The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Seven (5 page)

This idea of art as a
do
or path seems to underlie much of his work in the arts in America, particularly in the later years, when his attention was focused on the Shambhala teachings on warriorship and society. As we shall see later in the discussion, he created multifaceted dharma art experiences for people, which brought together a broad audience of practicing artists and practicing meditators, incorporating lectures and discussion groups on dharma art, demonstrations and exhibits of art, exercises to work with principles of dharma art, and art installations that were conceived of and directed by Rinpoche, but which incorporated the efforts of as many as a hundred students. Art as an activity that utterly transforms your life and the lives of others was a message he communicated in many ways.

So far, the discussion of Chögyam Trungpa’s view of art and creativity has focused largely on the artistic process: how one looks, how one sees, how one creates. However, he also talked a great deal about
what
one sees if one looks at the world with awareness. The world in fact is speaking for itself all the time, proclaiming itself, and through awareness the artist—and the practitioner—can contact and appreciate the self-existing messages that arise from the world. That is the meaning of nontheistic symbolism.
¹¹
As Trungpa Rinpoche says in
Dharma Art
:

The basic notion of nontheistic symbolism is that whatever exists in our life—our birth, our death, our sickness, our marriage, our business adventure, our educational adventure—is based on symbolism of some kind. . . . Symbolism usually comes as messages. It is a very simple eye-level relationship: me and my world. . . . There is always some kind of message taking place. What message? We don’t know. It’s up to you. There’s not going to be a fantastic dictionary or encyclopedia. This is simply a reminder that every activity you are doing—smoking cigarettes, chewing gum—has some kind of meaning behind it. (“Ordinary Truth”)

In the vajrayana Buddhist perspective, which is the basis for this understanding, symbolism is not something impersonal. It is deeply personal, connected to our existence and to our nonexistence, as Rinpoche points out:

People’s usual idea of symbolism is that it is something outside them, like a signpost or billboard, that gives them signs, perhaps of religious significance. That’s not quite true. Symbolism is connected with your self, your inner being. In other words, you are the biggest symbol of yourself. That is symbolism. . . .

There are two basic understandings of symbolism: the theistic and the nontheistic. Theistic symbolism is a constant self-existing confirmation; that is, whenever symbolism exists, you exist and your world exists. In the case of a nontheistic symbolism such as Buddhism, you don’t exist, symbolism doesn’t exist, and the universe doesn’t exist. That’s quite shocking! “How do we go beyond that?” you might ask. But we don’t actually go beyond that. Instead of trying to go beyond it, we try to get into it. (“Ordinary Truth”)

According to Rinpoche, symbolism itself is also a path, not just a result: “Symbolism is a question of gaining new sight. It is being extremely inquisitive to see things in their own nature, not always wanting to change things.” Through his or her appreciation of symbolism, the artist participates in and connects with a sacred world. Sacredness is both part of the process and part of the outcome: what the artist sees and experiences. Through the process of appreciating the inherent symbolism of reality, the artist sees the world as a sacred place, and his or her activity becomes sacred activity. Rinpoche often talked about this as connecting with basic goodness and as experiencing and creating harmony and richness. He also connected it with the artist’s role in the creation of enlightened society. In an interview about one of his dharma art installations, “Art of Simplicity: Discovering Elegance,” he said, “Dharma art is the principal way we are trying to create enlightened society, which is a society where there is no aggression, and where people could discover their innate basic goodness and enlightened existence, whether it is in a domestic or political or social situation.”

We turn now to the specific consideration of the artistic disciplines that Chögyam Trungpa worked with in America. In looking at the various disciplines that Rinpoche both practiced and taught about, we will see more about the development of his ideas on art and creativity.

P
OETRY

When Chögyam Trungpa arrived in America in 1970, he had been writing poetry for many years. In “Tibetan Poetics,” a 1975 conversation with Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman, which was published in 1976 in
Loka II
:
A Journal from the Naropa Institute
, Rinpoche talks at length about the classical style of Tibetan poetry in which he was trained and how it used very formal language, metaphors, and set line lengths. He compares the classical poetry with the more colloquial style employed by Milarepa and other great spiritual teachers to convey what Rinpoche calls “songs of their own experience.” He also describes his own approach to writing poetry in Tibetan in the West, in which he continued to employ classical line lengths, as well as some use of rhyme and puns. He contrasts his Tibetan poems with the approach he adopted to writing in English: “I just regard the poems that I write in English as finger painting, in my mind.” The vast majority of the poems he wrote in America were written in English in this free style, influenced more by the poets he met in America than by the classical training of his upbringing.

