The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume One (6 page)

There is one other notable fact about
Mudra
: Chögyam Trungpa’s use of the term “egolessness” (in
Mudra
, “The Way of the Buddha”) is noted in the second edition of
The Oxford English Dictionary
, under the entry for the word
ego
. Trungpa Rinpoche, one can be sure, would have been delighted that he was quoted in the OED, a book that he treated with the greatest respect and regarded as
the
authority on the English language. Beyond that, this mention in the OED is an indication of the great and groundbreaking effect he had on the terminology adopted by Buddhism in the West in the twentieth century, of which there will be more said in the introductions to other volumes of
The Collected Works
.

Of the articles originally published in
The Middle Way
that are included in Volume One, a little has been said above, about how they show the development of Trungpa Rinpoche’s grasp of Western language and thought. They include many teachings on compassion and the practice of the bodhisattva path, including a discussion of the six paramitas, the subject that also forms the foundation of
Meditation in Action
. Two articles on the history of Buddhism in Tibet contain unique information not duplicated in any other writings by Chögyam Trungpa.

Additionally, three other articles are included in Volume One of
The Collected Works
. “The Way of Maha Ati” is an exposition of some of the teachings of dzogchen or atiyoga, the most advanced stage of practice in the nine yanas of Tibetan Buddhism. The article contains the earliest meditation instruction by Trunpga Rinpoche ever to appear in print. It is notable that this instruction is similar to the meditation instructions that he gave to his beginning, as well as advanced, students in North America, throughout most of his seventeen years teaching there. Michael Hookham, the editor of this piece (who now uses his dharma name, Rigdzin Shikpo), provided the following information on the genesis of this article and the confusion that arose with its original publication:

Trungpa Rinpoche gave the Maha-Ati teachings in this text directly to me from his personal inspiration; they weren’t translated from Tibetan, but emerged from his insight, based, I’m sure, on traditional Dzogchen upadesa [instruction or teaching]. I wrote them down over a period of time with Rinpoche’s guidance and encouragement, linking them together using his terminology. The text was probably completed in 1968 at Biddulph Old Hall, shortly before Rinpoche left for India. Some time later the text was translated into Tibetan so that Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche could check what was said; as far as I know he approved. Thus there seems to have been a textual translation involved, but remarkably it was from English into Tibetan!

After Rinpoche left Britain, some copies of the text found their way into hands other than those of his students. It was published in part by Dr. John Crook in his
The Yogins of Ladakh
and more completely in Chime Yungdung’s magazine
Vajra
. This latter version was photocopied and circulated within Vajradhatu [the main organization founded by Trungpa Rinpoche in the United States]. Unfortunately the text was incorrectly described in
Vajra
as a translation made by Rinpoche and me; there was also confusion in places between the main text and the interleaved commentary and the title was changed to “Maha-Ati.”

Alone this might not have mattered too much, but in the
Shambhala Sun
of September 1998 and subsequently in the
Shambhala Sun
website up to the present day, a new version of the text appeared, full of arbitrary, idiosyncratic editorial changes. The
Vajra
version with its errors was used as the basis for this . . . revision.

Rinpoche referred to the original text as self-secret, so it’s probably suitable for a wider distribution than most Vajrayana texts, but I feel it’s important to keep to Rinpoche’s intention as closely as we can. . . . It may help matters if the original text is published, so I have attached it to this e-mail.
¹⁸

For
The Collected Works
Rigdzin Shikpo has provided the authoritative and original edition of this text. Its editor continues to live in Oxford, where he and Rinpoche originally met. He was one of Trungpa Rinpoche’s early students in England and continued to study with him until Rinpoche’s death. He was one of the first truly scholarly students that Rinpoche worked with, and he took voluminous notes on their conversations about many aspects of Buddhist doctrine and practice, particularly focused on the ati teachings. With encouragement from his teachers, he later founded the Longchen Foundation as a vehicle to further the study and practice of this tradition, and he continues to teach in England. Another article that he and Chögyam Trungpa worked on together, on teachings related to the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
, appears in Volume Six of
The Collected Works
.

The next offering in Volume One is “The Meditation of Guru Rinpoche,” which was published in
Chakra: A Journal of Tantra and Yoga
in 1971. This short practice text is identified in
Chakra
as a translation of a Tibetan sadhana by “Ven. Lama Trungpa Tulku.” Rigdzin Shikpo, the editor of “The Way of Maha Ati,” has also shed some light on the probable history of this text: “. . . the book
Diamond Light
contained the first version of the text Rinpoche called the
Guru Sadhana
(an Ati Guru Yoga of Guru Rinpoche). As far as I can tell, this must be the text you mean. Rinpoche created it from two Tibetan texts that he said were from the Longchen Nyingthik. I searched the Longchen Nyingthik for them, but with no success. It may be that the texts came from the Nyingthik Yabzhi. In any case, Rinpoche weaved the two texts together and translated the result into English in Oxford in 1965 or 1966, with the help of John Blackwood, a resident of Oxford who died in Egypt some years ago. In 1967 or 1968, probably at Biddulph Old Hall, Rinpoche and I retranslated the text into English with more Sanskrit and Dharma terminology and Rinpoche created a commentary for it.”
¹⁹
Apparently, the short text that appears in Volume One of
The Collected Works
is part of a much larger undertaking.

