that he wanted to have kind of a 'courtlike' atmosphere, and that every(one) had to wear a costume.....
Trungpa arrived around 10:30, looking baleful. Butch haircut. Flanked by guards -- fortunately, because he was very drunk, and they caught him twice, when he fell. He whispered with the guards. Something was said to be brewing: one of the secrets he'd been preparing. A few minutes later a woman student in her sixties was borne in, naked, held high by guards. She let them carry her around the room, then struggled to be let down. Finally she was released and ran out. Trungpa giggled, did a strip tease, was carried around, in turn. Dressed again....
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."
-- Behind the Veil of Boulder Buddhism: Ed Sanders, The Party, by Ed Sanders
In Satanic rites a woman, a virgin is much better, acting as an "altar" is essential. In the US I've seen wooden supports anatomically shaped so as to host the priestess in a laid down position. In Italy it's usually an uncomfortable table.
-- What I Saw at a Black Mass: An Interview with Massimo Introvigne, by Maria Grazia Cutulu
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
While we were there, we took a number of drives around the area. One day while driving around, we discovered some small pyramids. Rinpoche was excited about this, and he wanted to do a ceremony at the top of one of them. We went up to the top of the pyramid with an incense bowl and juniper so that we could have a little Ihasang fire. I decided to wear a pair of expensive new shoes that I'd bought recently in New York at Saks Fifth Avenue. It was a beautiful day with a clear blue sky. There had been a drought in the area. Rinpoche did the lhasang, and within five minutes clouds gathered and there was a torrential downpour. I was upset at Rinpoche and I said, "Why did you do this? I just bought this nice pair of shoes and now they're ruined!"
They wanted to know what I had been doing. I told them that I had just been in the city of Tula, Hidalgo, where I had visited some archaeological ruins. I had been most impressed with a row of four colossal, columnlike figures of stone, called the Atlanteans, which stand on the flat top of a pyramid.
Each one of the almost cylindrical figures, measuring fifteen feet in height and three feet across, is made of four separate pieces of basalt carved to represent what archaeologists think are Toltec warriors carrying their war paraphernalia. Twenty feet behind each of the front figures on the top of the pyramid, there is another row of four rectangular columns of the same height and width as the first, also made of four separate pieces of stone.
The awe-inspiring setting of the Atlanteans was enhanced by what a friend, who had guided me through the site, had told me about them. He said that a custodian of the ruins had revealed to him that he had heard the Atlanteans walking at night; making the ground underneath them shake.
I asked the Genaros for comments on what my friend had said. They acted shy and giggled. I turned to la Gorda who was sitting beside me, and asked her directly for her opinions.
"I've never seen those figures," she said. "I've never been in Tula. Just the idea of going to that town scares me."
"Why does it scare you, Gorda?" I asked.
"Something happened to me in the ruins of Monte Alban in Oaxaca," she said…..
The conversation faded. I asked the others if they had anything to say. The little sisters glared at me. Benigno giggled and hid his face with his hat.
"Pablito and I have been in the pyramids of Tula," he finally said. "We've been in all the pyramids there are in Mexico. We like them."
"Why did you go to all the pyramids?" I asked him.
"I really don't know why we went to them," he said. "Perhaps it was because the Nagual Juan Matus told us not to."
"How about you, Pablito?" I asked.
"I went there to learn," he replied huffily, and laughed. "I used to live in the city of Tula. I know those pyramids like the back of my hand. The Nagual told me that he also used to live there. He knew everything about the pyramids. He was a Toltec himself."
I realized then that it had been more than curiosity that made me go to the archaeological site in Tula. The main reason I had accepted my friend's invitation was because at the time of my first visit to la Gorda, and the others, they had told me something which don Juan had never even mentioned to me; that he considered himself a cultural descendant of the Toltecs. Tula had been the ancient epicenter of the Toltec empire.
"What do you think about the Atlanteans walking around at night?" I asked Pablito.
"Sure, they walk at night," he said. "Those things have been there for ages. No one knows who built the pyramids. The Nagual Juan Matus himself told me that the Spaniards were not the first to discover them. The Nagual said there were others before them. God knows how many."
"What do you think those four figures of stone represent?" I asked.
"They are not men, but women," he said. "That pyramid is the center of order and stability. Those figures are its four corners. They are the four winds, the four directions. They are the foundation, the basis of the pyramid. They have to be women, mannish women, if you want to call them that. As you yourself know, we men are not that hot. We are a good binding, a glue to hold things together, but that's all. The Nagual Juan Matus said that the mystery of the pyramid is its structure. The four corners have been elevated to the top. The pyramid itself is the man supported by his female warriors; a male who has elevated his supporters to the highest place. See what I mean?"
I must have had a look of perplexity on my face. Pablito laughed. It was a polite laughter.
