PART II
A SOLAR TORCH FOR THE STATUE OF LIBERTY
I liked the ferry ride from Battery Park, at the southernmost tip of Manhattan, across the harbor to Staten Island, passing the Statue of Liberty, coming and going, the great green woman leading us all with an upheld torch and the book of knowledge. My parents were living in an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, overlooking the harbor. At night you could barely see the Statue. You could see some industrial light complexes around the dark harbor, and you could see the weak light of the Statue’s old electric torch.
One night I was at my parent’s apartment for dinner and I sat out on the balcony, high over the harbor, looking at the dim Statue. Suddenly I saw the Statue come alive. The torch got bright enough to illuminate New York harbor. You could see into the torchlight, like looking into a luminous jewel the color of the sun. Solar torch. Sun at night.
I got excited. The next day I called the Statue of Liberty and asked for the Director. I was told that his name was Jim Batman. I said I was Robert Newman director of Gain Ground. They put me through. I told Jim that I was the director of a company studying the use of light in national monuments, and we couldn’t help seeing that the lighting system in the torch of the Statue was seriously outdated. He said that the system was 40 years old and did need replacing but that there was no money for that.
I said that we could arrange to have a new torch lighting system designed and installed, using the most advance technology, and we would have the installation donated. There’d be no cost to the government and a big improvement to New York harbor. Jim Batman was excited.
I went home and got on the phone. In three days I reached the directors of the light research facilities at General Electric, ITT, Westinghouse, and Sylvania, the 4 major American electric light producers. Telling the truth that I was directing the development of a new torch for the Statue of Liberty got their quick attention. Within three days I could see that the Light Institute of General Electric in Cleveland, Ohio, was the only significant American electric light research facility, and the American Society of Illumination Engineers was definitely interested in my suggestion that we could have a design competition.
But I decided to work with GE and design the torch myself, which by then I knew could be a system producing light with the spectral distribution of sunlight. Bob Daley, director of the GE Light Institute, set up a meeting for me with his chief engineer, Terry McGowen, to see the GE facilities and discuss the torch. Five days from my initial vision I was on an American Airlines jet headed for Cleveland, feeling that the project just might be destined to happen.
AMERICAN LIGHT RESEARCH
We had an initial hour long meeting and then Terry showed me around. On that walk I sized up what we could and couldn’t do. What we could do was install a new torch system that would produce about 100 times the present illumination and have the spectral distribution of sunlight, using no more electricity that was then available. Meanwhile, Jim Batman had set up a meeting for me with Jerry Waters, Eastern regional chief of the Department of the Interior.
A few days after I returned from the meeting with GE, with a sense that we could build and install the torch and get it paid for by GE and a big lighting company in New York they worked with, I met with Jim Batman and Jerry Waters at the Statue. Jerry assured me that he was 100% behind the project, which was all I needed.
After the meeting we took a walk up to the torch. Wow. Jim Batman admitted that he had never been up there. We went through a door in the armpit of the Statue and slowly ascended an iron spiral staircase up the arm. It felt like we were on a branch of a big tree swaying in a 40 mph December wind over the harbor. Batman was scared. I was leading the way.
Coming up into the torch was amazing. It was freezing and we were really swaying. First we came up and out onto a porch that ran around the torch, holding onto the rails for our lives. We were 38 stories above the rough looking harbor and getting the full hit of the wind. I found a door into the inside of the old torch, and we went in. We closed the door and we were still hanging on and freezing. I saw fourteen 1000 watt Westinghouse light bulbs in an operating system, a broken lighthouse lens structure for projecting light, and some other discarded bulbs and equipment.
Jerry Waters was even more scared than Jim Batman so I didn’t linger. I calmed them by saying we’d be sure to do the installation in nice weather, but I admit I was concerned that the old swaying arm could fall off into the harbor. I decided to keep a positive attitude.
Two weeks later Terry McGowen came to New York and we went back up to the torch with my close associate Ted Wolff. Ted was an electrical engineer who had worked on major art-and-technology projects at Bell Labs and advised me on my projects. We survived the visit up to the torch, again in cold and wind, holding on to each other. That night we drove all around the harbor taking light measurements. Ted said that we should consider an alternative proposal: create breeding grounds for fire flies in the torch, nothing else, just keep the flies warm He said we’d be surprised at the light bug effect over the harbor. Actually, Ted was very excited by the big torch we were creating.
LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD
When Frederic Bartholdi was working on designs for the Statue in 1879, his drawings showed seven titanic beams of light emanating from the statue’s forehead and light also beaming out of the torch. The 7 spikes coming out of the forehead of the finished statue are an attempt to indicate rays of light. Bartholdi named the statue Liberty Enlightening the World.
In 1879 Edison invented electric light bulb technology, but when the Statue was dedicated in 1886 the torch was a copper sheet metal image of flame, and the spike/rays coming out of the forehead were reversed images of rays that looked like a crown.
In 1916 the sculptor Gutzon Borglum cut away sections of the sheet metal flame and installed 600 small sections of amber cathedral glass and a fifth order lighthouse lens lit with twenty 250 watt lamps. The new torch was dedicated by President Woodrow Wilson.
In 1931 Westinghouse installed fourteen 1000 watt light bulbs in the torch, a 500,000 candlepower system. It was dedicated in an elaborate ceremony started by the daughter of French premier Laval in Paris via transatlantic telegraph. The daughter of France pushed a button that sent a radio signal to a US Air Force pilot circling over the harbor. When he received the signal he released an “illumination bomb” over the Statue, the light blast of which turned the new lighting system on.
In 1945 six mercury vapor lamps were added, and so it stayed. In 1970 that torchlight system looked dim in the harbor. It hadn’t been improved in 14 years even though lighting technology had advanced, and there were more scattered lights in the darkness of the harbor at night, detracting from the Statue’s weak lighthouse effect.
The records showed that several new torch lighting system designs had been engineered over the years, but factors kept it so that none of them were installed. I knew we needed all the help we could get. I called Senator Jacob Javits (D, NY) to see if this project sparked his interest. Indeed it did. He said he’d like to involve France, as was traditional, and he put me in touch with the US ambassador to France at that time, Hon. Arthur Watson. Senator Javits agreed to be our liaison with NASA which I had invited to do a technological event involving France.
Through Senator Javits in the US Senate, NASA responded to my request for a techospectacular turn on of the new torch system. Actually they responded to two proposals I made to them.
They said that they could arrange an energetic signal from France via satellite to ignite the torch. But my proposal to light the new torch via a laser relay system on the moon was too expensive.
THE FATE OF THE SOLAR TORCH
I was a friend of the art editor of Life magazine, who liked my artwork. He said to me that a new torch for the Statue of Liberty was a cover for Life magazine. He encouraged me to create artwork the magazine might be able to use, like photo-design work of mine he had seen exhibited. I told him that there was one photograph that was the heart of the matter: at exactly the right time, out on Liberty Island, you could catch the sun in the torch. You could see and photograph a solar torch.
It happened that it was early morning in autumn when you could get sun in the torch, and the Statue wasn’t open for business yet. But the government had a little ferryboat that left Battery Park at 7am each day to bring out some maintenance employees. I was so determined to get that photograph that I rode the early ferry to the statue three times, with various cameras, to get a blazing solar torch image. I did get some good ones.
So what happened? What happened is that it took two years to design the system and complete the presentation for the government, and by then Gerry Waters was no longer the director of the East Region Department of the Interior. Our torch improvement presentation landed on the desk of a mean little man named Arnold Palmer who loved to say no. His response was that our proposal was “unhistorical” and besides he wanted to take some of the light bulbs out of the torch to save electricity.
I wrote him back to be sure that he understood that we were donating $300,000 worth of improvements and using only the current level of electrical power, in a much improved electrical system, with 100 times the illumination. He answered that he’d already said no on historical and energy grounds. So be it. But I loved the idea of looking into a brilliant source of light that could give psychic enhancement to millions of people, to satisfy a spiritual need. And there are still people alive who loved what I tried to do.
ME AND THE MOB
When I was a kid in Brooklyn and also in the summers in Atlantic Beach there were Italian families in the neighborhood and we were close with some of them. One night my dad Jack was hanging out with Joe G. who confided that he was the accountant for one of the major Italian crime families. Dad knew that was the kind of information that could be dangerous yet he told me. I dissolved the information. No one got hurt by the leak. The New York newspapers made a big display of the bodies of people killed by the Mafia, especially when the families were killing each other.
My father’s used office equipment business was in a little old building on Grand Street, a few blocks from Little Italy. We ate there some times. You walked past the deadly social clubs with armed hoods usually outside the door. I think they invented the wearing of handsome suits and ties with hand gun holsters before the CIA started dressing to kill.
When I moved to downtown Manhattan I was 23 and had various jobs. One of them was that I was the lighting man for Radio Televisione Italia (RAI), by far the biggest media organization in Italy. Our job was to film something of interest to the people of Italy, which could be any day depending on the news. I was on call and was well paid.
My first assignment was to drive with Angie (sound), and Sal (video cam)
to Kennedy airport to meet Gina Lollobrigida. This was fun. We went into the media room with all the other Press. There were about 50 people with cameras and mics and writing pads and a small platform for Gina with a little podium and microphones. We got fairly close where I could light her well. I didn’t want to trouble her. What I didn’t know was that she was a magnificent woman who was also a photojournalist and a sculptor.
She came into the room and I was blown away by her beauty. The reporters were ugly with their personal questions and she managed everything gracefully. What we saw Italy would see. What I saw was the best of Italy.
A few days later Sal called me to meet Angie and him in Little Italy. There was going to be a big Saints Day parade and jammed church services, and we were going to make movies of it all. (Everyone would be out on the streets including the Mafia and they were bound to be in our movie.) I was psyched. The parade was phenenomal. It was big and slow and the music blared from different places in the crowded streets. A human-sized statue of a the Saint was carried aloft by a team of big men followed by a priest and attendants, all in their beautiful robes, the altar boys casting swirls of incense – all in my lights, including well-dressed hoods. Some of them were obviously heavy and I hit them easy with my light.
Then we left the remarkable street theater and headed into the main church in Little Italy. What follows I swear is true. Sal seemed to know what to do. A Catholic service was underway. The church was filled beyond capacity with worshipers, some of them clearly Mafia. To my amazement Sal led us up onto the stage where the priest was performing the service, at the sacred altar, with the jam-packed audience leaning toward him, many of them with their hands pointed in prayer.
We were ignored by everyone, as if we didn’t exist. We filmed the priest doing the service. There we were, up on the high altar with the priest and his acolytes, inadvertently challenging the audience’s faith. We got some very good shots. Then we turned and I focused my lights into the faces of the devotees, especially the hoods, with a cloak of invisibility about me, all for RAI.
My 1967 confrontation with the Mafia in Little Italy was the most dramatic. In truth it was me and a well-dressed armed family man in a stairwell of a walk-up apartment building in the heart of Little Italy. It happened like this. In 1967 Laura Dean and I lived in a 5th floor apartment in a classical family building in Little Italy. The apartment had been lived in by Merce Cunningham and John Cage, a well-known and highly respect gay couple. How they ever got the apartment and lived there peacefully for more than 10 years we don’t know. One day Laura and I had several friends over, two of them quite gay, one of them, with a strong voice, wearing a big fur coat and a sheer pink scarf. We visited for a while in the apartment and then all went out to have some food.
As we were out on the stairwell about to descend, in front of us were three Italian women wearing their daily black clothes, and a son of one of them, a mean-looking well-dressed gangster, standing fiercely at the top of the stairwell. The three women clicked their tongues and made disapproving faces at us as they descended the stairs. The hood stood at the top leaving enough space for us to get by him and leave. I was the last one out. I’ll never forget his eyes.
Our lightheartedness was goring him. I was containing my smile as I passed him, glancing at his stony eyes. He stared intently into the space, refusing to make eye contact, letting us know that he could kill us. As I went past him and turned my back on him I was slightly smiling not to make fun of him but because I was surviving a close encounter with the Mob again.
In about 1971 I was driving back from Vermont with a carful of Buddhists. I was holding a large spiral conch shell. Up in Vermont we had carefully cut a small opening in the big shell that made it into a conch trumpet. When blown into properly they make a big haunting sound. But all the way down from Vermont I was frustrated. None of us in the car could make more than irritating squeaks with the horn. I kept at it the most, and was still trying as we came into Manhattan and went down a main street of Little Italy, one famous for having 3 of the most dangerous “social clubs”. It was summer and all the car windows were open. Suddenly (I swear this is true) the big conch horn I was trying to master responded with a huge resonant outpouring of sound, stunning everyone in and near the car and turning the heads of the hoods manning the social club doors. I couldn’t stop.
Since the people in the car with me were proud of me I went on instinct and kept blowing the horn, in long resonant waves, through slow traffic, no doubt encouraged by my successes with RAI. After a few minutes I got tired, but I smiled a long time afterwards. After all I got away with making a big spirit sound in the streets of Little Italy.
MYSTERY AND FUN IN THE DARK TIBETAN MUSEUM
Before leaving New York to move west to Boulder, Colorado, in 1973, to study with Trungpa Rinpoche, I had some interesting Tibetan magic on Staten Island. Among the faculty of the art department was my friend Rosemary Tung, a painter and teacher of contemporary painting who lived on Staten Island. Somehow, mostly I think because she had a Chinese last name from her ex-husband and she was an artist, she got a phone call asking her if she would please be the director of Staten Island’s unique Tibetan museum, which had been boarded up for 10 years. It was supposed to be full of Tibetan Buddhist art.
Rosemary called me for help. I was working with a Buddhist teacher and studying Tibetan Vajrayana art and iconography while I taught art history and new kinds of art. We quickly arranged to meet at the museum to open the locked doors, look in, and see what the woman who went to Tibet twice brought back. She had built a fine little temple museum, filled it with Tibetan artifacts and died before it was catalogued and evaluated. And so it was sealed for many years.
The museum was on a hill in a remote part of the island. We met there at noon on a Saturday. I had two friends with me, Bruce Robinson and John Baker, also students of Trungpa Rinpoche. We discovered a perfectly built authentic little Tibetan temple, a pleasant surprise. The big hardwood door had a unique lock and Rosemary had the key. Click click and the door was unlocked. I swung it open and looked into the dark interior, apparently full of surprises from the tantric world. I cautiously led the group into the dark unknown. In about 3 seconds I banged my forehead against a metal form.
When I banged the same spot on my forehead on the way to kindergarten for the first time, it was a telephone pole in broad daylight. I lit a match to see what had happened this time. Up against me was a six foot high metal Magic Dagger, a phurba, standing on its point, with another one beside it. Phurbas are a three bladed knife that can control important powers.
The top part of each one consisted of three heads, indicating the full potential of human transformation. I had hit one of the heads with my forehead, experiencing a kind of wake-up again. Years later, after I met Dudjom Rinpoche, I received empowerment in the practice symbolized by the phurba, Vajra Kilaya, holder of the magic dagger. In fact I’ve received that empowerment 21 times over the years. It has everything to do with how I am Doctor Life Vase. It began that day in the Staten Island temple darkness.
We took the plywood off the outside of the windows, one by one, and slowly lit up the room. We somehow figured out that the two great phurbas belonged outside, to guard the entrance. It took us three men plus Rosemary to carry the heavy magic daggers out into blazing sunlight. We set them to either side of the door and we were open for business.
To make a long story short we got the electricity turned on and spent two days sorting through dozens of metal statues of all sizes, mostly of poor quality, but there were a few beauties. There were also two excellent Tibetan thankas (scroll paintings). We removed most of the statues from the well-designed shrine room and used the few excellent works in the art treasury to make a compelling shrine arrangement around two large, powerful statues, classical icons of Shakyamuni Buddha and Padmasambhava, the founder of Buddhism in Tibet. We sat in meditation with them, at the stillpoint of the turning world, sitting in primal ground in southernmost New York City.
Soon I left New York and went West, with Naomi and her 7 year old daughter Darya, moving to Boulder, Colorado, Trungpa Rinpoche’s home base at that time, summer 1973. I was leaving the New York I had grown up in and thrived in and I was going into the unknown. It would be that my further studies of meditation would test me deeply, on the way to becoming a teacher of the medical uses of meditation and childbirth meditation.
GOING WEST, GOING DEEP
We drove across America in summer heat without air conditioning. The world felt hard. There was some underlying depression. As we came into Denver we went through an area of meat processing and packing plants the stink of which painfully twisted my depression. But Denver released us and we went further on.
We went up a hill and, behold, there was Boulder, spread out along the base of the great Flatirons mountainside, the most beautiful city along the whole eastern range of the Rockies, a big university town 25 miles from Denver. It was easier than Denver on my spirit, and Trungpa Rinpoche had arranged for us to have a house to stay in for a couple of weeks. The move to Boulder proved to be very challenging, but it had a great first year.
I taught a course in art-and-technology at the University of Colorado, and helped with preparations for the opening of Naropa University, summer 1974. I was the art department. I brought in two close friends of mine, Tony Candido and Eugene Gregan, to teach the oriental art of the brush, and I offered a sweeping course called The Energies of Ego and Egolessness in 20th Century Art.
But the famous first semester of Naropa University is more remembered for the presence of Chogyam Trungpa, Muktananda, Ram Dass, Gregory Bateson, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, and many others in the remarkable gathering of intelligences wanting to establish a new order of education.
Since I had produced many art shows I proposed that we could have an art show by meditation practitioners in the large lobby of one of the buildings we were renting. As far as what art we might be showing, that was the question. We had two things to start with. A large black Dharmakaya Dragon brush painting by Chogyam Trungpa, and a two-chamber mirror work by me: Life Story. From the community at large and from artists attending Naropa the show filled out well.
Life Story was an efficient two room white satin magic theater that told your story for you to see. You entered the first chamber and to your left was a well-lighted live photograph of you in the full-length mirror, caught by the caption:
YOU WERE BORN
In a flash you are born. Here’s your living image in the world. You pause and see yourself pause.
Then you move forward to where a second mirror awaits you. Over your living image it says,
YOU KEEP GOING
No doubt about it, you’re an image of inevitable motion. Your image can’t stop moving. You see the curtains parted in front of you, inviting you to go in. You enter the second chamber. You see yourself framed in the mirror. The mirror says :
YOUR EMBODIMENT LOOKS LIKE THIS
What can you say about life? I designed the work with Trungpa Rinpoche in mind. Each caption had to be true for him as well as everyone else. I heard he found Life Story very amusing.
ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
At the same time that Life Story was installed at Naropa University in Boulder I had an installation in the Denver Museum of Art, in the All-Colorado show (7/74). It was a room within the exhibition room:
A six foot by six foot enclosure structure, eight feet high, with a white velvet surface and a white door. The four panels on the door have words instructing you in the use of the room. It’s for one person at a time.
Inside, an illumination crown behind the door lets you see. You place it on your head, with the light centered over your brow. Three of the black velvet interior walls each have seven lines of words for you, numbered 1 – 7, 8 – 14, and 15 – 21. You sit on a black stool in the center. You start by reading line 1. The illumination crown is on for 5 seconds and then off for 5 seconds. You read only one line of words before the light goes out and then you have the aftermath of the words in the dark. The adventure takes place line by line, taking you far through the dark.
8. On the computer screen, there you are, standing on the keyboard. ______________________________________________________________
9. Beside you on the screen are strange words and people.
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10. You manage to turn on the sound but can't understand.
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11. Suddenly the talking rabbit comes back.
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12. He speaks English and asks you to come down.
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13. You're both the same size. He says, follow me.
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14. You immediately go into the dark.
15. You learn to fly sitting still.
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16. You see deep into absolute dark. ______________________________________________________
17. You see into all the life in your body.
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18. You see deep into your body-mind.
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19. You start to see deep into life on Earth.
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20. Then the rabbit says it's time to go.
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21. And boom, in the blink of an eye, you're back.
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THE LEGENDARY LOHAN STATUES
In 1967, when I was presenting work in language art in the New York art world and teaching art history at CUNY, one day I was wandering in the massive halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I sometimes taught in the museum. I had been studying the Rembrandts and then I decided to go into the Asian galleries. The Museum was so vast I had never been in that part.
After going through a large, beautifully lighted hall of a colossal sandstone Buddha, seemingly standing floating in the hall, I wandered into a gallery of about 10 life-sized statues in different media, wood, ceramic, and stone.
There were bodhisattvas (buddhas of compassion and service), there was a stone Bodhidharma (the master who brought the Chan/Zen lineage into China), and two very life-like ceramic statues of disciples of the Buddha. One of them, a statue of an elderly man seated in meditation, attracted me. As I walked toward it I had what was then and still is now the most remarkable experience I’ve ever had with a work of art. I saw something miraculous. The statue was alive and breathing. For an instant I had paranormal vision.
The statue was called a Lohan (Chinese), disciple of the Buddha. I think I had an electric hit of Buddhist meditation from an artist of paranormal ability. I was to discover that many people had similar experiences with that statue.
There was a second Lohan statue nearby, a powerful form, also seated in meditation posture, clearly by the same artist; the head however is not the original head. I began research on the statues, in the museum library and at the Asian Art Institute of New York University, very near the museum. I learned that the two statues in the MMA were from a group that originally was 16 or 18 life-sized statues of disciples of the historical Buddha, those who would carry his transmissions and teachings to the world. The disciples were rendered in art in all Buddhist traditions. In China the Lohan tradition achieved some rare and unforgettable art, especially in life-size ceramic sculpture, art alive with meditation.
It turned out that the so-called I-Chou Lohan statues were from a large remaining fragment of an original work widely considered to be one of the greatest works of art known to art history, 16 or 18 life-like life-sized images of a life devoted to meditation. The great western museums that have the 8 remaining statues paid the largest sums ever paid for works of art at that time, 1913-14, two and a quarter to two and a half million dollars for each statue. As famous as the statues were, no one had written a book about them at the time that I discovered them. I decided I wanted to try to write a book that recreated the original temple setting of the statues and disclosed the full nature of the work. Bold innocence indeed, but it turned out to be somewhat inspired.
For two years I worked with different photographers and photographed the statues, in England, Canada, and America, and I continued to do basic art history research on the representations of the Disciples in the Buddha in several traditions. In the Gurdjieff Foundation I received practices to shift attention for greater function, but I still had poor knowledge of the meditation practice the statues disclosed.
Then in 1970 I met Chogyam Trungpa, became his disciple, showed him some of the Disciple photographs, and asked his support to drop the project since I couldn’t write about something I didn’t know. He asked me to keep working at it and said he’d help me. I had started on what would become a 10 year mission to practice and embody the very meditation made visible in the statues, Vipashyana, mindful/awareness meditation.
During the first of the Naropa 1974 summer sessions, a Naropa magazine, LOCA, was published by Random House. The two featured articles were the first published chapters of the Trungpa-Fremantle translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and a photographically rich article I wrote; The I-Chou Lohan Statues and the Stages of Meditation. There was also work by Chogyam Trungpa, Gregory Batson, Ram Dass, John Cage, and Tony Candido.