Rinpoche encountered the American poetry scene soon after he arrived in the United States. He and Allen Ginsberg ran across one another in New York in 1970.
¹²
Rinpoche and Ginsberg encountered one another as they were both trying to hail the same taxicab in Manhattan. Ginsberg was introduced to Rinpoche by one of Rinpoche’s companions, while they were standing on the street, and upon learning who Rinpoche was, Ginsberg spoke the Vajra Guru mantra of Padmasambhava, “
OM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM
,” and clasped his hands in a traditional bow or salutation. Rinpoche, who was with his wife, Diana, and their companion invited Ginsberg and his ailing father to share the cab. After dropping Ginsberg’s father at his apartment, they continued on to Allen’s place, where they stayed up into the night talking, writing poetry, and becoming friends. When later they knew each other better, Ginsberg asked Rinpoche what he thought of being greeted by this mantra, and Rinpoche replied that he wondered whether Allen had known what he was talking about.
¹³

This chance meeting led to an enduring friendship, collaboration, and a teacher-student relationship. On the Buddhist front, Rinpoche was the teacher, Ginsberg the student; on the poetry front, Rinpoche acknowledged how much he had learned from Ginsberg, and Ginsberg also credited Trungpa Rinpoche with considerable influence on his poetry.

Ginsberg introduced Chögyam Trungpa to many other poets, some of whom became longtime friends and students. Rinpoche’s interactions with the poets were sometimes explosive affairs. In 1972, a poetry reading was organized in Boulder, with Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Robert Bly, and Nanao Sasaki sharing the stage with Chögyam Trungpa. While Bly was reading, Trungpa Rinpoche put a huge gong over his own head and hammed it up so that the audience dissolved into laughter rather than paying attention to Bly’s reading. Bly and Snyder were furious, attributing Rinpoche’s behavior to alcohol. They left and were never again part of any poetry scene that had anything to do with Rinpoche. Rinpoche himself later said that his actions were meant to cut through the self-righteous and self-serious attitude displayed by some of the poets at this reading.
¹⁴

In 1974, Rinpoche invited Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman to teach at the first summer session of the Naropa Institute. The Jack Kerouac School of Poetics (originally “of Disembodied Poetics”) became a founding department at Naropa. Ginsberg remained affiliated with Naropa until his death in 1997; Anne Waldman, though now based in New York, continues her affiliation with Naropa and travels to Boulder to teach in the summers and several times throughout the year. In its first two summers, Naropa attracted an impressive group of writers who collaborated, read, and taught there. “Poets’ Colloquium,” from a gathering in 1975, originally published in
Loka II,
shows the freewheeling and spirited discussion among Rinpoche, Ginsberg, Waldman, William Burroughs, W. S. Merwin, Philip Whalen, David Rome, and Joshua Zim. The discussion ranges over a variety of topics: why and how the poets write poetry, whether to take a typewriter into retreat with you, whether a poet writes for an audience, and whether a conscious death is possible. Ginsberg and Whalen compose poems on the spot; Merwin remembers one to share. In the fall of 1975 at the Vajradhatu Seminary, Merwin and Rinpoche had a huge falling out, which drew considerable negative publicity.

Rinpoche discussed his relationship with American poets in his Preface to
First Thought Best Thought:

I have met many American poets. Some are like coral snakes; some are frolicking deer; some are ripe apples; some are German shepherds who jump to conclusions whenever a sound is heard . . . some are like mountains, dignified but proclaiming occasional avalanches; some are like oceans, endless minds joining sky and earth . . . some are like lions—trustworthy, sharp, and kind. I have confronted, worked with, learned from, fought and fallen in love with these American poets. All in all, the buddhadharma could not have been proclaimed in America without their contribution in introducing dharmic terms and teachings. . . .

I would like to thank Allen Ginsberg . . . and I would also like to thank all the poets in America who contributed to this book—either positively or negatively. As is said: a month cannot happen without new moon as well as full, light cannot shine without shadows. My profound gratitude to everyone.

I do not think his expression of gratitude was facetious. Indeed, he cared enough about American poetry and the American poets to work with them, love them, confront them, and fight with them.