"No. I don't see what you mean, Pablito," I said. "But that's because don Juan never told me anything about it. The topic is completely new to me. Please tell me everything you know."
"The Atlanteans are the nagual. They are dreamers. They represent the order of the second attention brought forward. That's why they're so fearsome and mysterious. They are creatures of war but not of destruction.
"The other row of columns, the rectangular ones, represent the order of the first attention; the tonal. They are stalkers. That's why they are covered with inscriptions. They are very peaceful and wise; the opposite of the front row."
Pablito stopped talking and looked at me almost defiantly, then he broke into a smile.
I thought he was going to go on to explain what he had said, but he remained silent as if waiting for my comments.
I told him how mystified I was and urged him to continue talking. He seemed undecided, stared at me for a moment, and took a deep breath. He had hardly begun to speak when the voices of the rest of them were raised in a clamor of protest.
"The Nagual already explained that to all of us," la Gorda said impatiently. "What's the point of making him repeat it?"
I tried to make them understand that I really had no conception of what Pablito was talking about. I prevailed on him to go on with his explanation. There was another wave of voices speaking at the same time. Judging by the way the little sisters glared at me, they were getting very angry; especially Lydia.
"We don't like to talk about those women," la Gorda said to me in a conciliatory tone. "Just the thought of the women of the pyramid makes us very nervous."
"What's the matter with you people?" I asked. "Why are you acting like this?"
"We don't know," la Gorda replied. "It's just a feeling that all of us have; a very disturbing feeling. We were fine until a moment ago when you started to ask questions about those women."
La Gorda's statements were like an alarm signal. All of them stood up and advanced menacingly toward me, talking in loud voices.
It took me a long time to calm them and make them sit down. The little sisters were very upset and their mood seemed to influence la Gorda's. The three men showed more restraint. I faced Nestor and asked him bluntly to explain to me why the women were so agitated. Obviously I was unwittingly doing something to aggravate them.
"I really don't know what it is," Nestor said. "I'm sure none of us here knows what is the matter with us, except that we all feel very sad and nervous."
"Is it because we're talking about the pyramids?" I asked him.
"It must be," Nestor replied somberly. "I myself didn't know that those figures were women."
"Of course you did, you idiot," Lydia snapped.
Nestor seemed to be intimidated by her outburst. He recoiled and smiled sheepishly at me.
"Maybe I did," he conceded. "We're going through a very strange period in our lives. None of us knows anything for sure any more. Since you came into our lives, we are unknown to ourselves."
A very oppressive mood set in. I insisted that the only way to dispel it was to talk about those mysterious columns on the pyramids.
The women protested heatedly. The men remained silent. I had the feeling that the men were affiliated in principle with the women, but secretly wanted to discuss the topic just as I did.
"Did don Juan tell you anything else about the pyramids, Pablito?" I asked.
My intention was to steer the conversation away from the specific topic of the Atlanteans, and yet stay near it.
"He said one specific pyramid there in Tula was a guide," Pablito replied eagerly.
From the tone of his voice I deduced that he really wanted to talk. And the attentiveness of the other apprentices convinced me that covertly all of them wanted to exchange opinions.
"The Nagual said that it was a guide to the second attention," Pablito went on, "but that it was ransacked and everything destroyed. He told me that some of the pyramids were gigantic not-doings. They were not lodgings but places for warriors to do their dreaming and exercise their second attention. Whatever they did was recorded in drawings and figures that were put on the walls.
"Then another kind of warrior must've come along; a kind who didn't approve of what the sorcerers of the pyramid had done with their second attention, and destroyed the pyramid and all that was in it.
"The Nagual believed that the new warriors must've been warriors of the third attention, just as he himself was. Warriors who were appalled by the evilness of the fixation of the second attention. The sorcerers of the pyramids were too busy with their fixation to realize what was going on. When they did, it was too late."
Pablito had an audience. Everyone in the room, myself included, was fascinated with what he was saying. I understood the ideas he was presenting because don Juan had explained them to me.
Don Juan had said that our total being consists of two perceivable segments. The first is the familiar physical body which all of us can perceive. The second is the luminous body which is a cocoon that only seers can perceive; a cocoon that gives us the appearance of giant luminous eggs.
He had also said that one of the most important goals of sorcery is to reach the luminous cocoon; a goal which is fulfilled through the sophisticated use of dreaming, and through a rigorous systematic exertion he called not-doing. He defined not-doing as an unfamiliar act which engages our total being by forcing us to become conscious of its luminous segment.
In order to explain these concepts, don Juan made a three-part, uneven division of our consciousness.
He called the smallest the first attention, and said that it is the consciousness that every normal person has developed in order to deal with the daily world. It encompasses the awareness of the physical body.
