The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Five Read Free Page A

roaring rivers in the dead of winter, reduced in the end to boiling saddlebags for food. 4 When Trungpa Rinpoche and his party reached the Brahmaputra River, close to the end of the journey, they had to make their crossing at night in somewhat unstable boats made of leather. Someone in a nearby town had alerted the Chinese that a group of Tibetans was going across that night, and the Chinese ambushed Rinpoche’s party. Out of more than two hundred traveling together, fewer than two dozen made it across. Trungpa Rinpoche luckily was one of those who did. Reaching the other side while hearing gunshots in the background, he and most of the remaining band hid in some holly trees until the next night. In Born in Tibet , he wrote, “We dared not open our food pack and there was no water. We could only moisten our lips with the hoar frost.” 5 While they were hiding, hoping to reconnect with some of the rest of the party who they thought had escaped capture, they could hear and sometimes see the Chinese searching for them. Their clothes had been soaked during the crossing, and the weather was so cold that their clothing became frozen to their skin, so it crackled when they moved. Later that day, as it became dark, they climbed for five hours to reach shelter in some fir trees above the village. Hiding in the cover of the trees, after everything they had been through, Rinpoche and his attendant quietly discussed whether or not their experiences were a test of their meditation and how their meditative equanimity would fare if they were captured the next day by the Chinese. Several members of the party made jokes about doing the yoga of inner heat to try to keep warm. Rinpoche and others found quite a lot of humor in this dire situation.
    This is not exactly a crazy wisdom story, except that it is almost inconceivable that, faced with the loss of family and friends, with the prospect of capture and possible torture or death, Chögyam Trungpa and his companions—many of whom were also highly trained practitioners—approached their experience with evenhandedness and humor and seemingly very little fear. That in itself is rather crazy but also seems quite wise, and it does remind one of the lineage forefathers and their outrageous journeys to freedom.
    When the going gets tough, these are people you might want to have on your team. In that vein, it is worth looking twice at what Chögyam Trungpa has to say about the life of these great Buddhist adepts. It is indeed applicable to things we may face today—or tomorrow. Their compassion was compassion for the toughest times. It may be just what the world needs now.
    Both Crazy Wisdom and Illusion’s Game are the work of a great storyteller. In his first five or six years in North America, Chögyam Trungpa taught more than forty seminars on the life and teachings of the Kagyü forefathers. (The life of Padmasambhava was a less common topic. In addition to the two seminars that were edited for Crazy Wisdom , he presented one other seminar specifically on the life and teachings of Padmasambhava.) He also gave several seminars on his own teacher, Jamgön Kongtrül, and on the lineage of the Trungpa tulkus. In seminars on other topics, Rinpoche often would bring up a story about Tilopa, Naropa, Marpa, Milarepa, or Gampopa to illustrate a point he was making. These stories are included in Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism and other popular books. When he told these tales, you felt that he knew these people; he definitely seemed to be on a first-name basis with them. And like any good father telling his children about their grandparents and great-grandparents, one point of his storytelling was to make the younger generation feel close to the ancestors and the ancestral wisdom. He never failed to make those in the audience feel that they were part of or just about to join this lineage of awakened mind.
    The Life of Marpa the Translator continues the theme of perilous journeys and extreme