Just after the summer Trungpa Rinpoche fulfilled his promise to me. He recorded an introduction to the book in dialogue with me, to support me to finish it and get it published. Sam Bercholz of Shambhala Publications had announced that he was publishing both the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Disciples of the Buddha. But it took many years more of tenacity through struggle with the language of the book until it was published beautifully in 2001. The book found the perfect publisher, Tej Hazarika, Cool Grove Press, a publisher of Dudjom Rinpoche, It includes Dudjom Rinpoche’s Sadhana of the Buddha and His Sixteen Major Disciples, his last written work.
Trungpa Rinpoche, from his introduction:
“I think these statues are expressions of nonverbal experience that the artist had in a state of arhathood. The statues are powerful because they are filled with a sense of experience…We could say that these images present the particular realization of Buddha’s sanity in his disciples…The images are done with a sense of awe and reverence, in a very sacred application. And so the images are very human and at the same time kind of superhuman.”
Today we can also say that the statues are images of the kind of meditation the medical establishment has been making increasing use of, the kind of meditation I would eventually use in medical and childbirth applications.
ALAN GINSBURG AND ROBERT NEWMAN
In 1959 I was a very young poet living in the East Village of Manhattan. Alan lived a few blocks away from me and had just published Howl. We both read our poems at the Gaslight Café on McDougal Street, but we hadn’t met. I was put off by the first line of Howl, “I saw the best minds of my generation starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through Negro streets at dawn, looking for an angry fix…” I figured that with billions of people in the world all acting at once there was bound to be way more genius than Alan could know.
One day I walked into a pharmacy near where I lived, and then I noticed that Alan had followed me in. He was famously gay. I was straight. I didn’t think he knew who I was. He probably just saw me and liked me. I ignored him. He kept his distance but I felt his glances. Since I ignored him he didn’t follow me when I left. I didn’t want to meet him then because I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t like Howl. It wasn’t yet our time to meet.
In 1970 Alan and I were both early students of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche but we still hadn’t met. I was by then some kind of new world poet artist. Trungpa Rinpoche had publically said that among the artists and poets around him I was “the only magician.” Rinpoche liked poetry and wrote poems, and I decided to put together a big poetry reading in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in uptown Manhattan, featuring Chogyam Trungpa, Alan, myself, John Giorno, and others. I created a beautiful gold poster with dark red lettering, calling the event MANTRA, scheduled for that magnificent cathedral space which had great acoustics. The poster went up around town and stirred interest.
Meanwhile, I had what I thought was a clever idea. I planned to be away at the time of the event, practicing quietly at Trungpa Rinpoche’s retreat center in Vermont. I carefully prepared a 16 minute recording of me reading several poems into the imaginary space of the Cathedral and the universe in general. I thought it would be good to have my disembodied voice rocking the cathedral while I sat meditating in silence in a cabin in the woods. I left the recording with someone producing the event and I left for Vermont.
My retreat in the cabin was going well. After about a week very early one morning I went into the kitchen of the main house to get some provisions and I got caught by one of Rinpoche’s closest aides. He said that they were leaving for the poetry reading in New York City in a couple of hours and had room for me in the car with Rinpoche. I didn’t hesitate to say that I liked the idea of staying in retreat and having my voice speak for me in the Cathedral. I got some food supplies and went back to my cabin. It wasn’t until I broke retreat three weeks later that I learned what happened: more than 900 people had packed into the Cathedral and it was a potentially hot audience, but there were 3 or 4 poets too many and the program became overlong. They had to forget about playing my recording. The highlight of the evening, I heard, was when Alan Ginsburg was reading a serious poem and, behind him on the stage, Trungpa Rinpoche gracefully picked up the meditation gong bowl and placed it over his own head, mocking Alan. The audience roared and Alan was embarrassed and confused.
About a month later, at a Trungpa Rinpoche teaching in Manhattan, during the intermission, somehow Alan and I found ourselves all alone. He was sweet and I was rather outrageous. He said he’d expected to meet me at the poetry reading. I explained. Alan said he wished he’d heard my recording. I decided to give him a taste of a poem I recorded called WHO AM I:
I move. I turn. I brighten. I burn. I sleep. I rotate. I care. I call.
WHO AM I
I darken. I shout. I react. I hit. I hold. I still. I open.
WHO AM I
I lose it. I kill. I stop. I fall. I soften. I care. I love.
WHO AM I
I went on a little. “Wow,” said Alan, putting his hand on his head. “That’s like Whitman!” I told you he was nice to me.
After that I didn’t see Alan again until the famous summer at Naropa Institute, 1974, in Boulder. I had moved to Boulder because it was Trungpa Rinpoche’s home base. By then I was something other than a poetry-reading poet. I’d been creating art installations that generated imagery in new ways and used language uniquely in the process. When Naropa University was created in July, 1974 I was head of the art department and Alan was perhaps chief among the poets.
Once we met at a party. He asked what I’d been doing. When I told him a little I must have sounded like I was putting him down. That night he told my friend Tony Candido, “Robert Newman thinks he’s a better poet than me.” He was probably right. I never saw him again. He was good man.
TONY C AND THE LIFE IN THE BRUSH
My friend Russ introduced me to Tony Candido. Russ had met him at the University of California at Berkeley where Tony was teaching architecture design, infamous for his sometimes loud dynamic classes. Tony had just moved back to New York (he had been born in the Bronx), and was living only a few blocks away from me. He was teaching architecture at Cooper Union, but the story was that he was an exceptional artist. Russell swore that Tony’s paintings were as good as DeKooning, but that Tony had caused himself problems that limited the success of his work.
At the ages of 18 and 19 he was a bombardier in the Air Force who was responsible for dropping vast payloads of bombs on German military and civilian targets, devastating many many lives, and fearing death every moment of it. Afterwards he went to college, became an architect, and painted passionately. He married and had a child, a girl, and saw a psychiatrist for years about rages he had, especially when he drank too much. He was known for being controversial and aggressive verbally. Once he drank too much at an important event at the Museum of Modern Art. DeKooning and Jackson Pollack were in the room. Tony talked loudly and then shouted out, waving a chair in the air, “I’ll bury you all.” Such behavior didn’t help him succeed in the art world, no matter how talented he was. (When he told me that story he added, “I hope they understood that I meant bury them artistically.”)
After a couple of years of being Tony’s friend and knowing his work well I was director of the Spectrum Art Gallery on West 57th Street, in the heart of the art world, a co-operative gallery of which Tony was not a member. But suddenly we had an open exhibition date and I had to get a show together quickly. I chose to do an exhibition of figurative art with a wide range, in which Tony’s work would fit well. I got a great painting by Frances Bacon “From A Death Mask of William Blake” (now permanently in the Museum of Modern Art), a large bold DeKooning drawing of a “Woman”, and a striking life-size human figure by Candido, somehow painted from the inside out and outside in at once. There were 5 other paintings that I forget.
When it was the night to hang the show Tony and I were all alone in the gallery. He was in heaven. We looked at the main gallery wall. The Bacon had to go there. Of the paintings in the room, only Tony’s painting was a fit complement to it, in Tony’s eyes and mine. So we did it. We hung the Bacon head and the Candido life-sized figure on the main wall. That wall carried the show and Tony felt vindicated forever. Gregory Babcock, one of the most respected art critics in New York then, wrote: “The Candido is the best painting in the show.” Tony at last had a moment of bliss in the heart of the art world.
Shortly after that Tony’s design for the American Pavilion at the Osaka World’s Fair was accepted, and he went off to Japan for 2 years to build it. He came back much more oriental in his art work, working with large Samurai brushes and his love of inks and big sheets of paper, which he made brim with implied form and life. But he never stopped painting human heads and figures, in both oil and acrylic on canvas, some of which were superb.
When I was helping build the Art Department for the Naropa University summer program in 1974 I invited Tony to teach a course called The Life in the Brush, about inks, papers, and brushes and the Oriental master path. The course was very successful.
There was one extensive show of his paintings, at Cooper Union, a retrospective, in 1983, but his work was never widely known. By now Tony is gone and almost all of his work is buried in the stars.
TIBET COMES TO NEW YORK
Chogyam Trungpa came to New York in 1970 and slowly took us by storm. Over the next 2 years many outstanding artists, poets, etc pressed forward unto the flesh of the handsome magic lama. Through and on into 1971, among the pressers were: Alan Ginsburg, John Giorno, and Robert Newman. He treated the 3 of us poets distinctly differently.
With me, Rinpoche was warm and ingratiating. He told me privately, and then caused a stir by saying publically more than once that he seemed to attract many artists and poets and, he announced, they were all imitating the real thing. He said there was only one artist, only one magician, and that was me. With that seduction I was willing to give up my career in the arts in NYC desiring to focus on the Buddhist teachings. Several times he reminded me to focus on my artwork, my special capabilities. But when I said I'd like to move to his center in Boulder he then called me into his office and said they had a house waiting for me. I went leaving the field of life I had thrived in.
With Alan, Rinpoche was unfailingly hard, several times put him down publicly, embarrassing Alan, saying how his disliked Alan's poetry, how negative it was, how "setting sun world" it was, YET, he accepted Alan as a student, which Alan took deeply through to the end of his life.
With John , Rinpoche turned a cold shoulder, shut him out. And John and turned and went to India, sought and locked in with Dudjom Rinpoche, returned to the NYC art scene and began to thrive and then arranged to purchase a house, at 19 West 16th Street, for Dudjom Rinpoche, his family, and attendant lamas to be at home in New York. This was very important for the history of Buddhism in the West.
In Boulder, having been kissed by the magic prince, I found myself lost, finding that I was not part of his sangha, his community, but I stayed there for 6 years, in my commitment to meditation practice. I went downhill for 6 years, lost my artflow and my spirit. And those were the years, when John, who Trungpa Rinpoche was cold to, really started to thrive.
I did continue my artwork and practiced a lot of meditation. Finally in 1979, really in bad shape, I moved back to New York. John helped me, brought me to Dudjom Rinpoche, completely set me up with him, which healed me powerfully and quickly, but I was never able to regain my foothold in the New York art scene. Instead I got deeply close to the Dudjom family, just when John took a big split from that. And then I slowly found the magic for the rest of my life, being trained in advanced meditation under Dudjom Rinpoche's direction.
How then did I finally recover the Creative powerfully? Eventually I had the balls to found Medigrace, begin an advance into mind-body medicine based on a use of language as command and psychological direction. The artist/poet/creator went a unique way, still a single and achieved path that has given me the greatest satisfaction. Those six years actually lost because the magic prince kissed me will be henceforth left in the blaze of my past.
THE ELECTRIC VENERABLE CHOGYAM TRUNGPA RINPOCHE
In the fall of 1973 Rinpoche held the first of what was to be the annual Vajradhatu Seminary, three months alone with Rinpoche in Snowmass Village, Colorado, at a rented hotel called the Snowmass Village Inn. For various reasons I put off going until to the 1973 seminary. That turned out to be a good thing. The first seminary included some poets Rinpoche didn’t know well, and in general discipline was a problem.
The 1974 seminary began with 30 days of Vipashyana mindful/awareness meditation, 8 hours a day, with an hour lunch break, and a full study program, with electives including the relation of quantum physics to the direct practice of buddhahood, and Buddhism and psychiatry.
In the theater of the hotel’s largest hall, Rinpoche sat powerfully in a comfortable chair on a platform and taught the sanity of the Buddha according to the Kagyu Vajrayana tradition. He was physically beautiful, 35 years old, moving gracefully like a master though his left arm was crippled from a car crash. He was teaching the meditation wisdom of Tibet to people who would use it in their work in the world. He was well groomed, wore fine suits of clothes, smoked cigarettes and drank sake, and had a genius for teaching meditation in the language of western psychology. He carried a field of initiation.
120 of his students attended the ‘74 seminary. We sat and sat and sat into awareness, learning how to free ourselves from grasping and fixation. The whole seminary was challenging for me in that Rinpoche allowed me to drive back to Denver each week for 36 hours to teach a course, to hold onto a college teaching job. But there we were, day after day, sitting just like the I-Chou Lohan statues, doing the same practice. And then one day, during Rinpoche’s evening talk, while I was asking him a question, speaking into a microphone, my first act of high comedy in a Buddhist temple occurred. (I was to have more in the future, rocking shrine room congregations several times.)
In the question and answer period I asked Rinpoche if he would some time speak about the different Vajrayana words for space, all with different psychological implications. I was asking if there was a word for what the West would call objective space. He said, “Could be ying.” I dared to counter, “But that’s psychological space too.” “Well,” he started to say, when I jumped in with, “What about my refuge name [which he gave me] Namkha Drime, Immaculate Space. Namkha Drime,” I repeated. He squinted at me perplexed by my pronunciation of the Tibetan words.
Then suddenly I broke into deep laughter. I couldn’t stop it. I howled, and the whole assembly broke into laughter. It was totally contagious. Rinpoche had a good laugh too. It went on for a spell, then I finally calmed myself enough to say something into the microphone in my hand. I was chuckling as I said it, “Rinpoche, you mean you don’t remember my refuge name?” We all laughed loud and long again, Rinpoche too. I guess I couldn’t help making fun of the way I spoke Tibetan words with my New York accent and we all needed some release besides sex for all the energy we stored up through weeks of sitting meditation.
Decorum returned. Rinpoche finished the question and answer period and said goodnight. The next day someone said to me “You sure caused a riot.” I was glad. Rinpoche started his next teaching by saying that he would be teaching on the seven Buddhist words for space.
Computer graphic: Primal Wisdom, 5/75
NEW BELLS RING
After seminary I asked Rinpoche if he was interested in us casting the bells and vajras used in traditional Vajrayana practice. (In 1970 Mr. Benson had looked at me and asked me to study and draw Buddhist bells.) Trungpa Rinpoche really encouraged it, so explicitly so that we put together a team of four talented people who after a year of work had experience with the best foundries in the region and we had a perfect production studio. Rinpoche named us Dharma Foundries.
In quick, after 18 months of work we made a perfect bell, from a bell mold we developed, using a new bell Rinpoche had given us as a basis. Our bell looked great and sounded very good. It had a sophisticated reverse lip on the bell mouth. It looked regal. Rinpoche and his closest associates were impressed.
But we had a problem in that we had spent much time and money getting to the point where we could produce the bells and vajras with excellent quality but there was no financial wisdom to it. Rinpoche’s Vajradhatu organization in Boulder was importing bells and dorjes from Nepal to sell at less than it was costing us to produce. Ours in fact were better quality. We had better metal science, with the help of the Colorado School of Mines, and good metallurgy in the foundries, but we also wanted to support the Tibetan craftsmen in Nepal and not compete with them. It looked like Dharma Foundries was done, but our bell story had some exciting days ahead
In 1975 I learned from the Denver Museum of Art that the world’s largest bell museum was right outside Denver, in Evergreen, on a beautiful estate in an enclave of the foothills of the Rockies, and it was all the work of a Mr. Winston Jones. He had once worked for the Denver Museum, but then he used his great personal resources to build an estate dedicated to buying and installing a large number of fine bells from all traditions, including some of the biggest and best bells ever cast. Out on the lawns of the estate they were each supported and protected by individual architectural wood structures, allowing the bells to be rung and resound through the mountains.
He was very impressed with our hand bell. He gave us the royal treatment, slowly one by one ringing each of the 11 large bells on the lawn. We heard the hills and sky reverberate with the energy of each bell. There was one large Japanese temple bell that fascinated us. It had the same reverse inner lip the Tibetan Vajrayana hand bells had.
Inside the museum were more than 1000 hand bells, a few of them glass but mostly cast bronze bell metal mixtures, old and new. Mr. Jones rarely had visitors, and none before who had taught themselves the lost art of bell making. It also turned out that he was at that time the president of the American Bell Association. He mentioned that the next annual meeting was in Denver, in a year. He said, “Your bell is as good or better than the best bells in my collection”. He had a Buddhist bell similar to ours that was not nearly as good. He said that for each meeting of the ABA they had a bell cast as a gift for all attending, and he said the magic words: he wanted us to make at least 200 bells for that occasion.
But we were struggling with how to support ourselves in the present. We didn’t make the hand bells for the ABA, but we did visit Mr. Jones and the museum again to study the large Buddhist temple bell, because Roshi Kwan the zen master sent us a drawing of the traditional temple bell he needed for the Sonoma Zen Center and it was exactly the same as the bell living on Winston Jones’ big lawn.
In the end we never did cast the big bell, though many people wanted us to succeed, and we didn’t make any more hand bells. But we proved that we could continue sacred traditions in America, and ringing our hand bells and the great bells have been among the joys of this stressed, rich life.
THE ALLURE OF SOLAR POWER
1976-79 were the three hardest years of my life. I had thrived in New York, then moved to Boulder as a commitment to becoming accomplished in meditation but went out of my element and got lost. I did not fit into the smart drinking smoking fucking elegance of the Trungpa sangha, but I did greatly respect the traditional Buddhist teaching system. Even though I’d had close connection with Trungpa Rinpoche early on, I was in the wrong boat.
I had lost my way in Colorado, but that was the moment of the emergence of the solar energy industry, which was born in Denver at that time. As a lost poet/artist I took another leap, this time toward the sun. I made a commitment to work in the solar energy industry, and within a short period of time I was vice president and director of marketing of Solar Technology Corporation, Soltec.
By the time I met the engineer and president of Soltec, Rick Speed,
I had kind of a spontaneous understanding of how to raise money for the solar industry, and a distinct sense that I could develop and market solar power. Soltec made solar greenhouses and air-cooled solar collectors. At that time President Carter was in the White House, and he encouraged and inspired the development of a solar energy industry. There were 13 small companies in Denver and Boulder at the time I joined Soltec. And then it was announced with international press that the national Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) would be built up on South Table Mesa, Golden, Colorado, 18 miles East of Denver, at the base of the foothills, raised up above the Central Plain, facing East. It gave me the sense of being in the right place at the right time again. I was determined to be involved with SERI, and to be in the forefront of the development of solar technology. Said the poet.
I was friends with Carl Worthington, architect of the world class Denver Technological Center, whose office was in Boulder. With Carl, who was interested in solar design, and the solar architect Dick Crowther, I developed the solar architecture division of Soltec, and produced a beautiful brochure about solar architecture.
I heard on the Denver evening news that Mike Noland, vice president of SERI, was coming to Golden to rent temporary office space. I knew he would need an architect he could respect, one who knew South Table Mesa, and that was Carl. I called Mike Noland, arranged to meet him in Golden, and then drive the new government officer of solar research 20 miles north to Boulder.
Half-way there, without having told Mike what was going to happen, I stopped across from the main gate of the Department of Energy’s Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons/Research Facility, which was right on the road to Boulder. Mike and I had been talking realistically about the problems obstructing the development of solar technology when I brought my car to a graceful stop. Mike wanted to know what I was doing.
I explained to him that one of the painful things the new solar industry had to face in this area was the dark presence of nuclear technology, both nuclear power plants and the dangerously radioactive Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, where we were. He was nervous as I explained that nuclear wastes had been mismanaged there at Rocky Flats for 20 years, 17 miles from Boulder and 20 miles from Denver with wind currents to both. The highest incidence of leukemia in children in the USA was there. Mike couldn’t stand it anymore and asked me to get going to Boulder.
As we drove I told Mike that because I lived there and was committed to developing solar research and Industry there, I felt it was imperative to succeed to develop healthier technologies for the future, as opposed to nuclear.
Mike regained his composure by the time we entered beautiful Boulder and then met Carl Worthington in his office. Carl took Mike by storm with a power point slide show of his Denver Technological Center buildings all blazing with light. At lunch Carl did a classic act. He opened his napkin, took out his pen, and made a good quick drawing of South Table Mesa, from the sky looking down.
Carl landed the planning development contract for the Solar Energy Research Institute on the mesa, and Mike got excited about Soltec building solar homes in Golden for the SERI community.
The highpoint of this period was when President Carter and the CIA came to SERI for the President to make a dedication speech up on South Table Mesa, for National TV cameras. You had to see the CIA guys in suits with rifles around the outskirts and in insides of the great mesa to get the extremely cinematic scope of it. I was one of about a hundred people who were invited, and what the President did was an admirable act by a quality president.
His helicopter landed on the mesa in pouring rain. It was a challenge, but a good one. The president refused an umbrella, and walked up onto the platform with clear determination. “Rain is good,” he said with strong spirit into the microphones and cameras and the audience. “We need rain and solar energy,” he said strength.
He then proceeded to read a wonderful speech about the need for the development of renewable energy technology for the health and sanity of our nation. Under the awning of the makeshift podium, with rain pouring down, he brought his vision to fine conclusion in a 45 minute speech on the importance of solar and all renewable energy technologies. At that moment at last in my life I had a President.
By the way, SERI was impressed with our Soltec solar architecture brochure. They hired our designers to do a SERI brochure in the same style, plus they gave our brochure out with theirs to President Carter and the guests. Later I participated in a Presidential panel, presenting the potential of solar architecture.
QUICK SPEECH AT A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT
Some time shortly after that I was invited to give a talk on the prospects for solar industry development in a protest demonstration at a nuclear power plant about 30 miles from Boulder. I was 7th in the order of speakers, after the woman’s rights and Native American representatives. Feeling that there could be deadly radioactive particles in the air I got increasingly nervous as I awaited my turn. Twice I thought of sneaking off the platform and out, but I didn’t want to disturb the event.
Finally it was my turn. I went to the microphone and said, “I was supposed to talk to you about the potential of solar to replace nuclear technology. But while I was waiting to speak I realized that I could inhale a deadly radioactive particle any second and now I can’t stay here another minute”.
I left quickly and noticed many people leaving too. Driving away I held my breath until some vegetation began to appear on the desert-like land. Around the nuclear reactor for three miles plants found it hard to grow. In about 10 miles I slowed the car down when I got to where there were some healthy looking bushes.
The next week 2 Buddhist monks staged a sit-in protest at that awful power plant. They maintained meditation posture as they were carried out by the police. They were another kind of Buddhist but I’m proud to call them kin.
PRAISE FOR THE MEDITATION POSTURE
When I was with Trungpa Rinpoche, in the New York City center we used to have 8 hour sitting meditation sessions on Saturdays and Sundays, in which I sat, and in Boulder there were likewise all day weekend sessions, in which I sat, to sit into the buddha within, to recognize my mind as much as possible, to see it and not react. To be the awareness within. It’s a painstaking evolutionary practice of letting frequently-arising mind dissolve in awareness, inborn primal awareness. In all Buddhist traditions there is the practice of mental and physical stability that takes the posture associated with the Buddha to practice sitting into inherent buddhamind.
In the 1960s on the front page of the New York Times I saw an electrifying image of a Buddhist sitting in meditation posture, a man who had soaked himself with gasoline in protest against war, assumed the meditation posture, and lit the cigarette lighter in his hand. When the photo was taken it was about 30 seconds later and all the clothes and most of the outer flesh had burned off in blazing flame as he perfectly sat in meditation posture, after inconceivable trauma.
In the 1970s the FBI was at war with the Mohawk Indians in upstate New York. We’ve seen movies of how brutal it’s been between the FBI and Native Americans in several parts of the country. In New York City in 1979 I met a powerful Mohawk elder who was hiding in New York City with a trunk full of guns, grenades, and ammo, staying with a girlfriend of mine. He told us that two Buddhist monks trying to stop the warring sides ran out into the lines of fire between the FBI and the Mohawks, sat down in meditation posture and did not move, and both sides stopped shooting. The monks just didn’t move. The killing stopped for the rest of the day. Sad to say I think those wars still go on, but how about the courage of those two monks, sitting into primal awareness on a battleground and stopping the action.