Another larger portion he called the second attention, and described it as the awareness we need in order to perceive our luminous cocoon and to act as luminous beings. He said that the second attention remains in the background for the duration of our lives unless it is brought forth through deliberate training or by an accidental trauma. He said the second attention encompasses the awareness of the luminous body.
He called the last portion, which was the largest, the third attention -- an immeasurable consciousness which engages undefinable aspects of the awareness of the physical and the luminous bodies.
I asked him if he himself had experienced the third attention. He said that he was on the periphery of it, and that if he ever entered it completely, I would know it instantly because all of him would become what he really was; an outburst of energy.
He added that the battlefield of warriors was the second attention, which was something like a training ground for reaching the third attention. The second attention was a state rather difficult to arrive at, but very fruitful once it was attained.
"The pyramids are harmful," Pablito went on. "Especially to unprotected sorcerers like ourselves. They are worse yet to formless warriors like la Gorda. The Nagual said that there is nothing more dangerous than the evil fixation of the second attention.
"When warriors learn to focus on the weak side of the second attention nothing can stand in their way. They become hunters of men; ghouls. Even if they are no longer alive, they can reach for their prey through time as if they were present here and now.
"And because prey is what we become if we walk into one of those pyramids, the Nagual called them traps of the second attention."
"What exactly did he say would happen?" la Gorda asked.
"The Nagual said that we could stand perhaps one visit to the pyramids," Pablito explained. "On the second visit we would feel a strange sadness. It would be like a cold breeze that would make us listless and fatigued; a fatigue that soon turns into bad luck. In no time at all we'll be jinxed. Everything will happen to us. In fact, the Nagual said that our own streaks of bad luck were due to our willfulness in visiting those ruins against his recommendations.
"Eligio, for instance, never disobeyed the Nagual. You wouldn't catch him dead in there. Neither did this Nagual here, and they were always lucky while the rest of us were jinxed, especially la Gorda and myself. Weren't we even bitten by the same dog? And didn't the same beams of the kitchen roof get rotten twice and fall on us?"
"The Nagual never explained this to me," la Gorda said.
"Of course he did," Pablito insisted,
"If I had known how bad it was, I wouldn't have set foot in those damned places," la Gorda protested.
"The Nagual told every one of us the same things," Nestor said. "The problem is that every one of us was not listening attentively, or rather every one of us listened to him in his own way, and heard what he wanted to hear.
"The Nagual said that the fixation of the second attention has two faces.
"The first and easier face is the evil one. It happens when dreamers use their dreaming to focus their second attention on the items of the world, like money and power over people.[~ the world of the 1st attention]
"The other face is the more difficult to reach and it happens when dreamers focus their second attention on items that are not in or from this world, such as the journey into the unknown. [~ the world of the third attention]
"Warriors need endless impeccability in order to reach this face."
I said to them that I was sure that don Juan had selectively revealed certain things to some of us, and other things to others. I could not, for instance, recall don Juan ever discussing the evil face of the second attention with me.
I told them then what don Juan said to me in reference to the fixation of attention in general.
He stressed to me that all archaeological ruins in Mexico, especially the pyramids, were harmful to modern man. He depicted the pyramids as foreign expressions of thought and action. He said that every item, every design in them, was a calculated effort to record aspects of attention which were thoroughly alien to us. For don Juan, it was not only ruins of past cultures that held a dangerous element in them. Anything which was the object of an obsessive concern had a harmful potential.
We had discussed this in detail once. It was a reaction he had to some comments I had made about my being at a loss as to where to store my field notes safely. I regarded them in a most possessive manner and was obsessed with their security….
"It is easy for me to understand why the Nagual Juan Matus didn't want us to have possessions," Nestor said after I had finished talking. "We are all dreamers. He didn't want us to focus our dreaming body on the weak face of the second attention.
"I didn't understand his maneuvers at the time. I resented the fact that he made me get rid of everything I had. I thought he was being unfair. My belief was that he was trying to keep Pablito and Benigno from envying me because they had nothing themselves. I was well-off in comparison. At the time, I had no idea that he was protecting my dreaming body."…
"It takes time to make a perfect Nagual," Pablito said. "The Nagual Juan Matus told me that he himself was crappy in his youth, until something shook him out of his complacency."
"I don't believe it," Lydia shouted. "He never told me that."
"He said that he was very crummy," la Gorda added in a low voice.
"The Nagual told me that in his youth he was a jinx, just like me," Pablito said. "He was also told by his benefactor not to set foot in those pyramids and because of that he practically lived there until he was driven away by a horde of phantoms."
Apparently no one else knew the story. They perked up.
"I had completely forgotten about that," Pablito explained. "I've only just remembered it now. It was just like what happened to la Gorda. One day after the Nagual had finally become a formless warrior, the evil fixations of those warriors who had done their dreaming and other not-doings in the pyramids came after him.