An article entitled “The New Age,” which first appeared in the
International Times
(
IT
) magazine in 1969, completes Volume One.
IT
was, according to Richard Arthure, “a popular underground paper in the ’60s and ’70s . . . published weekly in London.” The article contains many intriguing ideas about society and politics, topics that continued to interest Chögyam Trungpa throughout his life. “The New Age” may be the first recorded germ of the Shambhala teachings, in English, that he concentrated on so much in the last ten years of his life.

Altogether, Volume One of
The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa
contains a varied and vibrant group of teachings. The pace of change in modern society is such that something written thirty years ago now may seem already almost archaic. These early writings of Chögyam Trungpa, however, are not just of interest as historical artifacts, for they convey timeless, always up-to-date wisdom. There is much to recommend the writings from these early years, and this editor hopes that they will continue to enlighten readers for many generations. At the same time, the contents of Volume One set the stage for the extraordinary pageant of dharma that lies ahead in future volumes.

C
AROLYN
R
OSE
G
IMIAN

April 15, 2002

Trident Mountain House

Tatamagouche Mountain, Nova Scotia

1
. There has been some confusion about Chögyam Trungpa’s precise date of birth.
Born in Tibet
gives it as the full-moon day of the first month of the Earth Hare year, 1939. Other autobiographical sources, including an important doha (song) that he wrote in Tibet, suggest that he was born in the year of the Iron Dragon, 1940. Later in his life, he himself considered this to be his birth year. However, since
Born in Tibet
is included in Volume One of
The Collected Works
, I have given 1939 as his birth year in this introduction.

2
.
Rinpoche
, which literally means “precious one,” is a respectful title for a Tibetan teacher.

3
. See
First Thought Best Thought
, preface, p. xix.

4
. Neither Rinpoche nor Ginsberg seemed to remember this brief meeting when they next encountered one another in the 1970s in New York. Ginsberg only realized that he had met Chögyam Trungpa in India after the latter’s death. When Ginsberg examined a photograph taken during his visit to the Young Lamas School, he saw that the lama who showed him around the school was none other than Trungpa Rinpoche, who had been one of his most important Buddhist teachers from the 1970s on.

5
. The version of this article that appears in
The Collected Works
is based on the article that appeared in
The Middle Way
as well as on material from another manuscript that was discovered in Chögyam Trungpa’s papers housed in the Shambhala Archives. This early typed version of the article included a few significant additions to the discussion, which for some reason were omitted from the text as published in
The Middle Way
. More notably, the earlier manuscript includes a chart that outlines the relationship of the mantra OM MANI PADME HUM to overcoming various obstacles and attaining the wisdom of the five buddha families. This chart has been included with the article in Volume One of
The Collected Works
. It is the first time the chart has been published.

6
. From the epilogue to the Penguin edition of
Born in Tibet
, © 1971 by Penguin Books, Inc. See pp. 280, 281 of Volume One of
The Collected Works
. Until the publication of
The Collected Works
, this epilogue was out of print for many years. It contains revealing information about the time that Chögyam Trungpa spent in England, as well as a powerful discussion of his ongoing spiritual relationship with his Tibetan gurus after he left Tibet. Although he never saw his main teachers again, they continued to provide inspiration for his journey in the West.

7
. For the full text of this interview, see Volume Four of
The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa
.

8
. From “Mukpo,” an unpublished memoir by Diana J. Mukpo with Carolyn Rose Gimian.

9
. Ibid.

10
. Letter from Richard Arthure to Carolyn Rose Gimian, December 2001.

11
. A section of the sadhana appears in Volume Five of
The Collected Works
, along with an article about the meaning of the sadhana, “Space and Energy,” reprinted from
The Shambhala Sun
magazine.

12
. The practices preliminary to receiving abhisheka, or vajrayana empowerment. See the introduction to Volume Five of
The Collected Works
for a discussion of ngöndro.

13
. Letter from Richard Arthure to Carolyn Rose Gimian, December 2001.

14
. From “Chogyam’s Diary,” unpublished manuscript. Translated from the Tibetan by John Rockwell. Used by permission of Diana J. Mukpo.

15
. E-mail communication from Samuel Bercholz to Carolyn Gimian, January 1, 2002.

16
. E-mail communication from John Baker to Carolyn Rose Gimian, February 17, 2002.

17
. For an account of and commentary on their meetings, see David Chadwick,
Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki
(New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 2000), pp. 373–75.

18
. E-mail and attachment from Rigdzin Shikpo to Carolyn Rose Gimian, February 10, 2002.

19
. Ibid. The
Longchen Nyingthik
is a collection of writings—or termas, received teachings—by the famed Nyingma teacher Jigme Lingpa. The
Nyingthik Yabzhi
, mentioned in the next sentence, is a well-known and important collection of four dzogchen texts compiled by Longchen Rabjampa.

B
ORN IN
T
IBET