THE DUDJOM TREASURES
In 1978 and 1979 I helped Soltec become a public company. I learned that I had a good grasp of the legal language of solar business and some talent for marketing solar architecture. But I was not happy in Colorado, and I finally returned to New York in 1979.
When I returned I stayed with Ann Rower and other close friends initially. Then within 6 months magic happened. I had come to New York still feeling respect for and devotion to Trungpa Rinpoche, in spite of the difficulty I had relating to his organization. Initially I attended his New York center. Then in spring 1980 John Giorno was able to schedule an interview for me with His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche, head of the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, dzogchen lama of the Dali Lama and Trungpa Rinpoche.
During the 6 years I was in Colorado, John and Jonathan Altman, another close friend of mine, went to see Dudjom Rinpoche in India, made the proper offerings and received a positive response to their request to bring His Holiness to America, to New York City. Rinpoche foresaw that he was meant to establish a home base in New York, to establish his international center and a sanctuary for treasures of the Nyingma lineage.
His Holiness recognized that he had an old connection with John from a previous incarnation. A brownstone house at 19 West 16th Street was purchased for the Dudjom family in 1976, arranged by Jonathan Altman, and an old summer resort in upstate New York was donated to be the basis of a retreat center just before I arrived.
John had his own room in the house in New York and ate at the table with the Dudjom family. He set up an interview for me with Dudjom Rinpoche that was a turning point for me. His Holiness and his son Shenphen Dawa Rinpoche were doctors as well as high lamas. They were the final teachers I needed to become Doctor Life Vase.
His Holiness said that I had an old personal connection with him, and for the next 14 years I attended him and his family, especially his son Shenphen Rinpoche, who was his designated lineage heir. Shenphen Dawa Rinpoche is the reincarnation of Dudjom Rinpoche’s father, who was a direct descendent of the bloodline of the spiritual kings of Tibet. By some grace in my challenging life, Shenphen Rinpoche, aged 29, essentially free of responsibilities since other lamas attended his father, became my personal friend. Again I found Tibet in New York.
Shenphen Rinpoche and I would sometimes go alone up to the Dudjom retreat center in upstate New York. He liked it that I had been trained for 4 years in the Guirdjieff work and had studied with Trungpa Rinpoche for 10 years. Most of the Western students Shenphen Rinpoche’s father attracted didn’t have the background in study and practice I had. My many years with Trungpa Rinpoche made me qualified to work with Dudjom and Shenphen Rinpoche, and that starts the story of how this guy from Brooklyn became close to embodiments of the Tibetan bloodline of spiritual kings.
Then John resigned as the number one Westerner in the Dudjom center. He had a blow-out with the Board (he was chairman). Slowly after that I was given many responsibilities.
One time several years later I was having dinner with Shenphen Rinpoche and another disciple. Rinpoche was talking as he did sometimes about his spiritual royal bloodline, clearly indicating again that he wanted me to memorize the details for posterity. At a pause in his monologue I cleared my throat, like I was going to make an announcement. I said, mimicking him gently, “I come from a long line of garbage collectors and kings.” As I said that he was sipping tea and he spritzed it out laughing.
THE ESCAPE FROM TIBET
Once Shenphen Rinpoche told me the story of his escape from Tibet with Dudjom Rinpoche, his wife Sangyum Kushok, and his two daughters. It was 1958. One night, in their home in the Pema Ko Dudjom temple complex, Dudjom Rinpoche met privately with his family and said that they had to leave Tibet. They had to do it secretly. The state oracle had told the Dalai Lama that the only way a Chinese invasion could be prevented was if Dudjom Rinpoche could reconsecrate 4 major Tibetan stupas, protecting the four corners. But the Gelupa lineage forces around the Dalai lama refused to let a Nyingma lama do that task. It was then that Dudjom Rinpoche decided to leave, before the Dalai Lama was forced to leave.
The Dudjom family prepared for a long tour of Dudjom Tersar monasteries, taking only books as might be used on such a big tour, clothing, food provisions, and a few smaller precious things, like the terma phurbas from the treasury. They had two or three attendants. The family had to leave without giving any suspicion that they were leaving forever. They had to leave behind most of the sacred art treasures at the Dudjom home monastery in Pema Ko and spiritual treasure in all his monasteries and temples. Sangyum Kusho sewed jewelry and gem stones from the Dudjom royal line into the insides of their coats. And they left. The lamas in charge of the monastery were well-trained to run the Dudjom domain with nothing more being said.
There were only minor challenges to their secret exodus. They made it all the way through to the river that they had to cross to enter India. They made good arrangements, and crossed successfully. They settled in Northern India, with the help of James George and others. After a while the Dudjom Tersar lamas in Tibet realized that His Holiness had escaped, and most of them decided to try to leave Tibet too. At the Dudjom headquarters in Pemo Ko, 7 oxen-drawn carts were loaded with spiritual treasures. A group of Dudjom lamas and monks on horseback slowly headed into the Himalayas toward India.
Remarkably in a couple of months they made it though safely all the way to the river, with India on the other side. They decided to linger in Tibet just overnight, and then cross in the morning. So they set up camp, and Chinese soldiers found them. The Tibetans climbed on their horses and sent their cargo loads of treasure into the river with the oxen, every one swimming for their lives, and the Chinese soldiers had a field day with them, machine gunning the animals and the Tibetans and the treasures. The river was alive with mixed human blood, animal blood, and shattered rare treasures.
Two men and two oxen made it across with one of the seven carts. They continued into Northern India with the animals and the treasure, looking for Dudjom Rinpoche. At last they found him. His Holiness was told that two men from their Pemo Ko temple had escaped with a big cart of lineage treasures. His Holiness said that they should be taken care of, fed and given a place to rest, then he would greet them.
Shenphen Rinpoche was in the room when the two men met with His Holiness and described the escape and the massacre in the river. They were so happy that they had saved what they did. His Holiness told the two men to keep the cart of treasure they had risked their lives to save. He told them they would need it to help them start new lives.
So much was destroyed. The Nyingma lineage survived, at first in India. Dudjom Rinpoche was appointed by the Dalai Lama to be the first head of the Nyingma lineage, the original Vajrayana lineage in Tibet. All the eminent lamas of the Nyingma lineage agreed
Then the Dudjom Tersar lineage and all of the Nyingma lineage slowly became established in India and the West.
NEW YORK SOLAR CITY
New York seemed to be no place for solar business, but I quickly got a job as manager of the solar energy division at PANTEC, Inc. in Babylon, New York, out on Long Island. I had an impressive Solar resume, which got me the job. I worked with PANTEC and it’s solar manufacturer for 6 months, until it went bust. December, 1980. No job, no direction in the big dangerous world, but living with the Dudjom family and feeling blessed.
There was one solar company in Manhattan, Solar Energy Industries Corporation (SEIC). Its main distinction was that it had installed the solar energy system on the White House for President Carter, and had installed more solar thermal and solar electric systems than any other New York region solar business. I met with the president, Hector Gutierrez, and showed him my resume. On his office wall was a photo of President Carter with the solar system installation crew on the White House roof. Hector was standing next to the President.
Hector showed my resume to an officer of the Wall Street firm that was in the process of taking SEIC public. He told Hector to hire me. I became executive vice president and once again I was raising money for solar programs, but this time I had found my true spiritual family, and I was living in the Dudjom house, in my mind studying to be a new kind of doctor.
EM CEE SQUARED: RENEWABLE ENERGY POWER DEVELOPMENT
Then Ronald Regan was elected president and one of the first things he did was to remove the solar system from the White House and deny solar any more tax credit support. SEIC died within months of the election. Unlike Soltec, whose investors did make a profit, the SEIC investors lost money. The solar industry was challenged. The military industrial complex was gaining in power. What could possibly be done in the field of such vast forces?
Shenphen Rinpoche called upon his buddha father. By then I had been empowered and trained in various practices that Dudjom Rinpoche himself did, on another level. I knew he engaged the dangerous fields that threatened human life and I believe he did effective work maintaining balance, to give life a chance. Shenphen Rinpoche asked His Holiness to support my work in solar power development. I didn’t know what work that might be, but I had not come away from SEIC empty handed.
I had come to know and befriend a former senior engineer in the NASA space program, Jack Bitterly, who had developed and patented several technologies including a prismatic solar thermal collector and a flywheel electric power automotive system. I wrote a concise white paper on each to attract financing.
Soon there was a spectacular meeting in the architect Carl Kline’s penthouse atop the IBM building he had designed. The spaces were vast. There was a remarkable model of New York City looking like a future super-city. He met with me because I was with his brother, Fritz, and my close friend Mike Helfgott who Fritz admired.
Carl looked at his watch and said I had 20 minutes. I said fine and spoke about the importance of using the nongravity and vacuum technologies developed in the NASA space program, and the importance of solar technologies. I spoke of the Bitterly patents and the need for support. I stopped on the point. He started to look at his watch and I said, “16 minutes” (guessing). He looked at his watch and said, “16 minutes”. He called across the large room to his secretary in her office, “Get me Jack Goldman.” Carl told us that Dr. Goldman was Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and was looking for new solar technologies to develop in Israel.
Carl did send my white papers to Jack Goldman who liked them and arranged to meet with me in a conference room at the Xerox Corporation building in Manhattan, not too far from the IBM tower. Mike and Fritz came along. Dr. Goldman said he liked what I wrote about the Bitterly patents and he asked my permission to take my papers and Bitterly’s patents with him to Israel, to see if there was interest. I said I trusted him, sensing that was the way to go.
He did take the Bitterly patents to Israel for further study, which never led anywhere, but Mike Helfgott and Fritz Kline decided that I should create a company that could be invested in. The name for the new energy company came through to me: EM CEE SQUARED. Mike, who had developed and sold a successful Madison Avenue advertising agency, said, “Corporate name of the century!” And so after His Holiness did ritual to support me, a couple of times, I stirred my mantra vat in my bedroom. With no idea of how to effect the world I just set about trying to do it directly.
I was married to Nancy Nichols at that time. She was also close to Shenphen Rinpoche. She was very helpful getting EM CEE SQUARED set up and running, setting up an IBM computer system in our apartment. I kept working on it and developed two programs: a wind power plant using large vertical axis wind turbines, and a flywheel electric power automotive program. Like the Statue of Liberty torch project, they were big but practical undertakings. While I was earning a living as a legal proofreader, those two wonderful programs, wind power and flywheel/electric automotive power, took up much of my time in the next two years, and both of them almost succeeded.
Developing a renewable energy power plant, with an initial installation of electric wind turbines and a plan to integrate solar electric power production into it by using the space available between the turbines, is a project involving several big components.
First we established relations with a Canadian company, Walton Corporation, who had bought ALCOA’s patent to manufacture the large aluminum rotor blades for their 500 kilowatt 125 foot high ground-mounted wind turbines, called vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT). They agreed to manufacture, install, operate and maintain the turbines for the power production partnership, guaranteeing the turbine function.
Then we needed a site with wind power development potential, probably in California. We needed a power production contract with a utility, either Southern California Edison (SCE) or Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) in northern California.
Then we needed a contract with a Wall Street insurer to guarantee that if there isn’t enough wind, the insurer will pay the investors.
When we secured a viable site, we then needed to run revenue stream scenarios for the site, and price out the expensive electrical grid installation specific to that site. Then we needed financing. Tall order?
I lucked out on a perfect wind power development site in the California desert near Palm Springs, about an hour east of L.A. It was called Garnet Hill. About a mile away, clearly visible across the flat desert, was SCE’s wind power test site. You could see the world’s only installed 500kw vertical axis wind turbine, a big, elegant machine with three shiny aluminum rotor blades, just like those EM CEE SQUARED hoped to install.
I was able to secure the Garnet Hill property on a wing and a prayer, hire Bob Odom, attorney for SERI, to negotiate our power production contract with SCE, set up a meeting at SCE headquarters in L.A., and discover a big blessing. Allow me to not divert to explain, but I was joined in the meeting by Jeff Hitchcock of Prudential, who announced that Prudential had decided to finance this project. It was $10 million for an initial 6 megawatt installation.
The SCE officers really liked the site and really liked the project. I mentioned that Bob Odom would work with them on the power purchase contract. They looked forward to it.
But it wasn’t meant to be. The world moves dynamically fast and sharp and I wasn’t able to move fast enough to secure the property ($250,000). It was sold to SCE for $500,000 a month later, shows you how much they did respect the site. We missed then but the project was still blessed.
We landed one of the best wind power sites in Northern California, in Altamont Pass, east of Oakland, with developers that already had the land under contract and had negotiated the best flat rate renewable power production contract ever negotiated, with PG&E, just needing us to install, operate, and maintain. Way more simple. I got to feeling blessed again.
But not for long. The neighboring wind farm offered our landlord a better land lease than we had and a legal battle arose. When Prudential heard that, the deal was dead.
And then the flywheel electric power program almost got done. I loved that program. Having been excited by that technology as presented by Jack Bitterly, I found that Brobeck Corporation in Berkeley had made a world class demonstration of flywheel electric power for automotive application.
They had done far more than Jack had. And they had two major credentials. They had built a one megawatt utility scale flywheel electric power generator for NASA, and they had produced several steam powered buses for the California Department of Transportation.
I developed a $5 million one year research and development program for flywheel/electric automotive power with Brobeck to present to Wall Street underwriters in 1982 and in 1983. The program came within a hair of being funded by International Harvester Corporation.
In the end EM CEE SQUARED raised enough money to present two fine programs which didn’t get funded. I started it with the energy of Dudjom Rinpoche behind me and it may be that it did good on invisible grounds.
THE MAGIC DAGGER AND THE ENERGY BODY
The following years I attended the Dudjom family in New York and in southern France. I was intensively involved with helping them preserve the treasures and practices of the lineage. I learned a new kind of Vipashyana, based on breathing energy into the energy body. It’s called vase breathing, the breathing of vital energy into the life vase in the energy body. There’s a big vase breathing (bum chen) and a small or gentle vase breathing (bum chung). I was given extensive training over many years and then asked to teach bum chung. It’s been central to my work in medicine and childbirth and is described in my books Childbirth Meditation and Empowered Care. It implies a new model of the human body.
I had a habit of being outrageous with Shenphen Rinpoche yet maintaining respect. Only on rare occasions did I spontaneously set people in the shrine room laughing aloud. One time Shenphen Rinpoche was distressed about something and he had a dark air. A relic had been lost and he saw that as a bad omen. I called a meeting of about 5 of us to consider it. Adam amazingly had two terma phurbas (I had one), and we arranged that we’d all chip in and buy one of Adam’s terma phurbas for Shenphen Rinpoche. A phurba is a magic dagger, especially if it’s terma, concealed treasure. A few survived from Tibet. They’re to be used for the benefit of all life. They can be used to work with great forces, especially when used by a blessed tulku like Shenphen Rinpoche. The use of the magic dagger implies a different model of the human body. We decided to present it to him formally in the shrine room at midnight, when we were about to begin an all-night practice.
At midnight, in the silence, just as Rinpoche was about to begin, before he could get a word out, I called out, “Rinpoche!” “Yes,” he answered, watching three of us rise up with white silk offering scarves, approaching him to make an offering at an auspicious moment. I declared, “In the past we have given you presents like TV sets and sophisticated electronics that you like, but never have we given you a gift precious enough, until now.” I could see Rinpoche getting slightly edgy, so I cut to the quick. “And so Rinpoche we’ve decided to give you a woman.” (He was unmarried.) There was hearty laughter. The boss cracked a smile. “Where is she?” he asked?” I said, “Actually we’re going to do something even better. Here’s a terma phurba. Here’s something precious enough to give you.” Adam and Patrick from France made the presentation with me.
And then we practiced energy body functions all night.
DUDJOM RINPOCHE’S OWN LIFE VASE
One day in 1983 Dudjom Rinpoche gave a “Long Life” empowerment at Barry Bryant’s big space in downtown Manhattan. The empowerment was Amytayus, “Buddha of Infinite Life”, the unobstructed life force. I arrived a little late from a business meeting. His Holiness was explaining the empowerment, with Tulku Pema Wangel translating.
At one point Dudjom Rinpoche said that in the field of this empowerment all your past life obstructions still caught in you and limiting your life force now will be freed. Your life force will be healed into unlimited life.”
Then he rang his bell several times and began the melodic chanting of the empowerment ritual. Over the throne His Holiness sat in was my Amytayus thanka. The central image is of a Buddha, man or woman, seated in meditation posture holding the life vase in his or her lap, the Vase of Immortality. I knew that Amytayus was an icon of the human potential to do what His Holiness was telling us to do. And I knew that the vase that the buddha was holding in his or her lap represented the internal life vase, tse bum, in the navel center.
In the field of Dudjom Rinpoche’s fully realized life vase I experienced what he indicated, so I believe. I know it happened, just like he said. You can call it my imagination if you want, but I had the distinct impression that something I had prayed for had come true, that something worth praying for had happened. Obstructions to my life force were dissolved. I believe the Dudjom long life empowerment increased my life force and life span.
After the empowerment was over, I was standing beside the throne to help His Holiness if I could. I could see he needed help getting out of the throne. He was 80 years old and somewhat frail, containing the fully realized life vase. He leaned toward me and started to rise, holding my arm for support. I lowered my arm so that he could put his full weight against it, and he did. I put my other arm behind his back and helped him up. For a few moments I was holding the weight of his precious, precious body. It felt like I was bringing his body and life vase into mine.
After I helped His Holiness into the car I went back inside to see if anything had been left behind. I saw one of my Tibetan rugs on the floor and the empowerment vase remaining on a table. Lama Rinchen took the empowerment vase and looked at me. I had come in late and had been the only one not to get a sip of the purification nectar upon entering the shrine room. Rinchen brought the empowerment vase to me and I cupped my hands, left over right, to receive a little bit of the nectar to sip. But Rinchen was bad and poured all the rest of the nectar into my hands, overflowing them onto my rug, as I seriously complained. He was chuckling as I drank every drop I could so not to waste it. My cup it ranneth over.
TEACHING THE MASTER TO TELL A JOKE
Trungpa Rinpoche had a great sense of humor. One night at Naropa, with 2000 people attending, after Rinpoche was seated he gracefully turned and picked up a stick of incense, as he usually did to start his evening teaching. He slowly inserted it to stand upright in a glass of rice, and then he gracefully lit the stick of incense with a lighter, before each of his evening lectures, a small ceremony. Then one time he lit the stick and it was a sparkler! It blazed with sparks, surprising and delighting us all. He extinguished it after a few seconds. Great theater, perfect timing. Shenphen Rinpoche had potentially good humor skills too. He just needed a little coaching and encouraging.
I noticed he liked any joke whatsoever that people told him, especially bad jokes. I think he liked the idea of making people happy by joking. He had a poor style of joke delivery. I decided to teach him one good short joke that he could perfect. The joke he said he’d like to learn was:
Question: How do you know when your girlfriend is getting too fat?
Answer: When she sits on your face and you can’t hear the stereo.
I asked him to say it several times with little success.
He went to southern France for the summer teaching program. I flew overseas and joined the retreat in time for the first day. A couple of hundred students were gathered outside the temple waiting for Shenphen Rinpoche to appear. I saw a cloud of dust and Rinpoche arrived driving a new BMW that someone had given him. [He’d only had old cars until then.] He was wearing dark glasses and his window was open. As he came to a stop I stepped up to him. With the whole sangha bowing forward gently with hands in prayer mudra toward Rinpoche, I said to him, loud enough for everyone to hear, “How do you know when your girlfriend is getting too fat?”
He answered, with good volume, “When she sits down upon your face and you can no longer hear that the stereo is playing.” He seemed a little proud of his delivery, which was not good enough. I let out a lip sound that clearly implied dissatisfaction with his attempt. I asked him, “Can’t I teach you anything?” Only a few new people were shocked. The others were used to my being the court jester and were mostly amused.
THE SOUND OF ONE HAND CLAPPING
My favorite exchange with Shenphen Rinpoche in a temple took place in Southern France, at the Dudjom center. Shenphen Rinpoche was teaching about healing practices. At a certain point he taught us a warm-up practice for healing with the hands. He fully extended both arms out sideways, with palms facing the front, held it for a moment, and then brought both hands together in a loud hot clap. It was powerful.
“Rinpoche!” I shouted out quickly.
“Yes,” he answered strongly.
“Please demonstrate the sound of one hand clapping!”, I called out.
The students and Rinpoche had a good laugh.
He announced loudly back to me, “No. You have that transmission!”
Hearty laughs again, whatever it all may have meant.
Dudjom Rinpoche once told the sangha, beware of any teacher that takes himself too seriously. Make sure he has a sense of humor.”
DRIVING THE DOCTOR LAMA
When I drove with Shenphen Rinpoche I almost always drove the car, with him beside me in the front passenger seat. On occasion he’d take the whole back seat. On rare occasions he’d drive. I drove him in some very bad weather, like once in a rainstorm on the Taconic Turnpike when traffic was moving fast but it was very difficult to see. It was dangerous and almost impossible to see how to get off the highway. The cars kept moving fast.
Shenphen Rinpoche was worried and checked his seat belt. Chho Je tulku, in the back seat, was very worried. Vision was almost blinded by torrential rain while the speed of traffic from the few cars we could see was about 40 miles an hour. We couldn’t stop and couldn’t pull off. I stayed superalert, looking for the road, red tail lights, head lights in the rear view mirror, anything. My instinct was to keep going as straight ahead as possible on the turnpike.
Rinpoche and Chho Je Tulku were expressing amazement that I was able to drive on through. Rinpoche said, “How can you see?! How can you do this?!” We were in mid-danger so I shut up and drove. It would have been a very dangerous, harrowing drive with anyone in the car. When you’ve got Dudjom Rinpoche’s lineage heir in the car and the reincarnation of a Tibetan oracle you hope you’ve got protection, and you drive with all the skill you can summon. We made it through the danger. Later in the year the reincarnation of Trungpa Rinpoche’s root lama was killed with 5 other lamas in a car crash in India.
Once Shenphen Rinpoche and I went to explore the region west of OCD, in the Catskill Mountains foot hills. I saw a town on the map named “Gay Head”. I said to Rinpoche, “Who knows what we’ll find. What if it’s an inbred town of gay red-necks?” And so we went off to find out, with the map in Rinpoche’s lap.
We followed road signs and turned up a hillside right into the center of the small town of Gay Head, maybe 20 buildings, including a little church and a courthouse, ALL boarded up. No one was in sight. It was a little eerie. We saw no reason to get out of the car. Nothing moved in the various wooden buildings. I drove very slowly down the main street, which then went out into hilly fields. Ahead of us there were about 50 sheep in a group near the road.
As I slowly drove ahead I said to Rinpoche, joking, “As we come to those sheep if they all turn their heads around at once and look at me they’ll be my disciples in my next life.” As we came to the sheep I experienced one of the darndest things I ever seen. Every single sheep turned its head and looked at us at the same moment. We both laughed a long time.