"They found him while he was working in the field. He told me that he saw a hand coming out of the loose dirt in a fresh furrow to grab the leg of his pants. He thought that it was a fellow worker who had been accidentally buried. He tried to dig him out. Then he realized that he was digging into a dirt coffin: A man was buried there. The Nagual said that the man was very thin and dark and had no hair.
"The Nagual tried frantically to patch up the dirt coffin. He didn't want his fellow workers to see it and he didn't want to injure the man by digging him out against his will. He was working so hard that he didn't even notice that the other workers had gathered around him. By then the Nagual said that the dirt coffin had collapsed and the dark man was sprawled on the ground; naked.
"The Nagual tried to help him up and asked the men to give him a hand. They laughed at him. They thought he was drunk having the d.t.'s because there was no man, or dirt coffin, or anything like that in the field.
"The Nagual said that he was shaken but he didn't dare tell his benefactor about it. It didn't matter because at night a whole flock of phantoms came after him. He went to open the front door after someone knocked and a horde of naked men with glaring yellow eyes burst in.
"They threw him to the floor and piled on top of him. They would have crushed every bone in his body had it not been for the swift actions of his benefactor. He saw the phantoms and pulled the Nagual to safety to a hole in the ground which he always kept conveniently at the back of his house. He buried the Nagual there while the ghosts squatted around waiting for their chance.
The Nagual told me that he had become so frightened that he would voluntarily go back into his dirt coffin every night to sleep long after the phantoms had vanished."
-- The Eagle's Gift, by Carlos Castaneda
While we were in Patzcuaro, he also composed a new Shambhala practice called the Werma Sadhana. In this practice, one identifies with the primordial Shambhala lineage and connects oneself to that lineage by visualizing oneself as the Rigden, or the ruler of Shambhala. One really has to take on the power and the majesty of the Shambhala world in order to accomplish this practice.
By this time, there were a number of Shambhala texts and practices for people to do. The Werma Sadhana became important for everyone who completed the advanced levels of Shambhala Training. Eventually, this was a group of several thousand people. While many of the core practices that Rinpoche transmitted to his students were ancient, traditional practices from the Buddhist tradition, the Werma Sadhana was part of the unique cycle of Shambhala terma, or teachings, that he received in the West and that he gave to his Western students. He was very careful about sharing these texts and practices with other Tibetan teachers. He shared them with His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and others with whom he had a strong bond, but he didn't generally want them to be propagated outside of his own teaching environment. He emphasized that students should begin with Shambhala Training and progress through the Shambhala program of education until they were ready to do advanced practices such as the Werma practice.
"The werma is an important class of Bon deities. The werma are the angry, ferocious and fearless ones, the dgra lha of the arrows and lances.
-- Werma, by Chinese Buddhist Encyclopedia
The wisdom of the Pon tradition was very profound, extremely profound....
The basic Pon philosophy is very powerful; it is much like the American Indian, Shinto, or Taoist approach to cosmic sanity. The whole thing is an extraordinarily sane approach. But there is a problem. It is also a very anthropocentric approach. The world is created for human beings....
The Pon tradition of Tibet was very solid and definite and sane....
Our Pon tradition is valid, because it believes in the sacredness of feeding life, bringing forth food from the earth in order to feed our offspring. These very simple things exist. This is religion, this is truth, as far as the Pon tradition is concerned....
For instance, we think the body is extremely important, because it maintains the mind. The mind feeds the body and the body feeds the mind. We feel it is important to keep this happening in a healthy manner for our benefit, and we have come to the conclusion that the easiest way to achieve this tremendous scheme of being healthy is to start with the less complicated side of it: feed the body. Then we can wait and see what happens with the mind. If we are less hungry, then we are more likely to be psychologically jolly, and then we may feel like looking into the teachings of depth psychology or other philosophies.
This is also the approach of the Pon tradition: Let us kill a yak; that will make us spiritually higher. Our bodies will be healthier, so our minds will be higher. American Indians would say, let us kill one buffalo. It is the same logic. It is very sensible. We could not say that it is insane at all. It is extremely sane, extremely realistic, very reasonable and logical....
Philosophies of this type are to be found not only among the Red Americans, but also among the Celts, the pre-Christian Scandinavians, and the Greeks and Romans. Such a philosophy can be found in the past of any nation that had a pre-Christian or pre-Buddhist religion, a religion of fertility or ecology -- such as that of the Jews, the Celts, the American Indians, whatever. That approach of venerating fertility and relating with the earth still goes on, and it is very powerful and very beautiful. I appreciate it very thoroughly, and I could become a follower of such a philosophy. In fact, I am one. I am a Ponist. I believe in Pon because I am Tibetan.
-- Crazy Wisdom, by Chogyam Trungpa
I think he really felt that these transmissions were meant for the West, and he wanted his Western students to be the lineage holders of this tradition. In a sense, this was yet another reason that he put such emphasis on the Court mandala and the roles of his family and his students in that mandala, particularly myself, his son the Sawang, and his senior students who became ministers, generals, diplomats, teachers, servants, and leaders in that world.
