Sunday, April 04, 2010

Never Forget Trungpa Rinpoche


Licking honey from a razor blade,
Eyes of the learned gouged out by books,
The beauty of maidens worn by display,
The warrior dead from not knowing fear―
It is ironical to see the dharma of samsara:
Celebrities deafened by fame,
The hand of the artist crippled by rheumatism.

The moth flew into the oil lamp,
The blind man walks with a torch,
The cripple runs in his wheelchair,
A fool's rhetoric is deep and learned,
The laughing poet has run out of breath and died.
The religious spin circles, in accordance with religion;
If they had not practiced their religion, they could not spin.
The sinner cannot spin according to religion;
He spins according to not knowing how to spin.
The yogis spin by practicing yoga;
If they don't have chakras to spin, they are not yogis.
Chögyam is spinning, watching the spinning/samsara;
If there is no samsara/spinning, there is no Chögyam.

---Cynical Letter, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, 22 May 1972

If you want to read something incredibly moving and beautiful, please immediately click to Gesar Mukpo's A Poem on the Anniversary of the Death of My Father: just published today.

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4 reader comments:

amy said...

KI KI SO SO ASHE LHA GYAL LO TAK SENG KHYUNG DRUK DYAR KYE!

Padma Kadag said...

Trungpa is an interesting phenomena. As one who has not read much of anything about him, I am amazed and curious about all of the students of his who remember him as anyone should remember your their root guru, that comes natural.Again, I do not know much about him but it is curious that his students seem to want to always remember him in a public forum. You see Trungpa everywhere especially on blogs, though I have to admit this is the only blog i visit regularly besides elephant. I rarely will join in the conversation. It just struck me that Trungpa is so "talked" about by old students. Much in the sameway old hippies reminisce about the 60's.

Editor said...

Maybe you would be doing something innocuous with him, like shopping in a store or something similar, and he would suddenly offer an off-hand but very specific remark, "When you are fifty, a purple crocodile will walk up to you." At the time, this might seem completely off the wall, but years would go by, you would turn fifty, and damned if a purple crocodile wouldn't walk up. Things like this would happen not once, but many, many times, so he would always be near you, always unfolding. If you knew of such wonderful things, you would want to share your good fortune with others. There are many other ways of explaining; this is only one.

Padma Kadag said...

Thanks Tenpa