It was great to do practice in the car with Rinpoche, and it was a good time to ask him questions. Once he said to me, “If an animal runs out in front of the car and you’re driving a lama, you do not endanger the lama by hitting the brakes. You kill the animal. It will be taken care of. Just don’t endanger the lama by hitting the brakes.”
Within 10 seconds a very large rabbit tried to cut in front of the car. I threw my right arm across Rinpoche’s chest to brace him and I hit the brakes, with a screech but not a rabbit scream, since I just avoided it. I turned toward Rinpoche, who was looking at me sharply, and I said, “Thank you for letting me taste my fear of killing.” He nodded his head up and down twice.
THE DOCTOR AND THE LIFE IN THE DEER
One fine August day at OCD Shenphen Rinpoche said let’s go swimming.
He and Chho Je (oracle) Tulku got in the back seat of the big old green Cadillac. I was behind the wheel, and Maria, an assistant, was in the front passenger seat.
As we drove down the road I saw a deer killed by a car, lying on the roadside. Rinpoche said, “Quick. Let’s get the deer!” So I pulled over and stopped the car and we all got out. She was a large beautiful doe, seemingly fresh killed, with no sign of blood and no odor. Rinpoche said, “Quick!! Quick!! Get it into the car,” meaning I should lift the 185 pound animal dead weight, with my bad back, and haul the deer into the trunk of the car. Moreover not only was Rinpoche showing clearly that he wouldn’t help me, Chho Je Tulku kept loudly echoing Shenphen Rinpoche: “Do it quick!! Quick!!” as he also pointed sharply at the deer.
If a car had come down the road at that time they would have seen an unusual sight: one man either wrestling with a dead deer or falling on it trying to lift it, or trying to dance with it, and two intent oriental people, one older and bigger, watching Maria and me just manage to get the deer into the big empty trunk of the Caddy, receiving commands from the commanders.
I turned the car around, we drove back to OCD, and parked in our driveway. We got out. I opened the trunk. The deer was very beautiful. What a graceful body and head. In the remarkably clear Cadillac trunk light she looked asleep completely still. Then Shenphen Rinpoche did something wonderful. He did Powa for the deer, the Transference of Consciousness into the next incarnation, bringing blessing into the death. Chho Je Tulku, Maria, and I all experienced, through Rinpoche’s sensitivity, energy of consciousness still in the deer. We saw Rinpoche transfer the subtle consciousness with blessing. But that wasn’t all that Rinpoche wanted to do for the deer. He would consecrate the flesh so that the body of the deer would become blessed food. There was no odor of decay at all. And Rinpoche was a very special doctor.
Maria and I hauled the deer’s body into the big kitchen and put it down respectfully on a big butcher block table. I was tired, with an aching back, and I went to get a good night’s sleep.
I was aroused early by a knocking at my door. One of the other students was there saying, “Quick! Come to the kitchen!” I got some clothes on and ran after him to the kitchen building. Inside the room stank of death and a shocking scene confronted us. The deer’s body was laying with its neck extended out over the side of the table with the head cut off. The head was in a big plastic bag with the guts of the doe. Her insides had been cleaned out. Thick blood still dripped down slowly from the cut arteries in her neck. Large amounts of Indian incense was burning to try to hide the death smell, unsuccessfully.
Shenphen Rinpoche came veering into the kitchen. “Quick!!!” he said. “Take the deer out into the woods!!! Leave it there! Other animals will use it as food! The plumber is here and he’s trying to fix something in this building! We don’t want him to see the deer. We’ve distracted him to another building. Get the deer out into the woods!!!!”
So Tony and I tied the deer’s ankles together and slipped a pole through so that we could lift her body and carry her upside-down into the woods, with me behind the deer, carrying the pole on my right shoulder. Tony also had the plastic bag with the deer’s head and guts and he led the way.
As we walked I watched the feminine rear end of the deer sway gently from side to side. From my view you couldn’t tell she wasn’t alive. And she was a beautiful female animal. She had a sweet and sexy rear end. We laid her to rest in the woods.
But it wasn’t over. It turns out that Tony, who was even more tired than me, dropped the bag with the head and guts somewhere on the way. We let it be. Animals would claw through the plastic and open it anyway.
About three hours later I was talking with Rinpoche in his office when a very high-strung, emotional student came bursting in shouting that she had found the severed head of a deer in a bag full of intestines and she demanded to know what the horrible sign meant!
I left Rinpoche to calm her down and I returned to my room. I’ve never forgotten all the implications of that experience of the aftermath of one anonymous death.
A MONUMENTAL DEATH
Trungpa Rinpoche’s nervous system had been damaged in a drinking-related car accident in Scotland in his early twenties, yet he demonstrated great skills and clarity thereafter. He was destined to be a spiritual genius with a profound legacy, one who drank and smoked and had frequent sex. Rinpoche had been warned by doctors in 1971 that his liver was enlarged from drinking, but he never stopped. By 1986, when he was 46 years old, he had achieved remarkable accomplishments, including the founding of Naropa University and the publication of many important books, but his body was failing. He died in Nova Scotia in May, 1987, and was cremated at Tail of the Tiger in Vermont in the most spectacular event I had ever been part of.
His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche presided over the ceremony. Trungpa Rinpoche’s body, ku dung (relic body) had been preserved in salt in the traditional way by Kagyu lamas for 7 weeks while the extensive preparations for the funeral were completed. A cremation purkhang was built, a noble ceramic structure with circular openings on each side that you could see through. 7 grand thrones were constructed around the purkhang, each about 200 feet away, and decorated traditionally for important lamas who would attend. The cremation site was situated in a large green meadow. The array of colorful, ultimately profound structures was a unique theater of the highest quality. The weather was clear. The sky was blue. The sun was overhead. It was the realm of the Dharmakaya of death. I was there with Nancy and thousands of other people, coming from around the world. Trungpa Rinpoche’s achievements were profoundly respected.
The large and stately funeral procession, with a lone bagpiper slowly leading, carried the treasure coffin in which Rinpoche’s body, wrapped in a samadhi robe, was preserved in salt crystals and silence.
As the body was carried with ceremonial grace to the cremation purkhang, a group of lamas and monks began chanting Kagyu liturgy, and then the eminent lamas were slowly seated in their thrones. Nearer the purkhang were seated Rinpoche’s wife, Diana Mukpo, and Osel Tensin, Trungpa Rinpoche’s Vajra Regent, his dharma heir, who was to shock the world a year later, on the front page of the New York Times, with a horrifying admission.
The cremation purkhang was designed with openings so that you could see the head of the ku dung. The relic body had been removed from the salt with devotion, covered in blessed cloth, with constant chanting, and the precious body was balanced seated upright in meditation posture in the center of the purkhang.
Then everyone in attendance, thousands of people, filed one by one past the purkhang to offer a white offering scarf. That took about 2 hours, with chanting, in English and Tibetan. Kerosene was fed into the purkhang systematically. When all was ready, when everyone was finally seated, a monk touched a lighted candle to the Trungpa ku dung and it burst into flame.
It took many hours for the relic body to burn completely, needing many gallons of kerosene. Those were extraordinary hours. Death itself is a great spiritual teacher, and the cremation of an eminent Buddhist master is a powerful teaching for those connected to him. The New York Times reported that there were rainbows around the sun. Unusual clouds and other signs were reported. It may or may not have had to do with all the kerosene fumes sent into the sky with the body.
But my karma with Trungpa Rinpoche wasn’t finished. By the time the Disciples of the Buddha book was published in 2001 my relationship with him was pure blessing. In a letter he had written to me in 1980, when I had written to him that I’d become a direct student of Dudjom Rinpoche, his last words to me were, “You have my blessings.” That proved true.
THE LIFE OF A MASTER OF MASTERS
Dudjom Rinpoche was born in Tibet in 1904. He was the reincarnation of the legendary treasure revealer Dudjom Lingpa. At the time of the Chinese invasion of Tibet, Dudjom Rinpoche was revered as the foremost treasure revealer of the age.
He came to New York City for a brief visit in 1971. He gave a public talk in a church in the City Hall area. I attended with a group of Trungpa Rinpoche students. We had heard that Dudjom Rinpoche was the head of the Nyingma order of Tibetan Buddhism and that he was one of the grand masters. He was called “His Holiness,” the same as the Dalai Lama.
We were waiting inside the church, up near the stage where he would be speaking. I was anticipating a bold presence with beautiful robes. His Holiness entered through the front of the church, so that we were furthest from him as he came into the room. I saw him radiating into the space and I got a thrill. He was wearing a plain but fine brown-gold chuba coat. I saw him radiating energy as he was escorted up onto the stage.
He was seated in a soft chair. A Catholic bishop introduced him. Then Dudjom Rinpoche spoke. Sonam Kazi translated. His Holiness went right to the heart of the matter, awareness of awareness, realization and liberation. His directness and authority were remarkable. I could see why he was called a master of masters.
When I met him personally in 1980 he was 77 years old and in good health. He was small and slender. He was physically the finest and most beautiful man I’d ever seen. He had a quality of physical and spiritual aristocracy. He was an important teacher of the Dalai Lama. In his house on 16th Street in Manhattan, in his room up at the retreat center, in his house in the Dordogne, His Holiness oversaw the continuity of one of the greatest schools of human development in history.
I was fortunate enough to live near the Dudjom family for more than 10 years. Sometimes I slept in His Holiness’s sitting room, just outside of Shenphen Rinpoche’s bedroom.
Early in the morning Dudjom Rinpoche would walk in, chuckling when he would see me. I would get up and start to leave and he would gesture for me to stay. We were alone together many times over the years, in his sitting room, in the car, but we couldn’t speak. I never learned Tibetan and His Holiness never learned English. Once we earnestly tried to communicate verbally, and we became increasingly humored by the situation. I learned to be quiet and smile.
But by 1984 His Holiness had become frail. He had respiratory problems. His last public teachings and empowerments were in the Dordogne in August, 1984. The empowerments were his revelations of Green Tara and Medicine Buddha, and I received them.
At the last teaching he gave, August 14/84, on the Diamond Words of Padmasambhava, he spoke very softly. He was careful with his breathing. Then there was an intermission in which His Holiness was alone for a few minutes. I knew it might be the last time I saw him. I went to him and sat down. I had two small iron phurbas in a white offering scarf that I held toward him. He took the phurbas into his hand and proceeded to softly bless them with mantra, and he kept blessing them with audible mantra, and he kept blessing the phurbas, and I received his precious, precious breath with all my heart.
SACRED DANCE AND THE ORACLE’S ROBE
My dad did good tap, and I did and still do good rock dance, but I loved the nobility and meaning of Buddhist dance, sacred dance. When I returned to New York from Boulder and began to participate in the Dudjom center activities I was glad to learn that there was a ceremonial dance group, led by Lin Lerner. Lin was a PhD dance ethnologist from Columbia University who had gone to the East to study Buddhist dance. She heard about Nyingma terma dzogchen dances called Dances of King Gesar, Padmasambhava as warrior king. She heard that they were performed in Orissa, India, under the guidance of terton Namkha Drime Rinpoche, “the Gesar Terton”, and she set out for Orissa, in 1977. Terton Namkha Drimed had a dream that she was coming and that he and his teachers would transmit the lineage to her to bring to the West. And that happened.
Lin was a good teacher, and when I joined we had a lively group of 5 men and 5 women. The dance is designed for man-woman consort couples. The men are King Gesar and the women are Tara as they dance and sing the highest teachings. We performed the dances in the traditional Tibetan costumes, including fur hats and the Gesar hat, as an offering for Dudjom Rinpoche, and once for Khyentse Rinpoche, and for New Year celebrations. Once we danced in 104 degree summer heat at OCD for Dudjom Rinpoche, and I almost lost it in my heavy garb. (John Giorno said I got rubbery legged.) On almost all dance occasions it was traditional for the dancers to drink hearty amounts of alcoholic beverage to loosen up but not get rubbery legged.
One time at a New Year’s celebration, with John Powell dancing the lead for the male dancers in a complex Gesar dance, loaded on sake John and I took off boldly in the wrong direction, which brought on a creative challenge. That pleased Dudjom Rinpoche greatly, but there was something it took me a long time to understand. The dance was anything but funny to the lamas. They saw something important still being transmitted.
Eventually I became the lead male dancer and had a proper Gesar hat, and I had a spectacular robe to wear for the dances.
I had been practicing and performing the Gesar dances for two years when Shenphen Rinpoche decided to give me a fine robe to dance in, a royal gold silk chuba (full robe with long sleeves), with turquoise and crimson silk interior. It had belonged to an oracle, a Nyingma lama who lived in Ladakh, bordering Tibet. It had been given to Shenphen Rinpoche as an offering by the reincarnation of that oracle lama, Chho Je Tulku, who became a good friend of mine.
Chho Je Tulku came to stay with me once. Never one to hesitate to challenge a young tulku (he was 25 at the time) when he came to my apartment after a while I showed him the robe and told him it had been given to me by Shenphen Rinpoche for the Geasar dances. I tried it on for Chho Je Tulku to show him a few dance moves. I have to say he took it well.
DUDJOM RINPOCHE PREVENTS A IN MY FAMILY
One day when I was living in the Dudjom house in New York City, my sister called, needing to talk to me. She was a little disturbed that within one month’s time an astrologer at a party and a fortune teller in Greenwich Village both said that there was a danger to Pat’s daughter Elizabeth in the month of November. Pat said it was eerie that they both said almost the same thing. She said, “I hate to bother Dudjom Rinpoche about anything, but can you find out what he has to say about this?”
I told the story to Shenphen Rinpoche who went in and spoke to his father. A few minutes later Shenphen Rinpoche returned and told me, unforgettably, “What those people said is true. “There’s a serious threat to your niece’s life in a car accident in November, but His Holiness can prevent the accident. Her car will skid on ice but she won’t be hurt. Afterwards some small incident will remind her that he prevented the car crash. He hasn’t done that yet. Your sister should make a simple offering to His Holiness that is appropriate, perhaps 5 pieces of colored silk, like 5 bands of a flag, blue, red, gold, green, and white.”
I told my sister. She was alarmed and grateful at once. I said she also should get a little offering for Shenphen Rinpoche, since he’s been so helpful.” “Sure,” said Pat. “What do you think I should get?” I said, “I suggest a portion of sesame Mongolian beef from Chinatown. He’d just love that. He’d think you knew his soft spot.” And so the offerings were properly made.
Just before Thanksgiving weekend Elizabeth was driving from Albany, New York, where she was going to law school, to her family home in Baldwin, New York, on Long Island, for Thanksgiving weekend. Her car took a frightening skid on black ice and spun out of control among other cars, but then stopped on the roadside with no damage. She righted the car, extremely afraid, but then drove downstate without incident.
After Thanksgiving, as I recall, Elizabeth returned to law school and her roommate became ill and was vomiting. Elizabeth drove her to the nearest emergency room, parked the car, took her roommate into the ER, turned around and went back to the car which she’d left open with her pocketbook in it. She got her purse, locked the car, and on her way back to the ER she slipped on oil in the parking lot and smacked her head on a metal sign. As she did she saw Dudjom Rinpoche’s face and she knew it was him. I believe she said she was reminded of the near-accident, but it’s long ago for all involved. It is clear that it was the beginning of a connection Elizabeth formed with Shenphen Rinpoche.
Albany, the New York state capitol, where Elizabeth was going to school, was about 45 minutes north of Orgyen Cho Dzong (OCD) in Greenville, New York, the Dudjom retreat center. Months after the near accident, the following spring, Elizabeth drove down to OCD to meet Shenphen Rinpoche. I think she expected an old Chinese wise man dressed oriental with a long gray beard.
When her car drove in Rinpoche was out in the middle of the lawn, casually dressed, flying a kite. He liked flying kites. He was embarrassed a little to be caught playing and was trying to hand the flying kite off to me but I walked away, so that they could say hello that way. Elizabeth was nervous and I thought that would relax her. Then I took the kite down, and Elizabeth followed Rinpoche into his office where she had an interview with him, which made her happy.
Then Elizabeth got married, to Andres, an architect, and soon she became pregnant. She was a nervous person basically and she worried about the pregnancy. She asked me to speak to Shenphen Rinpoche. He blessed a red knotted cord for her as protection and blessing for the baby. He said to tell her that he guaranteed the child a good birth and four healthy years to get started in life.
Elizabeth took to the protection cord like it was magic. She wore it around her neck, and after Lara was born, with a good birth, Elizabeth kept the protection cord on the crib.
About 7 years later Elizabeth became pregnant again, and intensely wanted Shenphen Rinpoche to protect and bless her womb child with another red protection cord. She was really concerned when she thought I might not be able to get it. But she did get the second protection cord from Shenphen Rinpoche. She was really relieved, and had a second good birth.
A year later she was pregnant again and immediately asked for a protection cord from Shenphen Rinpoche. But he was in the Far East and scheduled to be gone for a year with His Holiness. At that time I was close to Chagdud Tulku, the Red Tara lama, and I arranged for Elizabeth to come and see him, for protection and blessing for her childbirth. She arrived nervous, uncomfortable about seeing any lama except Shenphen Rinpoche.
I had told Chagdud Tulku about Elizabeth, her pregnancy fears, her trust in Shenphen Rinpoche’s blessings. He said nothing. He just radiated blessings and almost silently recited mantra, slowly moving his mantra beads with his fingers. I brought Elizabeth into the room. He radiated into her and everything, continuing to quietly reverberate mantra. With his long grey beard, his gray hair tied up on the top of his head, wearing beautiful robes, to me he looked like the oriental wise man she initially thought Shenphen Rinpoche would be. She tried to say something a couple of times. She knew he spoke English but he said nothing. Rinpoche was continuously blessing her quietly. She thought he was ignoring her because he didn’t speak to her. He just radiated blessing and protection into her and her child. She left disappointed.
That night she had a dream that Chagdud tulku was in her womb, blessing her child.
And so because my sister once asked Dudjom Rinpoche for help it is likely that he saved Elizabeth’s life and in doing so allowed my sister to eventually have 4 grandchildren from Elizabeth, children who are like the gift of new life to grandma Pat.
DUDJOM RINPOCHE AND THE PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR WAR
In being physically near to Dudjom Rinpoche, probably the foremost Vajrakilaya master of our age, I often had the distinct sense that in his phurba practice, facing the killer technology threats to all sentient beings, he acted specifically to neutralize threats, to prevent disaster. There is no doubt in my mind that he made a difference in the fields of the Earth, he and other masters. I feel that we’re probably alive by their grace and so still have the chance to realize the human potential.
One day Shenphen Rinpoche told me to get myself a beautiful locket and he would fill it with relics, to wear on my body. His Holiness had just told him that these were unprecedented and dangerous times, and that Shenphen Rinpoche should open their treasury of relics and place many things in lockets to be worn as protection and blessing by the disciples.
Nancy bought a fine gold locket for me and gave it to Shenphen Rinpoche with a sun disc locket for herself. When Shenphen Rinpoche had carefully filled and consecrated the lockets he called me in to see him. He said that it was filled with “Seventeen relics, enough to found many temples.” He gave me an official letter of certification, on Dudjom letterhead, and he listed the seventeen relics.
The first one was a bone relic of the Third Buddha, the one who preceded the Buddha of our age, Shakyamuni. Then there was a bone relic of Shakyamuni Buddha. There was a relic from Padmasambhava, founder of the Nyingma lineage, and relics from treasure revealers along the line, up to and including Dudjom Rinpoche. Shenphen Rinpoche sealed the locket with superglue.
As he handed it to me to wear, he said, “And if there is something like nuclear war, break the seal, open the locket, and feed the relics to those closest to you. Eat them. Bless your bodies.”
DRIVING DUDJOM RINPOCHE
In the first year of my service to Dudjom Rinpoche and his family I became the family driver, among all the other hats I wore.
The set up for all Dudjom Rinpoche drives, either short ones, like trips to Chinatown, or long ones, like back and forth to OCD, was that Dudjom Rinpoche sat in the back of the car, with Sangum Kusho, his power consort wife, to his left. In the front seat with me were the fox princesses of Tibet, Shenphen Rinpoche’s two sisters, the Dudjom daughters, Chimay and Tsering. They made themselves up as mod woman and dressed hip. They were also sincere practitioners of the Dudjom Tersar and they were my friends. They were in their thirties and they loved New York.
On almost all drives with Dudjom Rinpoche they were to my right in the front seat, speaking perfect English. Dudjom Rinpoche rarely spoke in the car. And so off we went, wherever we were going, carrying the most precious possible passengers, Dudjom Rinpoche and his family life support system, with two lively ones at my side.
I would drive carefully never forgetting the preciousness of the rare terton within. Sometimes we’d stop for lunch or dinner. If Dudjom Rinpoche needed to use the restroom I went with him.
Once we were at a large interstate highway rest stop. The doors to the men’s room were large, and inside was a line of 20 urinals and 20 toilets, full of men, mostly big. Beside me was the five foot five inch tall grandmaster in simple but elegant clothes, and he was chuckling as we entered the mass of men, who were taking their penises out and in.
I smiled at Rinpoche and indicated an open toilet stall. He chuckled. When he came out he was smiling, and at that moment two very large men came out of the stalls on either side of him. He chuckled. I put my arm around him and walked him out to the car.
One time at OCD I was the all-time tired I’d ever been. I had way too many responsibilities and we had long practice and study sessions. I lay down on my bed with serious need of sleep. I had just about conked out when someone was knocking at my door. I was told that the car was ready, and Dudjom Rinpoche, the Sangyum, and the daughters were all in the car waiting for me to drive them to New York.
I literally staggered to my feet and headed for Shenphen Rinpoche. “Sorry,” he said, “You’re the only one they trust to drive on the long trips.” “But I’m so tired it could be dangerous,” I said. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll all have you covered.”
To start with it was very hard on me. I was digging my fingernails into my arms to make myself more awake. We’re talking about driving 70 miles an hour with roaring trucks. Can’t blink for a second. Just stretch your eyes wide open. I knew that a revered Tibetan tulku had died in a violent car crash a few months before.
No I had never gone to war but I knew it was time to be battlefield alert. I tried to do protector prayers but the only thing that worked was spontaneous union with the precious Dudjom Buddha. I counted on some liveliness from the daughters, at the least, but they were so at ease with my driving they both fell right to sleep. Then in the rear-view mirror I saw His Holiness fall asleep.
It was Sangyum Kusho and me. It was night. There was an accident. There were police cars and ambulances, whirling lights, and I drove through with the Sangyum sitting upright behind me like a noble Tibetan protector. She was the reincarnation of Dudjom Rinpoche’s wife from his previous incarnation. She sat as the wrathful protectress of the present Dudjom tulku.
With the Sangyum at my back I drove on through the dangerous night, good for practicing panoramic awareness. Such an aging master is so, so precious. Breathing with him in the car I was breathing the meaning of the word rinpoche: precious one; treasure of the nation.
THE DEATH OF A RAINBOW BODY BUDDHA
I had the privilege of private teachings and blessings and public empowerments from Dudjom Rinpoche for years, mostly with Shenphen Rinpoche as translator. But by 1984 His Holiness had become frail. He had respiratory problems. His last public teachings and empowerments were in the Dordogne in August, 1984. The empowerments were his revelations of Tara and Medicine Buddha, and I received them with about one hundred students and lamas.