After the encampment Rinpoche returned to Boulder and I returned to my faltering attempts at inn-keeping in Nova Scotia. Some months later he came for a visit. A group of us were sitting around him drinking Scotch and sake. We were dressed splendidly in Scottish kilts, jackets, sporrans, shoes, and the socks with red swatches. I was thinking about the Celtic issue and how Rinpoche continually brought up the idea that he wanted me to do something with Celtic people. Every time, I had brushed it off as a trick Rinpoche was trying to play on me. Suddenly, in the midst of my reverie, he jumped up, pointed at me, and said, "That's it!"
In confusion at having my train of thought cut through in that way I said, "You mean we should all wear kilts?"
"No," he prompted, "larger, bigger vision."
I thought of the largest thing I could. "Lineage," I said. He nodded, smiled, and sat down. He intended to stay longer at our inn but was overtaken by sickness and so returned to Halifax and then to Boulder.
Later, I realized that he had picked the Celtic Buddhist lineage for me to work on. It was not something I would have picked for myself. But somehow, quite skillfully, he had nailed me to a course of action which I had no choice but to follow. It was like holding a hot potato that I couldn't drop....
Rinpoche: "Johnny, have you ever been to Iona?"
Johnny: "Iona! You mean the island in Scotland? No, Sir."
Rinpoche: "You should go there after I die."
Johnny (alarmed): "You are not going to die!"
Rinpoche (reassuringly): "No, of course not; we will grow old together. Perhaps sometime you could go to Iona and read the Sadhana of Mahamudra in the cathedral."
Johnny: "Why?"
Rinpoche: "The air is very clear there. You will like it."
Johnny: "Okay, Sir. I'll do it."
Rinpoche: "Great! Let's drink to that."
-- The Mahasiddha and His Idiot Servant, by John Riley Perks
After we came back to Boulder from our little holiday, I had a wonderful time being at the Court with Rinpoche. I was actually becoming used to daily life there. I would meet once a week with the head cook, Shari Vogler. Shari had been with us now for a very long time. She and I would design the dinner menu for the week. For a while, we had a buffet breakfast at the Court. Rinpoche was feeling healthy and energized, and we had a little more semblance of family life than usual. The buffet would be set up in the blue room for the family, and we'd often have dinner there too. We had wonderful meals there, real family gatherings. Osel and Gesar were both living in the house, and we would all get together for meals. I remember that once Rinpoche set the table for breakfast himself. He even put English toast racks on the table.
His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa came for his third visit that summer [May, 1980]. His health was in decline. He had had Bell's palsy, and a few months later he would be diagnosed with stomach cancer. It was to be his last teaching visit to America, which we did not know at the time.
While he was in Boulder, His Holiness attended another Shambhala holiday that we held each year: Midsummer's Day, which was celebrated appropriately enough on the summer solstice [June 20].
Litha was long known as Midsummer, an older name for the Solstice that emphasizes the actual course of the warmer months in the Northern Hemisphere. Summer was considered to begin around May 1st, when Beltane (or May Day) is celebrated, with June 21st marking the midpoint of the season. The name “Litha” is traced back to an old Anglo-Saxon word for the month of June, and came into use as a Wiccan name for this Sabbat in the second half of the 20th century. However, many Pagans continue to use the more traditional “Midsummer.”
-- The Wiccan Calendar: Litha (Summer Solstice), by Wicca Living
For a number of years, the Shambhala community used a large acreage south of Boulder for this occasion. Ken Green, the director and minister of internal affairs, and a staff of many dedicated volunteers (and a few paid staff members from Vajradhatu) organized this spectacular festival. A raised viewing platform was set up for His Holiness, Rinpoche, myself, our family, the Regent, Lady Rich, and their children. The members of the Shambhala community lined both sides of the broad pathway that led up to the platform.
At the beginning of the day, Rinpoche and I rode in together, he on his horse Drala and I on a gray mare that a sangha member loaned me for the occasion. Rinpoche and I were both dressed in white, and our horses had beautiful saddle blankets and colorful pennants on their bridles. Behind us, other members of the Court and the Vajradhatu administration and staff marched in, followed by members of the Dorje Kasung and many other groups, such as the Nalanda Translation Committee, teachers at Naropa Institute, students of Alaya Preschool, Vidya School, and their teachers, and all manner of other groups in the community. Many groups carried banners with the name of their organization, and many carried decorative flags and other banners. People would cheer as each new group passed by. Almost everyone in the community was in the parade. People lining the sides of the road would leave their place in the audience to march in with one or more groups and then return to view others as they presented themselves.