Chögyam Trungpa’s poetry is altogether intimate communication, conveying in a very personal voice his insights into his perception, his experiences and relationships, and his aspirations. One could gain almost an entire—and unique—history of his time in North America and how he viewed it purely by reading and reflecting on his poetry. The poems offered in Volume Seven of
The Collected Works
come primarily from two large collections edited by David I. Rome:
First Thought Best Thought: 108 Poems
, arranged chronologically and published in 1983; and
Timely Rain: Selected Poetry of Chögyam Trungpa,
organized thematically and published posthumously in 1998.
¹⁵
Other poems included in
The Collected Works
first appeared in small-press editions.
¹⁶
A number of poems from the
Loka
magazines are also appended, including a long poem recited spontaneously by Rinpoche and Allen Ginsberg.
The Collected Works
also includes poems published in the
Vajradhatu Sun,
the
Shambhala Sun,
the
Garuda
magazines, and in other periodicals and newsletters.

Allen Ginsberg and Chögyam Trungpa shared many years of personal, poetic, and spiritual collaboration. Both Ginsberg and Waldman took part with Rinpoche in several panel discussions and poetry readings at Naropa. Ginsberg contributed the Introduction to
First Thought Best Thought.
He encouraged Rinpoche to speak out about his ideas on poetics, inviting him to talk to Ginsberg’s classes at Naropa. “Poetics,” which appeared in the
Shambhala Sun
in 1993, was based on a discussion among Trungpa, Ginsberg, and Rome that took place in Ginsberg’s Meditation and Poetics course at Naropa in 1978. Here Rinpoche talks about using a threefold logic of ground, path, and fruition in writing poetry and says that “obviously poetry comes from an expression of one’s phenomenal world, in the written form.” “Dharma Poetics” from
The Heart of the Buddha
(see Volume Three) presents another discussion from one of Allen Ginsberg’s classes in 1982.

The creative interactions between Allen Ginsberg and Chögyam Trungpa gave rise to the famous concept of “first thought best thought.” In an interview with Paul Portuges in 1976, Ginsberg commented that he thought he had come up with the phrase first and that Trungpa Rinpoche had appropriated it from him.
¹⁷
In any case, this remark concretely reinforces a point Rinpoche made in his discussion of the American poets in his preface to
First Thought Best Thought:
that buddhadharma could not be proclaimed in America without the contribution of the American poets. In Ginsberg’s interview with Portuges, he also commented that Trungpa Rinpoche asked him to take part in the poetry school at Naropa (Ginsberg is too humble here to say that he was one of its founders) because Rinpoche “wanted his meditators to be inspired to poetry, because they can’t teach unless they’re poets—they can’t communicate.”
¹⁸
As mentioned earlier, Chögyam Trungpa was not just interested in art for artists, or poetry for poets. As Ginsberg notes, Rinpoche was trying to affect the perception and communication “skills” of all of his students through the medium of art.

For further insight into Chögyam Trungpa’s poetry itself, the reader is directed to the poems themselves, to the comments made by Allen Ginsberg in his Introduction to
First Thought Best Thought
(also reprinted as the Introduction to
Timely Rain),
and to David I. Rome’s Editor’s Preface to
First Thought Best Thought
and his Afterword to
Timely Rain.
In the Afterword, David attempts to look at Chögyam Trungpa’s life and psychology through the lens of his poetry. David Rome, Rinpoche’s private secretary and close student-friend for many years, has read, studied, and appreciated poetry for much of his life, with a particular fondness for the works of W. B. Yeats. He and Rinpoche shared an appreciation for poetry that was a creative spark for Rinpoche and an encouragement to persevere with his own poetic efforts. In his Preface to
First Thought Best Thought,
David talks about Rinpoche’s spontaneous method of composing poetry, which took place on many late nights at the end of a full day of activities. For many years, David Rome was frequently the scribe who took down Rinpoche’s poetry as he spoke it aloud. In his preface, perhaps out of modesty, David does not tell us that he was also the person who was called upon to read Trungpa Rinpoche’s poetry in public gatherings of all kinds. David Rome’s ability to evoke the words, the sounds, and the silence gave a voice to the poems—a voice that undoubtedly still echoes in the minds of many of Rinpoche’s students who heard David Rome read on so many occasions. David is one of the finest editors of Rinpoche’s work, as is reflected in the published poems. Rinpoche’s poetry has never been among his bestsellers—poetry rarely is—but it is some of his most difficult work to edit.