At the last teaching he gave, August 14/84, on the Diamond Words of Padmasambhava, he spoke very softly. He was careful with his breath. Then there was an intermission in which His Holiness was sitting alone for a few minutes. I knew it might be the last time I saw him. I went to him and sat at his feet. I had two small iron phurbas in a white offering scarf that I held toward him. He took the phurbas into his hand as if they were alive and proceeded to bless them with mantra, and he kept blessing them with audible mantra, and he kept blessing the phurbas, and I received his precious, precious breath with all my heart.
After the 1984 August program in France, I never saw Dudjom Rinpoche again. He almost died the winter of 1985, but through the care and prayers of Sangyum Kushok and Shenphen Rinpoche, and his daughters, Tsering and Chimay, he continued to live, quietly, within the family, still overseeing the continuity of the Nyingma lineage and acting in the subtle balances of world dynamics.
But in January, 1987, he couldn’t go on any more. He stopped eating and sat in samadhi for two weeks. Then, on January 17th, his heart stopped beating. Shenphen Rinpoche had to bring in French doctors to declare that death had occurred, but without heartbeat and other central functions the Dudjom relic body stayed hot and continued sitting upright in meditative absorption for 10 days.
On 1/27/87 I wrote:
Ten days ago your immediate family of incarnations
and your doctor had to say that your heartbeat was gone.
Your heart and central functions had stopped
but your energy was high and your body was hot.
You had been sitting in meditation for two weeks
and after death you still are sitting in meditation.
Your body is entering extraordinary states,
acting in majestic transform.
You are shockingly alive.
You are all-knowing in death.
Your meditation after death now may be
the most important act on the planet.
I wish every human being could be aware.
You are bodies of hot light in your flesh remains.
You are living Buddha empowering us now.
He remained upright in samadhi day after day after death, accessible only to the family and Tulku Rangdrol. Around the world, among Tibetan lamas, there was much focus on how Dudjom Rinpoche would die. He was master of the practice of ja lu, rainbow body, with which a dying practitioner may turn the mass of his or her body, flesh and bone, into light, usually within two weeks of the time of death. It is said that more than 100 students of Dudjom Rinpoche had accomplished rainbow body. However, the body of Shakyamuni Buddha was cremated, and other Buddhist masters died in various ways. Sometimes, because of the prayers of disciples, a lama might only partly reduce his body into light, preserving his body in perfect proportion, leaving a small deathless buddha as miraculous remains.
After about 10 days Dudjom Rinpoche’s upright samadhi passed. Shenphen Rinpoche and Tulku Rangdrol washed and dried the relic body and then wrapped it in a samadhi robe of white gauze, lowered it into a bed of salt crystals in an upright coffin, seated the body in meditation posture, covered it carefully with salt crystals, and then closed the top. I was close to the process. Shenphen Rinpoche made it clear to me that the ku dung was shrinking, bone as well as flesh was shrinking, and the energy released was going into the crystals. (I have some on the table as I write.)
When Dudjom Rinpoche was young, one of his main lamas was Sangye Tulku, who later escaped Tibet and lived in India, in hot Orissa. When Sangye Tulku died people close to him prayed for the lama to leave a miracle, a diminutive self-preserved relic body. Sangye Tulku reduced his relic body to about 20 inches high, seated upright in meditation posture, demonstrating the potential of meditation. At the same time he reincarnated as Shenphen Rinpoche’s first son, when Shenphen Rinpoche was married to one of the two dragon princesses of the King and Queen of Bhutan.
Sangye Tulku’s relic body remained seated in his throne in Orissa, dressed in miniature robes, with the hair and fingernails still growing, for years after the time of death. At some point Indian health authorities heard that the Tibetans were keeping a corpse in their temple, and they went to investigate. The Sangye Tulku ku dung had been self-preserved through 120 degree summers for years. The authorities took a good look and left and never came back.
In 1984 Dudjom Rinpoche told Shenphen Rinpoche to go to India to cremate Sangye Tulku’s ku dung, and bring back the relics that remained.
The relics were to be used to make terma medicines. I was stunned by the news. The Sangye Tulku ku dung was a rare example of an extraordinary human capability. I couldn’t comprehend cremating it, but Dudjom Rinpoche saw precious uses for the cremated remains in our dangerous times. I have seen such relics, and they are out of the ordinary.
As Shenphen Rinpoche watched over the Dudjom ku dung in southern France, he let me know that it was ja lu, rainbow body. According to Rinpoche the relic body had stopped shrinking when it was about 14 inches high in the meditation posture. Meanwhile, in Nepal, near the great stupa in Bodhanath, a remarkable temple and sanctuary were being built to house the precious Dudjom ku dung. Chatral Rinpoche, who was to become one of my lamas, directed the artists, monks, and lay people who worked on the building, which would be the tallest in Bodhanath, with a golden roof.
A TIME FOR MIRACLES
The Dudjom ku dung remained in the samadhi coffin in his house in the Dordogne until February, 1989. Then at last the Dudjom temple in Bodhanath was complete, and with great ceremony the relic body was flown from France to Bhutan, and then to Nepal, where all the major Nyingma lamas and tulkus were gathered. Disciples had come from around the world. The ku dung was brought slowly from the Kathmandu airport to the Dudjom temple on the back of a ceremonial elephant, past more than 150,000 people waiting along the way, all offering white scarves as the samadhi coffin slowly and powerfully went by.
The Dudjom temple, just completed, was spectacular. The art was of such a quality that it would have been excellent in the best Nyingma temples in Tibet. The tradition was alive and well. A special two story chapel had been created to contain a 14 foot high jeweled stupa to house the ku dung, with a window in the stupa through which you could see into the ku dung’s face.
Those were powerful and magical times. I made what turned out to be life time connections to other Nyingma lamas, particularly Dilgo Khyentse, Chatral Rinpoche, and Orgyen Tulku, connections which would bring me back to Bodhanath again in 1991, in my need to further my work in the field of medicine.
A PRECIOUS WISH-FULFILLING BUDDHA
After a week of ceremonies in the Dudjom temple I ventured out. Some of the greatest of the living Nyingma lamas were nearby. I was staying in a small hotel near the temple of His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. I had received empowerments from him but had little personal connection. I walked across a field to the Khyentse temple, a large classical Nyingma building, probably built in the 1970s. The door was open. I didn’t see anyone. The shrine room was empty. I walked up a wide staircase to the second floor. In front of me was His Holiness’s receiving room and bedroom. The receiving room was large, with glass doors that were open. The extraordinary scene inside looked heavenly to me.
I stood in the open doors looking at a graceful living Buddha, six foot four, in traditional maroon robes, surrounded by tulkus and lamas he was training. Most of the tulkus were of renowned incarnations. His Holiness seemed to have eyes all around his head, effortlessly teaching everyone.
He saw me standing in the door and indicated that I should come to him. I offered him a white silk scarf, a katah, an offering to sacred nature. His Holiness received the scarf and then placed it around my neck, meaning everyone is sacred. He asked me what I wanted. The translator was the excellent Dr. Matthieu Ricard.
I said that I just wanted his blessing. He reached forward, placed his large graceful hand on my forehead, and poured energy into me with a short prayer. Then he asked, “What do you want?” I said just his blessing, and I left.
I went back to my room and realized what had happened. I planned to go back the next day. It seemed like a miracle of availability. But I still wasn’t clear about what to ask for. I went back the next day and he invited me in again. I had books and ritual objects for him to bless. He did, and then he asked what I wanted. Again I said, just this.
I went home and was frustrated with myself. I went back the next day, was invited in as before, and when asked what I wanted I said I wanted to be able to heal with my hands, but I didn’t want to learn any existing methods. I wanted to develop my own methods. It came to my mind to ask His Holiness if Garuda practice might be connected to what I wanted. He said that I should come back the next day at 3pm and he would give me what I wanted.
At 3pm the next day I came into the room as before. This time His Holiness and Matthieu had prepared an empowerment table in an open part of the room. His Holiness arose, moved over to that table, and sat down on a cushion. I sat across from him. Matthieu sat next to him. He said we need one more person. At that moment, I swear, Nancy walked quickly though the door, knelt down beside me, and asked, “Why am I here?”
Matthieu, Nancy, and I received a rare and precious Garuda empowerment,
in Tibetan, with no teaching. His Holiness gave me three pages of his own text for me to copy and have translated, to practice.
A tulku I knew who was excited that Khyentse Rinpoche had given me Garuda empowerment and a copy of his own text, sat with me to translate it. As he read through it with me we could see that it was concerned with reversing physical and psychological epidemics and it involved making unique medicines in retreat conditions. It was an impossibly challenging practice to be left alone with. I knew that Shenphen Rinpoche would say
that any questions I had would have to be directed to Khyentse Rinpoche. He had answered my prayer but I still needed his help. I left Bodhanath and returned to New York not knowing if I’d be able to see Khyentse Rinpoche again.
MY NIGHT WITH A TIBETAN WOMAN OF MY DREAMS
One night there was a party at the Tara Goan hotel where I was staying, along with John Giorno, Nina Resnick, Mike Helfgott, David Frank, Anapurna, and others. It was some kind of Nepalese holiday. American music was rocking from the rec room. The whole atmosphere at the quiet hotel had changed like a change of scene in theater.
I was standing outside looking for stars in the sky over the pollution-ridden valley. The music was sounding nice to my ears. I was by myself, when up to me walks a magic threesome if I ever saw one: Gesar Rinpoche, one of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s sons, Rechung Rinpoche, a tulku friend of mine I met through Chho Je Tulku, and Rechung Rinpoche’s stunning sister, Pema, who hit me right in the heart.
Rechung Rinpoche introduced me to Gesar Rinpoche, who was Eurasian and big and beautiful. I had known him when he was young. We smiled. Then Rechung introduced me to his sister, Pema, and I really smiled. She was a beautiful woman in every way. How could I not spontaneously want her?
As if it was magic theater, Rechung Rinpoche asked if I would do him a favor. He asked me if I would look after his sister for the evening. I looked at her, we all smiled, and the two young Rinpoche’s went away.
Pema was about 30 years old, dressed in blue jeans and a nice top on a classically beautiful woman’s body and face, light olive Tibetan skin. Her black hair was cut nice.
I wanted to communicate effectively like never before, but there was no problem. Not only did she speak excellent English, there was easy communication rapport. She was clearly intelligent, like her tulku brother, from the same genes. The rock and roll played on. I was as ready to fall in love with her as with any woman I‘d ever met.
I asked her about herself. She told me a little but she really wanted me to tell her about Dudjom Rinpoche and about what I did in America. I told her I had done new kinds of art with new media. She was really interested. I wanted to talk about her but she was interested in my creative use of new means of communication.
Finally I said something I’d really wanted to say, “Please come into the rec room and dance with me.” She hesitated. She indicated that she’d rather continue getting acquainted outside where we were. And then I made a big mistake. I took her by the arm and said, “Come on, let’s dance,” and she came along with me into the rockin rec room.
I loved the music and wanted to burst into dance with her. I said, “Please dance with me.” She said, “Not yet.” And instead of waiting with her to help her get into it, I did something I regret.
I had to dance. I asked Annapurna and she jumped to the occasion. We rocked. I turned around and Pema had gone. I felt pain all through my body and mind. I went after her but couldn’t find her, and Rechung Rinpoche had asked me to take care of her. There were many people milling around outside and there was so much noise. Pain on pain. She was gone. I had had such bad luck in love, but for a moment I had a taste of perfect rapport with a Tibetan woman of my dreams and it’s with me to the present day. I call that a gift. Clearly I haven’t let it go.
CLOSENESS WITH A REVERED NEPALESE DOCTOR
During my first visit to Kathmandu Mike and Nina invited me to come with them out of the Buddhist enclave and into the Hindu depths, in a town near the airport, on a river that flowed into the Ganges and was considered holy. A Nepalese man told Mike about a “very intelligent guru” that lived there. The man said he would take Mike to meet the Guru. They made a date to go. Mike invited Nina and me to join in and we did.
The taxi dropped us off right near the river, where they were burning bodies. Mike and Nina were going around looking for the guy that Mike was supposed to meet and I was edging closer to the funeral pyres. After a few minutes Mike and Nina came back nervous and wanted to get away from the black smoke and smell of roasting flesh and guts. They headed across a bridge over the river into a Hindu graveyard live with monkeys.
I turned to a guy in the street and said, “Where’s the guru?” He said, “Guru? You want Guru? I take you to Guru.” With Mike and Nina looking back at me from across the river I followed the guy right down to the riverside where two bodies were being burnt on beds of pieces of wood and brush. Another body was lying on the ground awaiting its turn, a tall, handsome Nepali guy of about 40 with a big cock. Big change coming up for him. Appearance and disappearance.
My guide led me into a room just off the river where a guy in a loincloth was lying on his side smoking a cigarette. Against one wall was a shrine with a framed photograph of a radiant man sitting like a buddha.
My guide spoke to the slowly rising yogi who managed to put his cigarette out, saving the butt, and rose to stand up, adjusting his loin cloth. My guide said, “Guru will now demonstrate yogic postures.” The yogi was starting to raise a leg. “Stop,” I said firmly. “I want to meet the guy in the photo on the shrine.” My guide spoke in Nepali to the yogi. Both shrugged. I left.
I found Mike and Nina with the guy we were supposed to meet. He led us out of the town along the river, where people were bathing and saying mantra, and quietly washing clothes. We came to a small cabin. The guide lowered his voice respectfully and told us to wait while he asked if the Guru was available. He came back and said, “Guru is having massage. Please wait.” And we did, easily, by the river.
After a while the guide came and said, “Okay. Come.” We entered a dimly lit room featuring a stunning man, sharply dressed, with an unforgettably massive head of silvered hair up in a fro, and with a long braided grey beard. He wore a fine white gown. He was lying on his side like a reclining Buddha. He was 90 years old and lively. Several people were sitting near his feet, making devotional gestures and sounds. I sat down near his head. His name was Basudeb. He spoke perfect English.
He immediately hit on us as if he could see us and tell. He nailed Mike hard to start with. Mike, a graceful man, was uncomfortable. Basudeb was kinder to Nina. I saw he had a notebook beside him. Before he hit me I asked him what was in the notebook. “Here,” he said, and he gave me the book.
I opened it and found that it was full of English language, written in clear all capital letters. About every other page had a drawing. There were two major themes: stopping the spread of AIDS internationally, and preventing an earthquake of historic proportions. I read some aloud to Mike and Nina.
I asked him why his English was so good. He said he spent a year at Albert Einstein Medical Center in New York studying Western medicine. He said that since he didn’t need much sleep he was able to learn a great deal in one year and that was enough. Now he was concerned with problems of epidemics and natural disaster.
He said, “I need help. Will you people work with me?” Mike and Nina didn’t respond. I said I’d need to talk to him about that, but I was going into retreat for 7 days in Bodhanath, under the guidance of my Tibetan teachers. He wrote me a poem with a black calligraphic marker on white paper asking me to return and work with him “in the vajra”.
I noticed an electronic keyboard instrument in the room. I asked Basudeb about it. He said that he played music into the fields of the universe to practice healing and disaster prevention. He volunteered to play for us, and he did. I’m not that smart about music but I could hear that he was reaching for higher domain.
We left. I went on retreat in my room in my hotel in Boudha for seven days.
After retreat and after I visited Chatral Rinpoche and Chokyi Nyima again, I went to see Basudeb before returning to America. I was impressed enough with him to have gained the interest of my close friends Adam, who was to be recognized as a tulku, and Anapurna, my Dudjom sister.
When we got to Basudeb’s cabin by the river he wasn’t there. There was a nicely printed poster on the door in what I thought was Sanskrit. Somehow someone saw us standing in front of the sign and came to help. He was able to read the sign. “Oh,” he said. “Guru is in Kathmandu city. My brother-in-law has taxi and we can take you.”
We were taken to a complex of walled structures in Kathmandu, and led down into one building, then up a wide stairwell. I stopped. The music of Basudeb filled the space above. I told Adam and A.P. that Basudeb may have picked up that we were coming.
At the top of the second flight of steps there was an open door with music vibrating out. Inside the large white room was the elegantly dressed sister of the Queen of Nepal, and an equally well-dressed man of state. There was also a group of calm devotees. Basudeb was up on a stage with the keyboard instrument. The main part of the floor of the room was occupied by bowls of medicines, arranged in a large rectangle.
Basudeb ceased his musical celebration and turned to welcome us. He seated A.P. and Adam near the royalty and led me to a small divan in the rectangle of medicines. I asked about them and he told me that there were several herbs he was working with to counter respiratory disease in Nepal, from the bad pollution. He mentioned blood in the streets.
He took out a cigarette and started to smoke it. I asked him for one. He gave me the pack and then he lit the one I took. Our every move was being watched carefully by the Nepalese and Americans, to all of whom I must have seemed outrageous. I said that I was leaving in two days and had very little time. He addressed A.P., Adam, and me concerning a catastrophic earthquake. He asked if we’d help him. Adam and I said yes.
Then I said we have to act right now. I said let’s set up working against AIDS now. He reached to his right and brought out a chart that seemed astrological in form, but was unique. He concentrated on the chart, then said, “We need a vajra.” I reached into my jacket pocket which held several bronze ritual objects and brought out a small fine vajra. “Good,” he said, and then worked with the vajra on the chart a minute.
Then he noticed something in a corner of the room, got up, and sat down where two men had a loaded smoking pipe ready for him. He took a puff, and I said loud and clear, “Is that hashish you’re smoking?” No answer. Since I’m used to my outrageousness I asked again, “Are you smoking hashish there or what are you smoking in that pipe?” I was really curious.
Anapurna said, “Oh Robert, let go of it.” And I did. Basudeb returned. He slept very little and was obviously a highly respected doctor and an ingenious being. He looked at the chart and moved the vajra. “We need another vajra,” he said. I reached into my pocket and found another small vajra.” I thought it was amusing that I really happened to have two vajras he asked for. He might have known, but I doubt it. It was some kind of serendipity. We made a private plan to work against AIDS.
He asked for someone to take photos. Adam did. We parted. In the photos you can see that he’s vibrantly alive.
Basudeb wrote to me several times over the next year. He sincerely believed if he could speak to major Western scientists he could change the world for the better. But his language was a poetic jumble of words that could only be considered personal poetry. He prayed for me to bring him to America to meet the powers. I told him more than once that I could not help him that way. But I’m sure he’s done some greater good.
He’d be 115 years old now if he’s still alive. I think he is. Anyhow he’s alive in my life.
A HORRIBLE EVENT IN TRUNGPA RINPOCHE’S SANGHA
In December, 1988, a disturbing story was printed on the front page of the New York Times concerning Trungpa Rinpoche’s Vajra Regent, Osel Tensin. In an interview he admitted to having AIDS and having probably infected others. It was clear that he knew he was HIV positive and yet believed that he was special and would not infect others. He had homosexual sex with many men and had sex with some women without telling them he was HIV positive after he was told that he was infected. There was no telling how many people in the Trungpa sangha had contracted the virus through him. It was clear that he had made a terrible abuse of power in using his position to have sex with many others and risk their lives.
Before Trungpa Rinpoche died he strongly told his wife that Osel Tensin was “terrible”. “He’s a disaster. We have to dismantle him!” But Rinpoche was too ill by the time he knew what was going on and Osel Tensin was too powerful. After Trungpa Rinpoche died the Osel Tensin revelations caused great agony and deep division in the Trungpa sangha. Khyentse Rinpoche advised that the students had met many teachers and could choose whoever they wanted to work with.
Osel Tensin died of AIDS in 1990. But Trungpa Rinpoche’s blessings are powerful and his various organizations and Shambhala lineage are alive and well throughout the world, promoting a vision of sacred world and a practice of sanity.
A TRAGIC DEATH IN THE DUDJOM SANGHA
Nancy Nichols and I divorced in 1987. In July, 1989, at the Dudjom center in southern France, I was standing with Shenphen Rinpoche and two other students when Nancy walked by. Rinpoche looked at her and commented to us quietly, “Crazy person.” Later I asked him why he said that. He said he wanted to prepare the sangha.
In September, 1989, the Dudjom family was living mainly in the house in New York City, with occasional visits to the retreat center, about 3 hours north of the city. Nancy bought a car, a black Saab van, to live in and go back and forth between New York and OCD. She was a gifted bodywork professional and had many good clients in New York. She was able to work when she wanted to and make money quickly. She had been erratic for years, and she increasingly pressured Shenphen Rinpoche, pushed his blood pressure up. He was overweight and we’d been concerned about his health for years.
The night before Nancy bought the black van, Sangyum Kusho, Dudjom Rinpoche’s wife, dreamed that Nancy had been slaughtered in a car. The next day I was talking to Shenphen Rinpoche in the Dudjom center on 16th Street when Nancy drove up in her new black van and parked right outside the shrine room. Shenphen Rinpoche was cold to Nancy. She left and then came back in and said that someone had just smashed in the rear window of her van and broken glass was all over. She asked Shenphen Rinpoche what it meant. I will never forget his words. He said, “Listen to me! It’s a sign of your death! That car is your coffin! Get rid of it!!” Nancy smiled with a smirk and left.
The next day she called me on her cell phone and said that she had been driving fast on a New Jersey highway and lost control of the van which jumped over into the other side of the highway, driving head on into oncoming traffic. She said, “It was amazing that I didn’t have an accident.”
That day I was working in my real estate office in New Jersey and Nancy hung around the Dudjom center in the city. That night Shenphen Rinpoche was kind to her but made her swear to not sleep in the van in the streets of New York, which she wanted to do. She promised him she would stay over with her parents in Edison, New Jersey.
The next morning about 5:30am the phone rang near my bed in Livingston, New Jersey. It was Shenphen Rinpoche. “Robert! This is very important! Nancy’s been shot! or stabbed! and she’d dead!!! Call her parents! Get here fast!!”
I called Frank and Ruth Nichols. Frank picked up. I said, “Frank, I have the worst possible news.” I told him what Shenphen Rinpoche had just said.
I dressed in a dark blue suit with tears in my eyes. About 7am I drove up to the Dudjom center. There were police, yellow tape crime scene barriers, there were TV news crews, and blood was being washed from the Dudjom center steps.
I immediately asked the police detectives what happened. One made a gesture of cutting across his throat, a knife or a screwdriver he said. I winced.
Shenphen Rinpoche came directly to me and quietly and firmly told me to handle it. The police came at me first – I was the ex-husband suspect – and then came WNBC-TV and WPIX-TV. By the end of the day Nancy’s murder made the front page in three of New York’s newspapers plus page three of the New York Times, and was on most of the TV networks. It was the murder of the day in New York, and they were trying to write a twisted story about Buddhism. For me it was like having to be super alert in a war zone. I managed to credit and celebrate Nancy as a sincere student of meditation and good person. I spoke of her as the health care professional she was. Rinpoche was happy with my management of the media.
I looked into the black van. There were blankets and books and clothes all drenched in blood, and her new laptop computer was still in the car. That neighborhood, near Union Square park, was live with junkies, many of them Viet Nam veterans who knew how to kill. You could sometimes see one going up or down the street quickly trying every car door on the way.