After Rinpoche and I rode in, we assumed our place with His Holiness on the viewing stand. As groups arrived at the platform, they would bow and present themselves to all of us and then go off to the side. After the opening parade, there was a large lhasang to bless the occasion and then skydivers, hired for the occasion, landed in the field and presented themselves to His Holiness. Following that, there were many entertainments, some in front of the viewing platform and others in locations around the property. There were games for both children and adults, and everyone had a picnic. It was quite a glorious celebration of summer and wonderful to share with His Holiness.
At this time, Gesar was just a seven-year-old boy. During the Karmapa's visit, Gesar found a little bird that had fallen out of the nest. He fed it and tried to keep it alive. The Karmapa loved birds and kept an aviary at his monastery in Sikkim, so he took quite an interest in Gesar's bird and told him what to feed it. However, after the Karmapa left, the little bird died. Our family went to RMDC for the beginning of the Dorje Kasung encampment, and we decided we would bring the bird and have a funeral for it halfway up Marpa Point, which is a small peak on the land. Rinpoche and I were walking up the mountain, and Gesar was skipping ahead of us, carrying the dead bird in a box. I said to Rinpoche, "I don't think we've done a good job." And he replied, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well, Gesar's not showing any signs that he cared about his bird. He should be a little bit emotional. His bird died." Rinpoche said, "He's a Tibetan. We aren't sentimental." I thought that was quite an interesting answer, and I decided that I was going to pursue this line of questioning to find out how far he would go with his reasoning. We had a little dog at this time, a Lhasa apso narned Yumtso who was absolutely devoted to Rinpoche and went everywhere with him. I said, "Well, come on. How would you feel if Yumtso died?" And he said, "That would be okay." And actually, a few years later, when Yumtso died, Rinpoche didn't have much of a reaction at all.
Then I thought of Rinpoche's horse and said, "All right then. How would you feel if Drala died?" He replied, "Well, that would be expensive." Then, very foolishly, I upped the ante, and I said, "Well, how would you feel if your wife died?" He said, "Oh well, that would be cheaper." Then he broke into a wide grin.
Although I was pregnant, I had accompanied Rinpoche to RMDC to attend part of the third Magyal Pomra Encampment. A number of my riding students from Boulder were also there, as members of the newly formed Windhorse Division of the Dorje Kasung. We worked on the equestrian version of drill, which included some rudimentary movements for a quadrille. I was not able to ride, but I worked with people in any case. It was very helpful for my training as a teacher to go through this period. I had to learn to be much more skillful in explaining what I wanted people to do and how to improve their riding.
We had purchased Drala for Rinpoche the previous year. The horse, a Lipizzaner stallion, had been sold to someone in Florida by the breeding farm in Piber, Austria, where the stallions are bred for the Spanish Riding School. This horse, originally named Maestoso Trompeta, was already quite old, about fifteen at the time. Rinpoche wanted to start riding again, and the members of the Dorje Kasung and the graduates of the Kalapa Assembly gave the horse to him as a birthday gift. We renamed the horse Maestoso Drala. Rinpoche loved him. It was amazing that, in spite of his partial paralysis, Rinpoche was quite a good rider. He started going to the stables as often as he possibly could given his teaching schedule. I asked my colleague Marie Louise to be Rinpoche's riding instructor. I didn't think it was workable for me to teach him, as his wife. The summer of 1980, we brought Drala up to RMDC for Rinpoche to ride at the encampment, now widely referred to simply as MPE (for Magyal Pomra Encampment).
I had never been able to attend an encampment, so I wanted to be there for a few days, even though it wasn't that easy for me since I was pregnant. The Dorje Kasung rented a small trailer for me to stay in. Rinpoche gave me a hard time about being such a wimp that I needed to stay in a trailer. After I left, a few days before the end of the program, I learned that he moved into the trailer!
The year 1980 was the first year that Rinpoche instituted a formal skirmish, rather than relying on random attacks by outsiders. The camp was divided into two armies, one led by the Vajra Regent Osel Tendzin and the other by the Kasung Kyi Khyap David Rome. Before the action commenced, Rinpoche asked each of the commanders to agree to a number of rules, and they were asked to sign a document saying they would adhere to these rules. After the commanders signed off on the rules, the two opposing armies would be marched up into a series of highland meadows where the skirmish would take place. Each participant would be given a certain number of small flour bags, which they could use as "weapons." When someone was hit with a flour bag, he or she would be "dead" and would have to remain out of action. All of this was outlined in the rules. There were other rules, such as, if the opposing team gave water to someone who had been hit, that person could join the opposing army. One rule, the most important tenth rule, was only visible on the carbon copies of the document signed by the heads of the armies. Either commander could have discovered this rule; but neither did, as it was not visible on the top copy they signed.
During the battle, the two commanders were responsible for their armies' strategy; and the soldiers were expected to follow their commands. The Regent's strategy was quite aggressive; he had his army attack the other group quickly. He had many "hits" with the flour bags and killed many of the opposing team. David Rome seemed quite lost and somewhat fearful in his approach, and as a result, he marched his army into the hands of the opposing team, where they were largely slaughtered. A small band from David's army (which was led by Mitchell and included the Sawang in its ranks) did escape the first battle and spent hours trekking around Marpa's Point, trying to avoid capture or "death." In the end, they staged a final futile assault on the Regent's army and were all "slaughtered." Watching one's comrades falling down in the midst of the hazy flour smoke was quite realistic for people. They saw firsthand the devastation that war can bring. On the other hand, for many of the participants the skirmish seemed to be a lighthearted game, a fun way to spend the day.
At the end of the day, following the final battle of the skirmish, a vivid rainbow spread across the sky, filling the entire meadow where the last action took place with light. Rinpoche and his party had set up their camp that afternoon on a large outcropping of rock in the middle of this field, where he could watch the dramas unfold. When a member of either army "died," he or she was sent to Rinpoche's camp, which became known as Bardo Rock.
After the final battle, he directed all of the Dorje Kasung members to return to the main camp. There the skies opened up and the rain fell in sheets. In the midst of this downpour he discussed the results of the day's skirmish and graded the performance of the armies and their leaders. As he began to speak, people's mood changed drastically, as they began to realize that they had missed the point. Lacking a microphone, Rinpoche had to yell in order to be heard over the noise of the downpour. He was standing under a tarpaulin, but the troops had no such protection from the weather. They were being soaked by the rain. No tape was made of Rinpoche's remarks, but a "scribe" took notes, writing at a frantic speed to catch his words. Rinpoche told the assembled students that in fact they had all lost. No one had understood the main point of the exercise. At this point, he revealed the hidden rule, the tenth rule, which was the fundamental message he was trying to convey. This rule read: "Lack of proper strategy, causing greater loss of life, is cause for loss of battle." Then he explained to everyone, "Our task at Encampment is to rewrite the Oxford English Dictionary so that the meaning of the word war would be 'victory over aggression.'"
Rinpoche said that before the skirmish began both armies looked quite good with their various pennants and flags flying and their energetic sense of windhorse. He gave both armies a point for that. However, the Regent had a Buddhist problem, because his approach was to kill others. He lost a point for that. David Rome had a Shambhala problem, because he allowed his own family, his own troops, to be sacrificed. He lost a point for this. Mitchell was graded down for having had the right idea and then going against his better judgment. He had the idea that he and his small band should surrender, but instead, they attacked the Regent at the end of the day, and all were killed, including Rinpoche's son. Mitchell, as the commander of this ragtag band, was also marked down for allowing the Sawang to be killed in battle. Nobody got a passing grade.
Rinpoche's remarks were an utter shock. Many of those assembled started weeping, recognizing the aggression they had put into the exercise and the problems they had overcoming it. Rinpoche told everyone that they would have to go back the next day and conduct the entire exercise again. People were exhausted, but he was not interested in how tired they were. Indeed, both armies marched back up the hill the next morning. Rinpoche switched the commanders, so that the Regent led what had been David Rome's army, and David led the Regent's original troops. They conducted a skirmish with hardly a shot being fired.
In later years, strategy progressed and there were many more skirmishes, some with no "killing," and some with a minimum loss of life. However, the first and most fundamental message -- that victory or conquest could not come out of aggression -- was the most profound.
Soon after the encampment ended, my doctor put me on bed rest because I was having some bleeding with my pregnancy. Rinpoche and I would hang out in bed together, and it was a very sweet, loving time for us. One evening, we had a small dinner at the Court to celebrate Mitchell's birthday. I was able to get up for this, but then I went back to bed and I watched The Exorcist on TV. Later I came downstairs to the kitchen to see Rinpoche. After we chatted for a while, Rinpoche went up the back stairs of the Court with his kusung, and I remained in the kitchen. He was in a playful mood, and he was jumping around on the stairs in a jaunty way. The kusung should have been behind him but was in front of him instead. Then I heard an incredible crash. I thought that somehow a chest of drawers had been pushed down the stairs. It turned out that Rinpoche had fallen and hit his head. When I found him at the bottom of the stairs, I became hysterical because he was briefly unconscious and I thought he was dead.
Mitchell was still at the Court, and he came immediately when he heard the crash. He came and examined Rinpoche, who was now awake and seemed fine -- much to our relief -- although upon examination, Mitchell found that he had a mild concussion. We decided to keep Rinpoche at home for the night. The next day, Rinpoche complained of a headache and said that, if he were anyone else, he "would have been licking ashtrays," referring to the intensity of the pain. Rinpoche's relationship to pain was quite different from most people's. Mitchell rushed him to the hospital at this point, where they found that he had bled into two small areas of his brain. He was allowed to come home, but he was confined to bed for a while.