In a flash I saw what really happened. Nancy was sleeping in her van near the Dudjom center as she was told not to do and she probably left a window or door open, plus the rear window was partly smashed in. A street junky found the car door or window open and quickly got in, Nancy jumped up and shouted. He was probably surprised, and then attacked her. She was big and strong and he would have to attack her in full assault to take her and he did, overpowering and silencing her by cutting her throat. Since she had shouted he probably thought that people had heard and he ran, leaving the computer and other valuables.
Nancy was alive when he ran and she tried to drive the car to find help. The New York Times said that a man passed her in his car and she was trying to say something to him but couldn’t speak. He didn’t help her. She must have been getting weak from massive loss of blood. She managed to drive the car to the Dudjom center and she tried to get into the building. She got into the alcove inside the front door, rang the buzzer, and fell, bleeding out. No one answered the buzzer. She managed to pick herself up and get back into the blood drenched car and try to drive, maybe to go to St. Vincent’s hospital, but she died at the wheel. Several people reported seeing her in the process.
Frank and Ruth Nichols arrived. We drove with Rinpoche to the city morgue to identify Nancy’s body. We were sent to a certain area. Her body was lifted up to us slowly from the floor below on an elevator platform. She was covered with a light blue sheet up to her neck. Her throat was cut. Her head and face were so swollen that it was at first hard to recognize her. Rinpoche said, “That’s her.”
What followed was a remarkable 10 days in which Shenphen Rinpoche, assisted by the Dalai Lama and Chatral Rinpoche, worked together to pull Nancy out of a hellish bardo experience into the clear light of freedom. We stayed mostly at OCD. I had some wrenching emotions. We did some ceremonies in the temple. There were phone calls from around the world. I was still quaking from the horror. I felt the knife cut my throat at least once a day. About the fourth night while I was sleeping Nancy reached out and grabbed my arm hard, pleading with me, “Please come with me Robbie!! Please come with me!!” I woke up shocked.
About the 7th night I drove back from OCD to the to the Dudjom center in New York with Shenphen Rinpoche. As we drove slowly down 16th Street toward the house, which was in the middle of the block, we saw that a black van was parked in front of our building. Indeed it was a black Saab van, but I knew with certainty it wasn’t Nancy’s van, which I assumed the police still had. “It’s her van!!” Shenphen Rinpoche shouted, with his eyes wide open. “It is not her van!!” I answered. I stopped my car behind the black van, which was clearly not the murder van. It was time for deep silence.
The next day the police released her bloody van to Frank Nichols. It stank of decomposed blood. Nothing had been touched, the bloody blankets and clothes and books, the broken back window. Shenphen Rinpoche told Frank and Ruth to burn all they could of what was in the car.
They did what Rinpoche told them. They made a fire in the fireplace in their living room and then slowly and painfully burned everything that was in the car that could be burned. But two small aerosol cans they didn’t see in the pockets of a jacket got put into the fire. And the fireplace exploded, filling the living room with the dark ash of Nancy’s blood, her pain.
On the 10th day after Nancy’s death I came by the Dudjom house and Shenphen Rinpoche was in a state of joy. “We did it!!” he said.
“We worked together and pulled her out of the bardo and into the clear light!!” I was still quaking a little from the horror. It sounded a bit like she died and went to heaven. I said, “Then she got what she prayed for.” He said that because of what the great lamas were able to do, Nancy had the greatest death a Westerner could have.
THE FAMOUS SHARK FIN SOUP
It took more than a year for me to stop feeling the knife cut my throat, but I was never closer with Shenphen Rinpoche. I had the best of Tibet in America. Rinpoche was also an extremely good cook, though he rarely used those skills. Three weeks after Nancy’s death he realized that my birthday was just a few days away and he announced that he would cook the famous shark fin healing soup. He had mentioned it several times over the years. Shenphen Rinpoche was a terma doctor and a gifted cook for extra measure, and when he said it was time for a great soup that was very good news.
We drove from OCD to Chinatown in Manhattan to shop for the soup ingrediants. Some of my most enjoyable moments in my many years of studying Buddhist meditation and medicine have been with Shenphen Rinpoche in New York Chinatown. He knew the depths of what the herb medicine shops and pharmacies had to offer, very sensitive to the qualities, very sophisticated, always teaching me. Then as always we had a major dinner, and Rinpoche just loved to eat. That gave me extra pleasure in eating with him.
When we had gathered all the ingredients for the shark fin soup and with a big dinner in our bellies we drove back to OCD. Rinpoche started working on the soup preparations that night. It had more than 60 ingredients, plus the lama’s energy and blessings.
That was a great birthday, with Rinpoche, Adam, Lin, and a few of our friends, in the Dudjom family residence at OCD. Rinpoche slept in Dudjom Rinpoche’s bedroom and gave me his bedroom. He played albums of calypso songs and Linda Rhondstat as he worked on the soup. He had an uncommonly good ear for music and memorized songs quickly and charmingly. He would sing me songs when I was blue. And he was often teaching me meditation and medicine.
After we had our fill of the great soup and the rest of the dinner, as a birthday wish I requested that everyone at the table sing a song of their choice. When it was my turn I sang Old Blue.
Well my wife died and left me a farm.
Yessir my wife died and left me a farm.
I say my wife died and left me a farm
that’s why I’m going back to Charlestown.
Got me a dog. His name is Blue.
Yes I got me a dog and named him Blue.
We’ll I got me a dog name of Blue
And I betcha five dollar he’s a good one too.
Singing, Herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre Bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue
You good doggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg youuuuuu..
Well I got my gun and I got my horn
gonna fetch a possum in the new mown corn.
Blue chased a possum up a tree.
Blue growl at him, possum snarl at Blue.
I say, “Come onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn Bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue.
Ya can have sommmmmme tooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Well when Old Blue died he died so hard
he shook the ground in my back yard.
I dug his grave with a silver spade
And lowered him down with a golden chain.
At every link I did call his name.
I called, “Herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre Bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue
You good dog youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Well I’ll tell you all just so you know,
Yes I’ll tell you all just so you know,
I’ll tell you all just so you know
Old Blue is gone where the good dogs go.
Singing, Herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre Bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
You good doggggggggggggggggggg youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Somehow the song rang through Nancy’s death.
DEATH IN A SILENT AND SCREAMING HOSPICE
In 1989 my father lived with my mother in Deerfield Beach, Florida. He was 87 years old and in good health other than he was troubled by rashes and insomnia and who knows what states of mind. All his close friends had died young. Twenty days after Nancy died Jack took off his wedding ring and put it down on a piece of yellow note paper with the words, “I can’t take it any more.” He swallowed a lot of sleeping pills and went to sleep.
But he didn’t take enough pills to die, only enough to mess up his nervous system and impair almost all function. He was put into a hospice. My mother went there but it made her very nervous and depressed. The next day my sister and I flew to Florida. Before we took my mother to the hospice again we had to calm her down. Her blood pressure had gone through the roof and wasn’t responding to medication.
I took her into the bedroom and sat her down. It looked like Dad was dying and she was going with him. “Mom”, I said. “If you want to live you have to calm yourself down. I’m going to teach you how to do it. This is meditation, okay?” She said okay.
I made sure she was seated comfortably upright. I said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re just going to sit here relaxed, with your hands in your lap, and pay attention to your breath. Relax your belly, breathe deep and easy. Follow your breath in and then out. Feel your breath go in, and then out, slowing down. And then your mind comes in like crazy and takes you away. Your mind goes on and on fast, but you catch it, and then you just come back to your breath, your awareness…. You relax and breathe, then your voice comes up in your mind, worrying. Stop. Remember your breathing. Keep coming back to it. Keep calming yourself down. Your mind takes you out. Your awareness brings you back. Calm down into your breathing. You understand?” “Yeah, I get it. Let’s do it already.”
And so we did. It got very quiet. Time slowed down. My mother didn’t speak, which was amazing for her nervous nature. She was silent for two minutes. Three. It was powerful. We sat there breathing. We did 5 powerful minutes. Then I said, “Okay. How was that for you Mom? Did you get the difference between your mind and your awareness?” “I did,” she said. “That was really good.”
Her blood pressure was normal. We drove to the hospice. She got nervous again. As we walked down the hall I noticed an infant lying on a little bed. “Don’t look,” said my mother. “It’s a two week old baby dying of brain cancer.” I immediately went over and touched the child caringly. My mother was stunned. I breathed with the child, practicing Giving and Receiving.
Then we passed a man who looked 200 years old, his mouth gaped open, barely breathing. We were expecting my father to be in a coma, as he was when my mother saw him the day before. But we were shocked to find him sitting upright in his bed, eyes open. “Is…that…Robert?” he spoke softly. I went up to him, put my arms around him, and I felt a current of white light run through us. He was asleep. Across the way a woman dying of AIDS was in a violent rage. She had bit one of the nurses saying she wanted her to die with her. The staff was strapping her down and sedating her when we left. The hospice was hard on my mother and sister.
But Mom called me after I returned to New York to tell me that she had been meditating and really liked it. She said, “I know I’m not a master or anything but I want to teach my girlfriends. My blood pressure is good.”
My father died a couple of days later and was flown to New York, to the Newman burial plot. My mother was frightened of the cemetery.
BURIAL IN A DEEP LONG ISLAND CEMETARY
We had a small family gathering the night before in a room with the coffin,
just my mother, my sister, her daughter and son, and their marriage partners. It was very quiet. A maintenance person asked my sister if she wanted the coffin opened so she could take a last look at her father. She said okay. She looked and let out a blood curdling scream. In a flash I went over and closed the coffin, grabbed my sister around the waist with one arm and my mother with the other, walked them across to the other side of the room, with the other family, all of whom had been close to my father.
“Let me tell you about Jack Newman,” I said.
I reminded them that Jack loved to entertain. He loved to tap dance and sing old songs. One time I was visiting Mom and Dad after not having seen them for years. After a simple dinner Mom turned on the TV. I had come to be with them so I watched with them. A violent cop show, commercials, then a corny comedy, and I was getting more and more depressed. When suddenly, as if by magic, my father turned the dial and on came a two hour special on the Ziegfeld Follies! My father came to life. For every minute of the two hours he was up entertaining us, tap dancing buck and wings and singing each and every song. I told the family that I was sure my father would want us to remember him that way.
The next day at 1pm we drove into the cemetery. Again I held my mother to me with one arm and my sister with the other. My mother was so scared she was near shock. I tried a little levity. “Did you know that Shakespeare and Mozart are buried here?” I asked. Mom didn’t understand.
At the burial site it was just the quiet close family. A few prayers were read. Almost nothing personal. We were about to leave. I stopped and said, really meaning it, “Oh yes. Jack Newman, thank you.” And everyone said “Thank you.”
Inside I thanked him profoundly for his support of me, helping give me a chance.
A NEW MODEL OF THE HUMAN BODY
I celebrated New Years Eve quietly with Shenphen Rinpoche and family. Rinpoche put on hot dance songs to get a few of us to dance, and I did. I had always loved to dance, from rock and roll to sacred dance. And though I didn’t bust any new moves that night, Rinpoche busted out the only dance moves I’ve ever seen him make, for about three seconds, very funny, like Trungpa Rinpoche lighting the sparkler we all thought was incense.
Within two weeks Shenphen Rinpoche and the Dudjom family left for the Orient. They would be gone from New York for many years. And I began my work in medicine, call it research and development in mind/body medicine, and a personal practice in deep tissue energy work using meditation.
I began to study the medicine meditation programs of the Harvard University Medical School and the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. I was interested in developing a clinical meditation program based on a new model of the human body. I had found my work in the world.
A STUNNING REAPPEARANCE
Inwardly I was developing my own medicine, somewhat concerned that I hadn’t been able to use the Garuda practice that Khyentse Rinpoche gave me with that important empowerment. It felt incomplete and Rinpoche had been in failing health. I didn’t know when or if I might see him again.
In August 1990 I was at the Dudjom center in Southern France, working on energy body practices, including yogic movements. And out of the blue it was announced that Khyentse Rinpoche was coming for a visit. He would be staying at the house neighboring the Dudjom center and he would be granting interviews. Boom.
Soon we heard he had arrived. Two hours later an interview list was posted and I signed up. Three hours later it was announced that His Holiness had “turned black” and they thought he might be dying. The field changed from having a marvelous opportunity to complete the Gardua transmission, for my healing practice development, or to be present at the death of a great master, one of my heart lamas. Boom.
The next morning it was announced that His Holiness had recovered and the interviews were on! Mine was in an hour! I was ready. It was a joy to see Matthieu Ricard, my partner in the Garuda empowerment. He remembered the text I had originally been given to practice, and he now saw that it was too complicated and hard for me to make use of. I asked if Mipam Rinpoche, who had revealed that Garuda practice, had revealed another such practice that could be more practical for me. Matthieu said maybe, went away for about 10 minutes, and came back with a concise Garuda revelation that was just what we needed. He made a photocopy of it for me. Boom.
We went in to meet with His Holiness. Again I was enlivened by coming into the presence of a living buddha, but this time it was inconceivably precious – my needing to see him again, his surprise visit, the miracle of his availability, then the announcement of his apparent death, then his availability again. Primal magic, appearance and disappearance, and reappearance.
His Holiness’s upper body was bare, with his robes down around his waist, his long grey hair tied in a bun at back of his head, his remarkable hands, so large and so fine. His skin was golden in color, a little darker than I recalled. Our eyes locked. Matthieu reminded His Holiness of my healing aspiration and of the Garuda empowerment he had given me in Nepal. Matthieu mentioned my problem in making practical use of it, and that we had found another Mipham Garuda revelation that would be easier for me to use.
Rinpoche took the new text from Matthieu, two pages, read it through silently, and then read the transmission aloud for me and Matthieu. He then wrote down a 4 line prayer for me to use the new text as a practice. He said I could still use the mantra transmitted in the ceremony we had done in Nepal.
I gave him an envelope with a modest offering, all I had left in my account at that time. He said he was going to use it to start to build a study facility that was needed. I thanked him with all my heart, knowing I would never see him again.
MEDIGRACE
In 1991, my 21st year of meditation practice and teaching, I was well-aware of the use of meditation as mind-body medicine at the Harvard Medical School and the University of Massachusetts Medical Center since
1979. Those programs primarily used Mindfulness meditation, Vipashyana, which I trained in with Trungpa Rinpoche from 1970 to 1980.Then I met Dudjom Rinpoche and was trained to teach energy body practice. By 1991 I was practicing and teaching a more complete kind of Vipashyana than had been available, Mindfulness meditation based on complete breathing, energy breathing. The practice implied a more complete model of the human body. The medical paradigm was shifting. Mind-body medicine and energy medicine were increasingly acknowledged and researched and the National Institutes of Health had created an Office of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, with meditation showing important biological benefits.
In December, 1991, together with my close associate Dr.Ted Wolff of New York University Medical Center Research. and with Drs. John Sutton and Craig Spaniol of NASA, we incorporated Medigrace, a nonprofit corporation, to research and develop a new model of medicine, integrating the mind/body and the energy body, and to advance the use of meditation in medicine and childbirth. I had devoted all those years to learn to be able to teach a more complete medical meditation than was available. The practice has important health implications. With the changes in the medical paradigm it was time to advance the use of meditation in medicine, and the use of meditation in childbirth could be vital. Medigrace was under way.
FRESH BUDDHA
At that time I had met and become close to Dudjom Rinpoche’s other son, Thinley Norbu Rinpoche, the magnificent famous outrageous buddha who sometimes lived quietly in New York City, not connected with the Dudjom center but profoundly devoted to his father and the Dudjom Tersar practices and teachings. I was soon to learn that the Dudjom Tersar lamas I knew called Thinley Norbu Rinpoche Dungse Rinpoche, implying as is the father so is the son, the same essence in the bone marrow and seed. The same is true of Shenphen Rinpoche. If you input the word dungse in a computer it will connect you to several references to Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche. There is a Wikipedia biography of him, speaking of his special relationship with Dudjom Rinpoche from his previous lifetime, when he was Dudjom Lingpa’s son. Shenphen Rinpoche previously was Dudjom Rinpoche’s father. Both Dudjom sons had a double bond with the great Dudjom Buddha.
Thinley Norbu lived in America, except for some trips to the East, and was considered private and hard to access. He had lived at the Dudjom center in the very beginning, when the house was bought, in 1976. He didn’t like John Giorno. He called John “the Buddhist mafia” and didn’t stay long at the center. He had serious health problems relating to a botched surgery in India when he was in his 30s and he had suffered from angina for many years. He took no medicine for the pain except red wine. He was considered one of the 4 or 5 most revered Nyingma tulkus.
I was introduced to Thinley Norbu by my friend Bhakha Tulku, who had been Dudjom Rinpoche’s secretary and had known Thinley Norbu in Tibet. Dungse Rinpoche and I got on well. He liked my directness. After my first visit I received a phone call inviting me to join Rinpoche and his small attendant family for practice. With Shenphen Rinpoche and the Dudjom family gone I had found another Dudjom Buddha, private but venerated throughout the world. His books, written in English, are considered a great achievement of the Dharma in the west.
MEDIGRACE AND MY RETURN TO THE ORIENT
I had met the Honorable James George through Nancy, and we became good friends. Jim was a senior teacher in the Gurdjieff work, so we shared that connection. He had been the Canadian ambassador to India at the time of the all-out Chinese invasion of Tibet. When the Dalai Lama and Dudjom Rinpoche and other revered teachers began to come into India as refugees, Jim was outstanding. He befriended and arranged protection for the Dalai Lama, Dudjom Rinpoche, Khyentse Rinpoche, Chatral Rinpoche, and other renowned Tibetan masters. He remained close to Dudjom Rinpoche, which is how he met and befriended Nancy.
Jim introduced me to Harold Genly, MD, who had developed a new electronic technology to apply acupuncture, and had the backing of a Swiss bank. Harold was very interested that I already had legally established a nonprofit organization for medical advances. He was interested in working with me.
Thinley Norbu Rinpoche said he was going to Nepal for a month, and in a flash I knew I wanted to go there again. I told him that. He said get your visa. I did, but I couldn’t leave as fast as he did. But I knew I wanted to go to Khatmandu anyway to ask Chatral Rinpoche and Orgyen Tulku about Medigrace.
Thinley Norbu Rinpoche had given no public empowerments, teachings, or transmissions for more than 17 years, so I imagined him quiet in his house outside Bodhanath, just as he stayed quietly in New York.
When I arrived in Bodhanath I found out that for the first time in 17 years Thinley Norbu Rinpoche was giving transmission. All the robed sangha had come out of the various Nyingma temples, Nyingma yogis had come down out of the Himalayan hills, and all had been gathering around Dungse Rinpoche’s house for a whole day by the time I got there. There were various Rinpoches, respected tulkus, monks and nuns, and some western students, all sitting on the hard dry ground around Thinley Norbu Rinpoche’s little house.
Rinpoche was inside, sitting in an old soft chair, with a microphone and a copy of a collection of the Dudjom dzogchen revelations, terma treasures of both Dudjom Lingpa and Dudjom Rinpoche, his fathers in his past and present life.
A few minutes after I sat and quieted with the others, Thinley Norbu’s beautiful voice began in full power, starting the 2nd day of an open transmission. His voice was exhalted. It was the energy of release, and at one or two points he broke into laughing bliss. Amazing. Transmitting the true nature of primordial wisdom.
I was told that I was considered family and was allowed to come inside the house through the kitchen door. After the next day’s transmission was finished I came inside carrying a wooden cage with two birds. They were for Rinpoche to bless so that we could release them with a prayer to extend his life. Many people were crowded into the house. I was in the kitchen; Rinpoche was in the main room, in the chair he gave the transmissions from. I couldn’t see him but the house was quiet and I could hear him.
I held up the bird cage. Everyone seemed to know what the birds were for. I passed the cage over into the room where Rinpoche was sitting. “What’s that coming to me?” Rinpoche asked. Patti said, “Robert has brought birds for you to bless so they can be released for long life blessing.” Rinpoche said, “He’d better watch out because the birds around here are like Hitler. They may kill his birds.” From the kitchen my voice replied loud and clear, “I released two other birds here yesterday and they’ve been teaching the Hitler birds to do mantra.”
After the transmission was complete, the third day, everyone filed through the house to get Rinpoche’s blessing. He accepted katah scarfs and touched some people on the head with the scriptures he had read. I waited until the last person was through. I kneeled at his feet and reminded him that I’d requested his dzogchen transmission personally before we went to Nepal.
He placed the scriptures on my head and proceeded to give a long blessing transmission. When it had gone on for about 20 seconds I knew it was a consummate moment in my life. It went on, instant after powerful instant, secretly sealed.
The next day there was an empowerment unlike any I’ve ever attended. The hundreds of people who had been outside were all inside the little house. I was among 50 people jammed into Rinpoche’s shrine room. It was to be a Guru Rinpoche empowerment. It was understood that Tinley Norbu was Guru Rinpoche. He did not move or make a sound while two other Rinpoches chanted the text and used the ritual instruments for him. It was the Samadhi of primordial wisdom.
After that Thinley Norbu Rinpoche needed substantial rest and I was on a mission to ask Chatral Rinpoche and Orgyen Tulku about Medigrace.
That night, out of the sky came a telephone call for me from Doctor Harold Genly in New York. He said he needed my help in that John Lennon and others were raising $10 million for his work and could we please make his program a Medigrace program. He needed nonprofit status. He would give Medigrace $1million and use $9 million for his program. It was easy for me to say yes, and I did, but I was in Nepal to see if Medigrace was a blind ego trip on my part or something potentially able to contribute to the field of medicine.
I liked the ferry ride from Battery Park, at the southernmost tip of Manhattan, across the harbor to Staten Island, passing the Statue of Liberty, coming and going, the great green woman leading us all with an upheld torch and the book of knowledge. My parents were living in an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, overlooking the harbor. At night you could barely see the Statue. You could see some industrial light complexes around the dark harbor, and you could see the weak light of the Statue’s old electric torch.
One night I was at my parent’s apartment for dinner and I sat out on the balcony, high over the harbor, looking at the dim Statue. Suddenly I saw the Statue come alive. The torch got bright enough to illuminate New York harbor. You could see into the torchlight, like looking into a luminous jewel the color of the sun. Solar torch. Sun at night.
I got excited. The next day I called the Statue of Liberty and asked for the Director. I was told that his name was Jim Batman. I said I was Robert Newman director of Gain Ground. They put me through. I told Jim that I was the director of a company studying the use of light in national monuments, and we couldn’t help seeing that the lighting system in the torch of the Statue was seriously outdated. He said that the system was 40 years old and did need replacing but that there was no money for that.
I said that we could arrange to have a new torch lighting system designed and installed, using the most advance technology, and we would have the installation donated. There’d be no cost to the government and a big improvement to New York harbor. Jim Batman was excited.
I went home and got on the phone. In three days I reached the directors of the light research facilities at General Electric, ITT, Westinghouse, and Sylvania, the 4 major American electric light producers. Telling the truth that I was directing the development of a new torch for the Statue of Liberty got their quick attention. Within three days I could see that the Light Institute of General Electric in Cleveland, Ohio, was the only significant American electric light research facility, and the American Society of Illumination Engineers was definitely interested in my suggestion that we could have a design competition.