We both had to stay in bed, and we started fighting. We had completely different sleeping and waking patterns, so we were constantly waking one another up. The whole atmosphere, which had been so sweet, was just awful. I now realize that Rinpoche was probably in a terrible mood because his head hurt. One night we had a horrible fight; we broke just about everything in the bedroom. I can't remember what it was about at all. I do remember both of us screaming and throwing things and breaking them. When the kusung came in, the whole room was in a shambles.
Rinpoche used to say that he appreciated being able to fight with me. There was nobody he could fight with like that, nobody to whom he could show such irritation, because of who he was. We didn't fight a lot, but we would have the occasional, really intense fight. Sometimes it got wild, but then it was over immediately. Neither of us ever hung onto it. The anger was never there the next morning.
In some ways, the accident on the stairs was a profound turning point in Rinpoche's life. I've always felt that he changed in a fundamental way after that. After the accident, I sometimes felt that he was no longer 100 percent in this realm. Certainly his teaching became a lot more atmospheric after that. I would say that he became less interested in transmitting the details of the teachings, but in some ways his lectures actually became more powerful because he radiated the essence of the teachings into the environment. He didn't have permanent brain damage or anything like that, but something shifted after his fall. Later, when I looked back, I felt that the accident was the beginning of a physical decline that ended with his death in 1987. I don't know exactly why I feel that.
Superficially at least, Rinpoche recovered thoroughly, and he continued with his schedule of teaching in the fall. In early January 1981, he went up to Chateau Lake Louise for the seminary again. This year it was followed by another Kalapa Assembly, where Rinpoche introduced the Werma Sadhana to all of the students there.
I stayed in Boulder until I was about a month away from giving birth. Then, I drove up to Lake Louise with Mitchell and moved into the suite with Rinpoche at the Chateau. I went over my due date by more than a week, and finally the doctor there decided to induce labor. I went down to the Mineral Springs Hospital in Banff to give birth.
Once again, Rinpoche proved to be a fabulous labor coach. He would tell me when to breathe and when not to breathe, and he always knew just the right time. I was in a Catholic hospital, and they had a cross on the wall of my labor room. Many of the nursing staff were nuns. I had extremely painful back labor because the baby was turned around. I was dilated at nine centimeters for several hours before the baby came out, and at the end I was screaming, ''Jesus Fucking Christ, Jesus Fucking Christ," because of the pain. They wouldn't give me a decent painkiller. It was quite primitive. Later, when I came back to Boulder, my doctor there said, "I can't believe they didn't turn the baby around." At one point, one of the nuns was in the room, and she said, "Take a deep breath now." It was completely the wrong time. I screamed at Mitchell, who was also in the room with Rinpoche and me, "Get this fucking woman out of here." She disappeared and never came back.
When the baby was crowning, I asked the doctor, "What color is the hair?" and he said, "Oh, just a little darker than yours." I'm quite blond. When he said that, Mitchell ripped his surgical hat off. He was beside himself. The baby came out; he was a beautiful little boy, cherubic looking, really. He was put in a little incubator in the corner, a bassinette. Rinpoche and Mitchell both ran over and stood over the baby in the delivery room, talking about whose he was. From some point of view, it was hysterically funny. They couldn't decide who the father was, so at a certain point they decided it was theirs and not mine. It really wasn't clear to any of us. Taggie had been quite Caucasian in appearance at first, whereas Gesar looked Asian right away.
They had run out of the blue blankets they usually wrap the baby boys in, so they wrapped our son, Ashoka Alexander Mukpo, in a pink blanket. The nurses gave him back to me, and I had him in my arms, and they wheeled me out into the corridor outside the delivery room. All the members of the Vajradhatu board of directors were waiting there, along with John Perks, Mitchell's wife, Sarah, and a few others. Out I came with this very pink baby in a very pink blanket.
At that moment, I started to feel that I was bleeding. I turned to Mitchell and said, "I'm hemorrhaging." Mitchell said, "Oh, it's okay." He was somewhat distracted, to say the least. So I had to endure showing the baby to all of the directors, while all the time I knew I was bleeding. By the time they got me back to my room, I had a dinner plate-sized blood clot where the blood was congealing under me. There was blood dripping off the bed, and they had to give me a transfusion. The nurse kept saying, "Why didn't you say something? Why didn't you say something?" I just said, "Well, I tried."
When people had their babies in that hospital, the policy was that the babies would go to the nursery. I refused to have Ashoka taken there; I wanted to have him with me. I remember the nurse saying to me, "You're feeding him too often. You should have him on a feeding schedule. What are you going to do if you have to vacuum your house and the baby wants to eat?" I said, "Well, I don't vacuum my house." I was able to take him back to the hotel the next day.