But I decided to work with GE and design the torch myself, which by then I knew could be a system producing light with the spectral distribution of sunlight. Bob Daley, director of the GE Light Institute, set up a meeting for me with his chief engineer, Terry McGowen, to see the GE facilities and discuss the torch. Five days from my initial vision I was on an American Airlines jet headed for Cleveland, feeling that the project just might be destined to happen.
AMERICAN LIGHT RESEARCH
We had an initial hour long meeting and then Terry showed me around. On that walk I sized up what we could and couldn’t do. What we could do was install a new torch system that would produce about 100 times the present illumination and have the spectral distribution of sunlight, using no more electricity that was then available. Meanwhile, Jim Batman had set up a meeting for me with Jerry Waters, Eastern regional chief of the Department of the Interior.
A few days after I returned from the meeting with GE, with a sense that we could build and install the torch and get it paid for by GE and a big lighting company in New York they worked with, I met with Jim Batman and Jerry Waters at the Statue. Jerry assured me that he was 100% behind the project, which was all I needed.
After the meeting we took a walk up to the torch. Wow. Jim Batman admitted that he had never been up there. We went through a door in the armpit of the Statue and slowly ascended an iron spiral staircase up the arm. It felt like we were on a branch of a big tree swaying in a 40 mph December wind over the harbor. Batman was scared. I was leading the way.
Coming up into the torch was amazing. It was freezing and we were really swaying. First we came up and out onto a porch that ran around the torch, holding onto the rails for our lives. We were 38 stories above the rough looking harbor and getting the full hit of the wind. I found a door into the inside of the old torch, and we went in. We closed the door and we were still hanging on and freezing. I saw fourteen 1000 watt Westinghouse light bulbs in an operating system, a broken lighthouse lens structure for projecting light, and some other discarded bulbs and equipment.
Jerry Waters was even more scared than Jim Batman so I didn’t linger. I calmed them by saying we’d be sure to do the installation in nice weather, but I admit I was concerned that the old swaying arm could fall off into the harbor. I decided to keep a positive attitude.
Two weeks later Terry McGowen came to New York and we went back up to the torch with my close associate Ted Wolff. Ted was an electrical engineer who had worked on major art-and-technology projects at Bell Labs and advised me on my projects. We survived the visit up to the torch, again in cold and wind, holding on to each other. That night we drove all around the harbor taking light measurements. Ted said that we should consider an alternative proposal: create breeding grounds for fire flies in the torch, nothing else, just keep the flies warm He said we’d be surprised at the light bug effect over the harbor. Actually, Ted was very excited by the big torch we were creating.
LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD
When Frederic Bartholdi was working on designs for the Statue in 1879, his drawings showed seven titanic beams of light emanating from the statue’s forehead and light also beaming out of the torch. The 7 spikes coming out of the forehead of the finished statue are an attempt to indicate rays of light. Bartholdi named the statue Liberty Enlightening the World.
In 1879 Edison invented electric light bulb technology, but when the Statue was dedicated in 1886 the torch was a copper sheet metal image of flame, and the spike/rays coming out of the forehead were reversed images of rays that looked like a crown.
In 1916 the sculptor Gutzon Borglum cut away sections of the sheet metal flame and installed 600 small sections of amber cathedral glass and a fifth order lighthouse lens lit with twenty 250 watt lamps. The new torch was dedicated by President Woodrow Wilson.
In 1931 Westinghouse installed fourteen 1000 watt light bulbs in the torch, a 500,000 candlepower system. It was dedicated in an elaborate ceremony started by the daughter of French premier Laval in Paris via transatlantic telegraph. The daughter of France pushed a button that sent a radio signal to a US Air Force pilot circling over the harbor. When he received the signal he released an “illumination bomb” over the Statue, the light blast of which turned the new lighting system on.
In 1945 six mercury vapor lamps were added, and so it stayed. In 1970 that torchlight system looked dim in the harbor. It hadn’t been improved in 14 years even though lighting technology had advanced, and there were more scattered lights in the darkness of the harbor at night, detracting from the Statue’s weak lighthouse effect.
The records showed that several new torch lighting system designs had been engineered over the years, but factors kept it so that none of them were installed. I knew we needed all the help we could get. I called Senator Jacob Javits (D, NY) to see if this project sparked his interest. Indeed it did. He said he’d like to involve France, as was traditional, and he put me in touch with the US ambassador to France at that time, Hon. Arthur Watson. Senator Javits agreed to be our liaison with NASA which I had invited to do a technological event involving France.
Through Senator Javits in the US Senate, NASA responded to my request for a techospectacular turn on of the new torch system. Actually they responded to two proposals I made to them.
They said that they could arrange an energetic signal from France via satellite to ignite the torch. But my proposal to light the new torch via a laser relay system on the moon was too expensive.
THE FATE OF THE SOLAR TORCH
I was a friend of the art editor of Life magazine, who liked my artwork. He said to me that a new torch for the Statue of Liberty was a cover for Life magazine. He encouraged me to create artwork the magazine might be able to use, like photo-design work of mine he had seen exhibited. I told him that there was one photograph that was the heart of the matter: at exactly the right time, out on Liberty Island, you could catch the sun in the torch. You could see and photograph a solar torch.
It happened that it was early morning in autumn when you could get sun in the torch, and the Statue wasn’t open for business yet. But the government had a little ferryboat that left Battery Park at 7am each day to bring out some maintenance employees. I was so determined to get that photograph that I rode the early ferry to the statue three times, with various cameras, to get a blazing solar torch image. I did get some good ones.
So what happened? What happened is that it took two years to design the system and complete the presentation for the government, and by then Gerry Waters was no longer the director of the East Region Department of the Interior. Our torch improvement presentation landed on the desk of a mean little man named Arnold Palmer who loved to say no. His response was that our proposal was “unhistorical” and besides he wanted to take some of the light bulbs out of the torch to save electricity.
I wrote him back to be sure that he understood that we were donating $300,000 worth of improvements and using only the current level of electrical power, in a much improved electrical system, with 100 times the illumination. He answered that he’d already said no on historical and energy grounds. So be it. But I loved the idea of looking into a brilliant source of light that could give psychic enhancement to millions of people, to satisfy a spiritual need. And there are still people alive who loved what I tried to do.
ME AND THE MOB
When I was a kid in Brooklyn and also in the summers in Atlantic Beach there were Italian families in the neighborhood and we were close with some of them. One night my dad Jack was hanging out with Joe G. who confided that he was the accountant for one of the major Italian crime families. Dad knew that was the kind of information that could be dangerous yet he told me. I dissolved the information. No one got hurt by the leak. The New York newspapers made a big display of the bodies of people killed by the Mafia, especially when the families were killing each other.
My father’s used office equipment business was in a little old building on Grand Street, a few blocks from Little Italy. We ate there some times. You walked past the deadly social clubs with armed hoods usually outside the door. I think they invented the wearing of handsome suits and ties with hand gun holsters before the CIA started dressing to kill.
When I moved to downtown Manhattan I was 23 and had various jobs. One of them was that I was the lighting man for Radio Televisione Italia (RAI), by far the biggest media organization in Italy. Our job was to film something of interest to the people of Italy, which could be any day depending on the news. I was on call and was well paid.
My first assignment was to drive with Angie (sound), and Sal (video cam)
to Kennedy airport to meet Gina Lollobrigida. This was fun. We went into the media room with all the other Press. There were about 50 people with cameras and mics and writing pads and a small platform for Gina with a little podium and microphones. We got fairly close where I could light her well. I didn’t want to trouble her. What I didn’t know was that she was a magnificent woman who was also a photojournalist and a sculptor.
She came into the room and I was blown away by her beauty. The reporters were ugly with their personal questions and she managed everything gracefully. What we saw Italy would see. What I saw was the best of Italy.
A few days later Sal called me to meet Angie and him in Little Italy. There was going to be a big Saints Day parade and jammed church services, and we were going to make movies of it all. (Everyone would be out on the streets including the Mafia and they were bound to be in our movie.) I was psyched. The parade was phenenomal. It was big and slow and the music blared from different places in the crowded streets. A human-sized statue of a the Saint was carried aloft by a team of big men followed by a priest and attendants, all in their beautiful robes, the altar boys casting swirls of incense – all in my lights, including well-dressed hoods. Some of them were obviously heavy and I hit them easy with my light.
Then we left the remarkable street theater and headed into the main church in Little Italy. What follows I swear is true. Sal seemed to know what to do. A Catholic service was underway. The church was filled beyond capacity with worshipers, some of them clearly Mafia. To my amazement Sal led us up onto the stage where the priest was performing the service, at the sacred altar, with the jam-packed audience leaning toward him, many of them with their hands pointed in prayer.
We were ignored by everyone, as if we didn’t exist. We filmed the priest doing the service. There we were, up on the high altar with the priest and his acolytes, inadvertently challenging the audience’s faith. We got some very good shots. Then we turned and I focused my lights into the faces of the devotees, especially the hoods, with a cloak of invisibility about me, all for RAI.
My 1967 confrontation with the Mafia in Little Italy was the most dramatic. In truth it was me and a well-dressed armed family man in a stairwell of a walk-up apartment building in the heart of Little Italy. It happened like this. In 1967 Laura Dean and I lived in a 5th floor apartment in a classical family building in Little Italy. The apartment had been lived in by Merce Cunningham and John Cage, a well-known and highly respect gay couple. How they ever got the apartment and lived there peacefully for more than 10 years we don’t know. One day Laura and I had several friends over, two of them quite gay, one of them, with a strong voice, wearing a big fur coat and a sheer pink scarf. We visited for a while in the apartment and then all went out to have some food.
As we were out on the stairwell about to descend, in front of us were three Italian women wearing their daily black clothes, and a son of one of them, a mean-looking well-dressed gangster, standing fiercely at the top of the stairwell. The three women clicked their tongues and made disapproving faces at us as they descended the stairs. The hood stood at the top leaving enough space for us to get by him and leave. I was the last one out. I’ll never forget his eyes.
Our lightheartedness was goring him. I was containing my smile as I passed him, glancing at his stony eyes. He stared intently into the space, refusing to make eye contact, letting us know that he could kill us. As I went past him and turned my back on him I was slightly smiling not to make fun of him but because I was surviving a close encounter with the Mob again.
In about 1971 I was driving back from Vermont with a carful of Buddhists. I was holding a large spiral conch shell. Up in Vermont we had carefully cut a small opening in the big shell that made it into a conch trumpet. When blown into properly they make a big haunting sound. But all the way down from Vermont I was frustrated. None of us in the car could make more than irritating squeaks with the horn. I kept at it the most, and was still trying as we came into Manhattan and went down a main street of Little Italy, one famous for having 3 of the most dangerous “social clubs”. It was summer and all the car windows were open. Suddenly (I swear this is true) the big conch horn I was trying to master responded with a huge resonant outpouring of sound, stunning everyone in and near the car and turning the heads of the hoods manning the social club doors. I couldn’t stop.
Since the people in the car with me were proud of me I went on instinct and kept blowing the horn, in long resonant waves, through slow traffic, no doubt encouraged by my successes with RAI. After a few minutes I got tired, but I smiled a long time afterwards. After all I got away with making a big spirit sound in the streets of Little Italy.
MYSTERY AND FUN IN THE DARK TIBETAN MUSEUM
Before leaving New York to move west to Boulder, Colorado, in 1973, to study with Trungpa Rinpoche, I had some interesting Tibetan magic on Staten Island. Among the faculty of the art department was my friend Rosemary Tung, a painter and teacher of contemporary painting who lived on Staten Island. Somehow, mostly I think because she had a Chinese last name from her ex-husband and she was an artist, she got a phone call asking her if she would please be the director of Staten Island’s unique Tibetan museum, which had been boarded up for 10 years. It was supposed to be full of Tibetan Buddhist art.
Rosemary called me for help. I was working with a Buddhist teacher and studying Tibetan Vajrayana art and iconography while I taught art history and new kinds of art. We quickly arranged to meet at the museum to open the locked doors, look in, and see what the woman who went to Tibet twice brought back. She had built a fine little temple museum, filled it with Tibetan artifacts and died before it was catalogued and evaluated. And so it was sealed for many years.
The museum was on a hill in a remote part of the island. We met there at noon on a Saturday. I had two friends with me, Bruce Robinson and John Baker, also students of Trungpa Rinpoche. We discovered a perfectly built authentic little Tibetan temple, a pleasant surprise. The big hardwood door had a unique lock and Rosemary had the key. Click click and the door was unlocked. I swung it open and looked into the dark interior, apparently full of surprises from the tantric world. I cautiously led the group into the dark unknown. In about 3 seconds I banged my forehead against a metal form.
When I banged the same spot on my forehead on the way to kindergarten for the first time, it was a telephone pole in broad daylight. I lit a match to see what had happened this time. Up against me was a six foot high metal Magic Dagger, a phurba, standing on its point, with another one beside it. Phurbas are a three bladed knife that can control important powers.
The top part of each one consisted of three heads, indicating the full potential of human transformation. I had hit one of the heads with my forehead, experiencing a kind of wake-up again. Years later, after I met Dudjom Rinpoche, I received empowerment in the practice symbolized by the phurba, Vajra Kilaya, holder of the magic dagger. In fact I’ve received that empowerment 21 times over the years. It has everything to do with how I am Doctor Life Vase. It began that day in the Staten Island temple darkness.
We took the plywood off the outside of the windows, one by one, and slowly lit up the room. We somehow figured out that the two great phurbas belonged outside, to guard the entrance. It took us three men plus Rosemary to carry the heavy magic daggers out into blazing sunlight. We set them to either side of the door and we were open for business.
To make a long story short we got the electricity turned on and spent two days sorting through dozens of metal statues of all sizes, mostly of poor quality, but there were a few beauties. There were also two excellent Tibetan thankas (scroll paintings). We removed most of the statues from the well-designed shrine room and used the few excellent works in the art treasury to make a compelling shrine arrangement around two large, powerful statues, classical icons of Shakyamuni Buddha and Padmasambhava, the founder of Buddhism in Tibet. We sat in meditation with them, at the stillpoint of the turning world, sitting in primal ground in southernmost New York City.
Soon I left New York and went West, with Naomi and her 7 year old daughter Darya, moving to Boulder, Colorado, Trungpa Rinpoche’s home base at that time, summer 1973. I was leaving the New York I had grown up in and thrived in and I was going into the unknown. It would be that my further studies of meditation would test me deeply, on the way to becoming a teacher of the medical uses of meditation and childbirth meditation.
GOING WEST, GOING DEEP
We drove across America in summer heat without air conditioning. The world felt hard. There was some underlying depression. As we came into Denver we went through an area of meat processing and packing plants the stink of which painfully twisted my depression. But Denver released us and we went further on.
We went up a hill and, behold, there was Boulder, spread out along the base of the great Flatirons mountainside, the most beautiful city along the whole eastern range of the Rockies, a big university town 25 miles from Denver. It was easier than Denver on my spirit, and Trungpa Rinpoche had arranged for us to have a house to stay in for a couple of weeks. The move to Boulder proved to be very challenging, but it had a great first year.
I taught a course in art-and-technology at the University of Colorado, and helped with preparations for the opening of Naropa University, summer 1974. I was the art department. I brought in two close friends of mine, Tony Candido and Eugene Gregan, to teach the oriental art of the brush, and I offered a sweeping course called The Energies of Ego and Egolessness in 20th Century Art.
But the famous first semester of Naropa University is more remembered for the presence of Chogyam Trungpa, Muktananda, Ram Dass, Gregory Bateson, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, and many others in the remarkable gathering of intelligences wanting to establish a new order of education.
Since I had produced many art shows I proposed that we could have an art show by meditation practitioners in the large lobby of one of the buildings we were renting. As far as what art we might be showing, that was the question. We had two things to start with. A large black Dharmakaya Dragon brush painting by Chogyam Trungpa, and a two-chamber mirror work by me: Life Story. From the community at large and from artists attending Naropa the show filled out well.
Life Story was an efficient two room white satin magic theater that told your story for you to see. You entered the first chamber and to your left was a well-lighted live photograph of you in the full-length mirror, caught by the caption:
YOU WERE BORN
In a flash you are born. Here’s your living image in the world. You pause and see yourself pause.
Then you move forward to where a second mirror awaits you. Over your living image it says,
YOU KEEP GOING
No doubt about it, you’re an image of inevitable motion. Your image can’t stop moving. You see the curtains parted in front of you, inviting you to go in. You enter the second chamber. You see yourself framed in the mirror. The mirror says :
YOUR EMBODIMENT LOOKS LIKE THIS
What can you say about life? I designed the work with Trungpa Rinpoche in mind. Each caption had to be true for him as well as everyone else. I heard he found Life Story very amusing.
ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
At the same time that Life Story was installed at Naropa University in Boulder I had an installation in the Denver Museum of Art, in the All-Colorado show (7/74). It was a room within the exhibition room:
A six foot by six foot enclosure structure, eight feet high, with a white velvet surface and a white door. The four panels on the door have words instructing you in the use of the room. It’s for one person at a time.
Inside, an illumination crown behind the door lets you see. You place it on your head, with the light centered over your brow. Three of the black velvet interior walls each have seven lines of words for you, numbered 1 – 7, 8 – 14, and 15 – 21. You sit on a black stool in the center. You start by reading line 1. The illumination crown is on for 5 seconds and then off for 5 seconds. You read only one line of words before the light goes out and then you have the aftermath of the words in the dark. The adventure takes place line by line, taking you far through the dark.
- You’re sitting by a river when a talking rabbit goes by.
- Just like that you follow him into his hole.
- In the dark you lose your direction.
- You have a great fall and you change your mind.
- You land in an enormous room. No one’s there.
- The chairs are very big. There’s a desktop computer.
- You manage to climb the chair and reach the keyboard.
8. On the computer screen, there you are, standing on the keyboard. ______________________________________________________________
9. Beside you on the screen are strange words and people.
______________________________________________________
10. You manage to turn on the sound but can't understand.
________________________________________________________
11. Suddenly the talking rabbit comes back.
_________________________________________________________
12. He speaks English and asks you to come down.
_________________________________________________________
13. You're both the same size. He says, follow me.
_________________________________________________________
14. You immediately go into the dark.
15. You learn to fly sitting still.
_________________________________________________________
16. You see deep into absolute dark. ______________________________________________________
17. You see into all the life in your body.
________________________________________________________
18. You see deep into your body-mind.
________________________________________________________
19. You start to see deep into life on Earth.
______________________________________________________
20. Then the rabbit says it's time to go.
______________________________________________________
21. And boom, in the blink of an eye, you're back.
___________________________________________________________
THE LEGENDARY LOHAN STATUES
In 1967, when I was presenting work in language art in the New York art world and teaching art history at CUNY, one day I was wandering in the massive halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I sometimes taught in the museum. I had been studying the Rembrandts and then I decided to go into the Asian galleries. The Museum was so vast I had never been in that part.
After going through a large, beautifully lighted hall of a colossal sandstone Buddha, seemingly standing floating in the hall, I wandered into a gallery of about 10 life-sized statues in different media, wood, ceramic, and stone.
There were bodhisattvas (buddhas of compassion and service), there was a stone Bodhidharma (the master who brought the Chan/Zen lineage into China), and two very life-like ceramic statues of disciples of the Buddha. One of them, a statue of an elderly man seated in meditation, attracted me. As I walked toward it I had what was then and still is now the most remarkable experience I’ve ever had with a work of art. I saw something miraculous. The statue was alive and breathing. For an instant I had paranormal vision.
The statue was called a Lohan (Chinese), disciple of the Buddha. I think I had an electric hit of Buddhist meditation from an artist of paranormal ability. I was to discover that many people had similar experiences with that statue.
There was a second Lohan statue nearby, a powerful form, also seated in meditation posture, clearly by the same artist; the head however is not the original head. I began research on the statues, in the museum library and at the Asian Art Institute of New York University, very near the museum. I learned that the two statues in the MMA were from a group that originally was 16 or 18 life-sized statues of disciples of the historical Buddha, those who would carry his transmissions and teachings to the world. The disciples were rendered in art in all Buddhist traditions. In China the Lohan tradition achieved some rare and unforgettable art, especially in life-size ceramic sculpture, art alive with meditation.
It turned out that the so-called I-Chou Lohan statues were from a large remaining fragment of an original work widely considered to be one of the greatest works of art known to art history, 16 or 18 life-like life-sized images of a life devoted to meditation. The great western museums that have the 8 remaining statues paid the largest sums ever paid for works of art at that time, 1913-14, two and a quarter to two and a half million dollars for each statue. As famous as the statues were, no one had written a book about them at the time that I discovered them. I decided I wanted to try to write a book that recreated the original temple setting of the statues and disclosed the full nature of the work. Bold innocence indeed, but it turned out to be somewhat inspired.
For two years I worked with different photographers and photographed the statues, in England, Canada, and America, and I continued to do basic art history research on the representations of the Disciples in the Buddha in several traditions. In the Gurdjieff Foundation I received practices to shift attention for greater function, but I still had poor knowledge of the meditation practice the statues disclosed.
Then in 1970 I met Chogyam Trungpa, became his disciple, showed him some of the Disciple photographs, and asked his support to drop the project since I couldn’t write about something I didn’t know. He asked me to keep working at it and said he’d help me. I had started on what would become a 10 year mission to practice and embody the very meditation made visible in the statues, Vipashyana, mindful/awareness meditation.
During the first of the Naropa 1974 summer sessions, a Naropa magazine, LOCA, was published by Random House. The two featured articles were the first published chapters of the Trungpa-Fremantle translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and a photographically rich article I wrote; The I-Chou Lohan Statues and the Stages of Meditation. There was also work by Chogyam Trungpa, Gregory Batson, Ram Dass, John Cage, and Tony Candido.
Just after the summer Trungpa Rinpoche fulfilled his promise to me. He recorded an introduction to the book in dialogue with me, to support me to finish it and get it published. Sam Bercholz of Shambhala Publications had announced that he was publishing both the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Disciples of the Buddha. But it took many years more of tenacity through struggle with the language of the book until it was published beautifully in 2001. The book found the perfect publisher, Tej Hazarika, Cool Grove Press, a publisher of Dudjom Rinpoche, It includes Dudjom Rinpoche’s Sadhana of the Buddha and His Sixteen Major Disciples, his last written work.
Trungpa Rinpoche, from his introduction:
“I think these statues are expressions of nonverbal experience that the artist had in a state of arhathood. The statues are powerful because they are filled with a sense of experience…We could say that these images present the particular realization of Buddha’s sanity in his disciples…The images are done with a sense of awe and reverence, in a very sacred application. And so the images are very human and at the same time kind of superhuman.”
Today we can also say that the statues are images of the kind of meditation the medical establishment has been making increasing use of, the kind of meditation I would eventually use in medical and childbirth applications.
ALAN GINSBURG AND ROBERT NEWMAN
In 1959 I was a very young poet living in the East Village of Manhattan. Alan lived a few blocks away from me and had just published Howl. We both read our poems at the Gaslight Café on McDougal Street, but we hadn’t met. I was put off by the first line of Howl, “I saw the best minds of my generation starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through Negro streets at dawn, looking for an angry fix…” I figured that with billions of people in the world all acting at once there was bound to be way more genius than Alan could know.
One day I walked into a pharmacy near where I lived, and then I noticed that Alan had followed me in. He was famously gay. I was straight. I didn’t think he knew who I was. He probably just saw me and liked me. I ignored him. He kept his distance but I felt his glances. Since I ignored him he didn’t follow me when I left. I didn’t want to meet him then because I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t like Howl. It wasn’t yet our time to meet.
In 1970 Alan and I were both early students of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche but we still hadn’t met. I was by then some kind of new world poet artist. Trungpa Rinpoche had publically said that among the artists and poets around him I was “the only magician.” Rinpoche liked poetry and wrote poems, and I decided to put together a big poetry reading in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in uptown Manhattan, featuring Chogyam Trungpa, Alan, myself, John Giorno, and others. I created a beautiful gold poster with dark red lettering, calling the event MANTRA, scheduled for that magnificent cathedral space which had great acoustics. The poster went up around town and stirred interest.
Meanwhile, I had what I thought was a clever idea. I planned to be away at the time of the event, practicing quietly at Trungpa Rinpoche’s retreat center in Vermont. I carefully prepared a 16 minute recording of me reading several poems into the imaginary space of the Cathedral and the universe in general. I thought it would be good to have my disembodied voice rocking the cathedral while I sat meditating in silence in a cabin in the woods. I left the recording with someone producing the event and I left for Vermont.
My retreat in the cabin was going well. After about a week very early one morning I went into the kitchen of the main house to get some provisions and I got caught by one of Rinpoche’s closest aides. He said that they were leaving for the poetry reading in New York City in a couple of hours and had room for me in the car with Rinpoche. I didn’t hesitate to say that I liked the idea of staying in retreat and having my voice speak for me in the Cathedral. I got some food supplies and went back to my cabin. It wasn’t until I broke retreat three weeks later that I learned what happened: more than 900 people had packed into the Cathedral and it was a potentially hot audience, but there were 3 or 4 poets too many and the program became overlong. They had to forget about playing my recording. The highlight of the evening, I heard, was when Alan Ginsburg was reading a serious poem and, behind him on the stage, Trungpa Rinpoche gracefully picked up the meditation gong bowl and placed it over his own head, mocking Alan. The audience roared and Alan was embarrassed and confused.
About a month later, at a Trungpa Rinpoche teaching in Manhattan, during the intermission, somehow Alan and I found ourselves all alone. He was sweet and I was rather outrageous. He said he’d expected to meet me at the poetry reading. I explained. Alan said he wished he’d heard my recording. I decided to give him a taste of a poem I recorded called WHO AM I:
I move. I turn. I brighten. I burn. I sleep. I rotate. I care. I call.
WHO AM I
I darken. I shout. I react. I hit. I hold. I still. I open.
WHO AM I
I lose it. I kill. I stop. I fall. I soften. I care. I love.
WHO AM I
I went on a little. “Wow,” said Alan, putting his hand on his head. “That’s like Whitman!” I told you he was nice to me.
After that I didn’t see Alan again until the famous summer at Naropa Institute, 1974, in Boulder. I had moved to Boulder because it was Trungpa Rinpoche’s home base. By then I was something other than a poetry-reading poet. I’d been creating art installations that generated imagery in new ways and used language uniquely in the process. When Naropa University was created in July, 1974 I was head of the art department and Alan was perhaps chief among the poets.
Once we met at a party. He asked what I’d been doing. When I told him a little I must have sounded like I was putting him down. That night he told my friend Tony Candido, “Robert Newman thinks he’s a better poet than me.” He was probably right. I never saw him again. He was good man.
TONY C AND THE LIFE IN THE BRUSH
My friend Russ introduced me to Tony Candido. Russ had met him at the University of California at Berkeley where Tony was teaching architecture design, infamous for his sometimes loud dynamic classes. Tony had just moved back to New York (he had been born in the Bronx), and was living only a few blocks away from me. He was teaching architecture at Cooper Union, but the story was that he was an exceptional artist. Russell swore that Tony’s paintings were as good as DeKooning, but that Tony had caused himself problems that limited the success of his work.
At the ages of 18 and 19 he was a bombardier in the Air Force who was responsible for dropping vast payloads of bombs on German military and civilian targets, devastating many many lives, and fearing death every moment of it. Afterwards he went to college, became an architect, and painted passionately. He married and had a child, a girl, and saw a psychiatrist for years about rages he had, especially when he drank too much. He was known for being controversial and aggressive verbally. Once he drank too much at an important event at the Museum of Modern Art. DeKooning and Jackson Pollack were in the room. Tony talked loudly and then shouted out, waving a chair in the air, “I’ll bury you all.” Such behavior didn’t help him succeed in the art world, no matter how talented he was. (When he told me that story he added, “I hope they understood that I meant bury them artistically.”)
After a couple of years of being Tony’s friend and knowing his work well I was director of the Spectrum Art Gallery on West 57th Street, in the heart of the art world, a co-operative gallery of which Tony was not a member. But suddenly we had an open exhibition date and I had to get a show together quickly. I chose to do an exhibition of figurative art with a wide range, in which Tony’s work would fit well. I got a great painting by Frances Bacon “From A Death Mask of William Blake” (now permanently in the Museum of Modern Art), a large bold DeKooning drawing of a “Woman”, and a striking life-size human figure by Candido, somehow painted from the inside out and outside in at once. There were 5 other paintings that I forget.
When it was the night to hang the show Tony and I were all alone in the gallery. He was in heaven. We looked at the main gallery wall. The Bacon had to go there. Of the paintings in the room, only Tony’s painting was a fit complement to it, in Tony’s eyes and mine. So we did it. We hung the Bacon head and the Candido life-sized figure on the main wall. That wall carried the show and Tony felt vindicated forever. Gregory Babcock, one of the most respected art critics in New York then, wrote: “The Candido is the best painting in the show.” Tony at last had a moment of bliss in the heart of the art world.
Shortly after that Tony’s design for the American Pavilion at the Osaka World’s Fair was accepted, and he went off to Japan for 2 years to build it. He came back much more oriental in his art work, working with large Samurai brushes and his love of inks and big sheets of paper, which he made brim with implied form and life. But he never stopped painting human heads and figures, in both oil and acrylic on canvas, some of which were superb.
When I was helping build the Art Department for the Naropa University summer program in 1974 I invited Tony to teach a course called The Life in the Brush, about inks, papers, and brushes and the Oriental master path. The course was very successful.
There was one extensive show of his paintings, at Cooper Union, a retrospective, in 1983, but his work was never widely known. By now Tony is gone and almost all of his work is buried in the stars.
TIBET COMES TO NEW YORK
Chogyam Trungpa came to New York in 1970 and slowly took us by storm. Over the next 2 years many outstanding artists, poets, etc pressed forward unto the flesh of the handsome magic lama. Through and on into 1971, among the pressers were: Alan Ginsburg, John Giorno, and Robert Newman. He treated the 3 of us poets distinctly differently.
With me, Rinpoche was warm and ingratiating. He told me privately, and then caused a stir by saying publically more than once that he seemed to attract many artists and poets and, he announced, they were all imitating the real thing. He said there was only one artist, only one magician, and that was me. With that seduction I was willing to give up my career in the arts in NYC desiring to focus on the Buddhist teachings. Several times he reminded me to focus on my artwork, my special capabilities. But when I said I'd like to move to his center in Boulder he then called me into his office and said they had a house waiting for me. I went leaving the field of life I had thrived in.
With Alan, Rinpoche was unfailingly hard, several times put him down publicly, embarrassing Alan, saying how his disliked Alan's poetry, how negative it was, how "setting sun world" it was, YET, he accepted Alan as a student, which Alan took deeply through to the end of his life.
With John , Rinpoche turned a cold shoulder, shut him out. And John and turned and went to India, sought and locked in with Dudjom Rinpoche, returned to the NYC art scene and began to thrive and then arranged to purchase a house, at 19 West 16th Street, for Dudjom Rinpoche, his family, and attendant lamas to be at home in New York. This was very important for the history of Buddhism in the West.
In Boulder, having been kissed by the magic prince, I found myself lost, finding that I was not part of his sangha, his community, but I stayed there for 6 years, in my commitment to meditation practice. I went downhill for 6 years, lost my artflow and my spirit. And those were the years, when John, who Trungpa Rinpoche was cold to, really started to thrive.
I did continue my artwork and practiced a lot of meditation. Finally in 1979, really in bad shape, I moved back to New York. John helped me, brought me to Dudjom Rinpoche, completely set me up with him, which healed me powerfully and quickly, but I was never able to regain my foothold in the New York art scene. Instead I got deeply close to the Dudjom family, just when John took a big split from that. And then I slowly found the magic for the rest of my life, being trained in advanced meditation under Dudjom Rinpoche's direction.
How then did I finally recover the Creative powerfully? Eventually I had the balls to found Medigrace, begin an advance into mind-body medicine based on a use of language as command and psychological direction. The artist/poet/creator went a unique way, still a single and achieved path that has given me the greatest satisfaction. Those six years actually lost because the magic prince kissed me will be henceforth left in the blaze of my past.
THE ELECTRIC VENERABLE CHOGYAM TRUNGPA RINPOCHE
In the fall of 1973 Rinpoche held the first of what was to be the annual Vajradhatu Seminary, three months alone with Rinpoche in Snowmass Village, Colorado, at a rented hotel called the Snowmass Village Inn. For various reasons I put off going until to the 1973 seminary. That turned out to be a good thing. The first seminary included some poets Rinpoche didn’t know well, and in general discipline was a problem.
The 1974 seminary began with 30 days of Vipashyana mindful/awareness meditation, 8 hours a day, with an hour lunch break, and a full study program, with electives including the relation of quantum physics to the direct practice of buddhahood, and Buddhism and psychiatry.
In the theater of the hotel’s largest hall, Rinpoche sat powerfully in a comfortable chair on a platform and taught the sanity of the Buddha according to the Kagyu Vajrayana tradition. He was physically beautiful, 35 years old, moving gracefully like a master though his left arm was crippled from a car crash. He was teaching the meditation wisdom of Tibet to people who would use it in their work in the world. He was well groomed, wore fine suits of clothes, smoked cigarettes and drank sake, and had a genius for teaching meditation in the language of western psychology. He carried a field of initiation.
120 of his students attended the ‘74 seminary. We sat and sat and sat into awareness, learning how to free ourselves from grasping and fixation. The whole seminary was challenging for me in that Rinpoche allowed me to drive back to Denver each week for 36 hours to teach a course, to hold onto a college teaching job. But there we were, day after day, sitting just like the I-Chou Lohan statues, doing the same practice. And then one day, during Rinpoche’s evening talk, while I was asking him a question, speaking into a microphone, my first act of high comedy in a Buddhist temple occurred. (I was to have more in the future, rocking shrine room congregations several times.)
In the question and answer period I asked Rinpoche if he would some time speak about the different Vajrayana words for space, all with different psychological implications. I was asking if there was a word for what the West would call objective space. He said, “Could be ying.” I dared to counter, “But that’s psychological space too.” “Well,” he started to say, when I jumped in with, “What about my refuge name [which he gave me] Namkha Drime, Immaculate Space. Namkha Drime,” I repeated. He squinted at me perplexed by my pronunciation of the Tibetan words.
Then suddenly I broke into deep laughter. I couldn’t stop it. I howled, and the whole assembly broke into laughter. It was totally contagious. Rinpoche had a good laugh too. It went on for a spell, then I finally calmed myself enough to say something into the microphone in my hand. I was chuckling as I said it, “Rinpoche, you mean you don’t remember my refuge name?” We all laughed loud and long again, Rinpoche too. I guess I couldn’t help making fun of the way I spoke Tibetan words with my New York accent and we all needed some release besides sex for all the energy we stored up through weeks of sitting meditation.
Decorum returned. Rinpoche finished the question and answer period and said goodnight. The next day someone said to me “You sure caused a riot.” I was glad. Rinpoche started his next teaching by saying that he would be teaching on the seven Buddhist words for space.
Computer graphic: Primal Wisdom, 5/75
NEW BELLS RING
After seminary I asked Rinpoche if he was interested in us casting the bells and vajras used in traditional Vajrayana practice. (In 1970 Mr. Benson had looked at me and asked me to study and draw Buddhist bells.) Trungpa Rinpoche really encouraged it, so explicitly so that we put together a team of four talented people who after a year of work had experience with the best foundries in the region and we had a perfect production studio. Rinpoche named us Dharma Foundries.
In quick, after 18 months of work we made a perfect bell, from a bell mold we developed, using a new bell Rinpoche had given us as a basis. Our bell looked great and sounded very good. It had a sophisticated reverse lip on the bell mouth. It looked regal. Rinpoche and his closest associates were impressed.
But we had a problem in that we had spent much time and money getting to the point where we could produce the bells and vajras with excellent quality but there was no financial wisdom to it. Rinpoche’s Vajradhatu organization in Boulder was importing bells and dorjes from Nepal to sell at less than it was costing us to produce. Ours in fact were better quality. We had better metal science, with the help of the Colorado School of Mines, and good metallurgy in the foundries, but we also wanted to support the Tibetan craftsmen in Nepal and not compete with them. It looked like Dharma Foundries was done, but our bell story had some exciting days ahead
In 1975 I learned from the Denver Museum of Art that the world’s largest bell museum was right outside Denver, in Evergreen, on a beautiful estate in an enclave of the foothills of the Rockies, and it was all the work of a Mr. Winston Jones. He had once worked for the Denver Museum, but then he used his great personal resources to build an estate dedicated to buying and installing a large number of fine bells from all traditions, including some of the biggest and best bells ever cast. Out on the lawns of the estate they were each supported and protected by individual architectural wood structures, allowing the bells to be rung and resound through the mountains.
He was very impressed with our hand bell. He gave us the royal treatment, slowly one by one ringing each of the 11 large bells on the lawn. We heard the hills and sky reverberate with the energy of each bell. There was one large Japanese temple bell that fascinated us. It had the same reverse inner lip the Tibetan Vajrayana hand bells had.
Inside the museum were more than 1000 hand bells, a few of them glass but mostly cast bronze bell metal mixtures, old and new. Mr. Jones rarely had visitors, and none before who had taught themselves the lost art of bell making. It also turned out that he was at that time the president of the American Bell Association. He mentioned that the next annual meeting was in Denver, in a year. He said, “Your bell is as good or better than the best bells in my collection”. He had a Buddhist bell similar to ours that was not nearly as good. He said that for each meeting of the ABA they had a bell cast as a gift for all attending, and he said the magic words: he wanted us to make at least 200 bells for that occasion.
But we were struggling with how to support ourselves in the present. We didn’t make the hand bells for the ABA, but we did visit Mr. Jones and the museum again to study the large Buddhist temple bell, because Roshi Kwan the zen master sent us a drawing of the traditional temple bell he needed for the Sonoma Zen Center and it was exactly the same as the bell living on Winston Jones’ big lawn.
In the end we never did cast the big bell, though many people wanted us to succeed, and we didn’t make any more hand bells. But we proved that we could continue sacred traditions in America, and ringing our hand bells and the great bells have been among the joys of this stressed, rich life.
THE ALLURE OF SOLAR POWER
1976-79 were the three hardest years of my life. I had thrived in New York, then moved to Boulder as a commitment to becoming accomplished in meditation but went out of my element and got lost. I did not fit into the smart drinking smoking fucking elegance of the Trungpa sangha, but I did greatly respect the traditional Buddhist teaching system. Even though I’d had close connection with Trungpa Rinpoche early on, I was in the wrong boat.
I had lost my way in Colorado, but that was the moment of the emergence of the solar energy industry, which was born in Denver at that time. As a lost poet/artist I took another leap, this time toward the sun. I made a commitment to work in the solar energy industry, and within a short period of time I was vice president and director of marketing of Solar Technology Corporation, Soltec.
By the time I met the engineer and president of Soltec, Rick Speed,
I had kind of a spontaneous understanding of how to raise money for the solar industry, and a distinct sense that I could develop and market solar power. Soltec made solar greenhouses and air-cooled solar collectors. At that time President Carter was in the White House, and he encouraged and inspired the development of a solar energy industry. There were 13 small companies in Denver and Boulder at the time I joined Soltec. And then it was announced with international press that the national Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) would be built up on South Table Mesa, Golden, Colorado, 18 miles East of Denver, at the base of the foothills, raised up above the Central Plain, facing East. It gave me the sense of being in the right place at the right time again. I was determined to be involved with SERI, and to be in the forefront of the development of solar technology. Said the poet.
I was friends with Carl Worthington, architect of the world class Denver Technological Center, whose office was in Boulder. With Carl, who was interested in solar design, and the solar architect Dick Crowther, I developed the solar architecture division of Soltec, and produced a beautiful brochure about solar architecture.
I heard on the Denver evening news that Mike Noland, vice president of SERI, was coming to Golden to rent temporary office space. I knew he would need an architect he could respect, one who knew South Table Mesa, and that was Carl. I called Mike Noland, arranged to meet him in Golden, and then drive the new government officer of solar research 20 miles north to Boulder.
Half-way there, without having told Mike what was going to happen, I stopped across from the main gate of the Department of Energy’s Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons/Research Facility, which was right on the road to Boulder. Mike and I had been talking realistically about the problems obstructing the development of solar technology when I brought my car to a graceful stop. Mike wanted to know what I was doing.
I explained to him that one of the painful things the new solar industry had to face in this area was the dark presence of nuclear technology, both nuclear power plants and the dangerously radioactive Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, where we were. He was nervous as I explained that nuclear wastes had been mismanaged there at Rocky Flats for 20 years, 17 miles from Boulder and 20 miles from Denver with wind currents to both. The highest incidence of leukemia in children in the USA was there. Mike couldn’t stand it anymore and asked me to get going to Boulder.
As we drove I told Mike that because I lived there and was committed to developing solar research and Industry there, I felt it was imperative to succeed to develop healthier technologies for the future, as opposed to nuclear.
Mike regained his composure by the time we entered beautiful Boulder and then met Carl Worthington in his office. Carl took Mike by storm with a power point slide show of his Denver Technological Center buildings all blazing with light. At lunch Carl did a classic act. He opened his napkin, took out his pen, and made a good quick drawing of South Table Mesa, from the sky looking down.
Carl landed the planning development contract for the Solar Energy Research Institute on the mesa, and Mike got excited about Soltec building solar homes in Golden for the SERI community.
The highpoint of this period was when President Carter and the CIA came to SERI for the President to make a dedication speech up on South Table Mesa, for National TV cameras. You had to see the CIA guys in suits with rifles around the outskirts and in insides of the great mesa to get the extremely cinematic scope of it. I was one of about a hundred people who were invited, and what the President did was an admirable act by a quality president.
His helicopter landed on the mesa in pouring rain. It was a challenge, but a good one. The president refused an umbrella, and walked up onto the platform with clear determination. “Rain is good,” he said with strong spirit into the microphones and cameras and the audience. “We need rain and solar energy,” he said strength.
He then proceeded to read a wonderful speech about the need for the development of renewable energy technology for the health and sanity of our nation. Under the awning of the makeshift podium, with rain pouring down, he brought his vision to fine conclusion in a 45 minute speech on the importance of solar and all renewable energy technologies. At that moment at last in my life I had a President.
By the way, SERI was impressed with our Soltec solar architecture brochure. They hired our designers to do a SERI brochure in the same style, plus they gave our brochure out with theirs to President Carter and the guests. Later I participated in a Presidential panel, presenting the potential of solar architecture.
QUICK SPEECH AT A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT
Some time shortly after that I was invited to give a talk on the prospects for solar industry development in a protest demonstration at a nuclear power plant about 30 miles from Boulder. I was 7th in the order of speakers, after the woman’s rights and Native American representatives. Feeling that there could be deadly radioactive particles in the air I got increasingly nervous as I awaited my turn. Twice I thought of sneaking off the platform and out, but I didn’t want to disturb the event.
Finally it was my turn. I went to the microphone and said, “I was supposed to talk to you about the potential of solar to replace nuclear technology. But while I was waiting to speak I realized that I could inhale a deadly radioactive particle any second and now I can’t stay here another minute”.
I left quickly and noticed many people leaving too. Driving away I held my breath until some vegetation began to appear on the desert-like land. Around the nuclear reactor for three miles plants found it hard to grow. In about 10 miles I slowed the car down when I got to where there were some healthy looking bushes.
The next week 2 Buddhist monks staged a sit-in protest at that awful power plant. They maintained meditation posture as they were carried out by the police. They were another kind of Buddhist but I’m proud to call them kin.
PRAISE FOR THE MEDITATION POSTURE
When I was with Trungpa Rinpoche, in the New York City center we used to have 8 hour sitting meditation sessions on Saturdays and Sundays, in which I sat, and in Boulder there were likewise all day weekend sessions, in which I sat, to sit into the buddha within, to recognize my mind as much as possible, to see it and not react. To be the awareness within. It’s a painstaking evolutionary practice of letting frequently-arising mind dissolve in awareness, inborn primal awareness. In all Buddhist traditions there is the practice of mental and physical stability that takes the posture associated with the Buddha to practice sitting into inherent buddhamind.
In the 1960s on the front page of the New York Times I saw an electrifying image of a Buddhist sitting in meditation posture, a man who had soaked himself with gasoline in protest against war, assumed the meditation posture, and lit the cigarette lighter in his hand. When the photo was taken it was about 30 seconds later and all the clothes and most of the outer flesh had burned off in blazing flame as he perfectly sat in meditation posture, after inconceivable trauma.
In the 1970s the FBI was at war with the Mohawk Indians in upstate New York. We’ve seen movies of how brutal it’s been between the FBI and Native Americans in several parts of the country. In New York City in 1979 I met a powerful Mohawk elder who was hiding in New York City with a trunk full of guns, grenades, and ammo, staying with a girlfriend of mine. He told us that two Buddhist monks trying to stop the warring sides ran out into the lines of fire between the FBI and the Mohawks, sat down in meditation posture and did not move, and both sides stopped shooting. The monks just didn’t move. The killing stopped for the rest of the day. Sad to say I think those wars still go on, but how about the courage of those two monks, sitting into primal awareness on a battleground and stopping the action.
THE DUDJOM TREASURES
In 1978 and 1979 I helped Soltec become a public company. I learned that I had a good grasp of the legal language of solar business and some talent for marketing solar architecture. But I was not happy in Colorado, and I finally returned to New York in 1979.
When I returned I stayed with Ann Rower and other close friends initially. Then within 6 months magic happened. I had come to New York still feeling respect for and devotion to Trungpa Rinpoche, in spite of the difficulty I had relating to his organization. Initially I attended his New York center. Then in spring 1980 John Giorno was able to schedule an interview for me with His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche, head of the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, dzogchen lama of the Dali Lama and Trungpa Rinpoche.
During the 6 years I was in Colorado, John and Jonathan Altman, another close friend of mine, went to see Dudjom Rinpoche in India, made the proper offerings and received a positive response to their request to bring His Holiness to America, to New York City. Rinpoche foresaw that he was meant to establish a home base in New York, to establish his international center and a sanctuary for treasures of the Nyingma lineage.
His Holiness recognized that he had an old connection with John from a previous incarnation. A brownstone house at 19 West 16th Street was purchased for the Dudjom family in 1976, arranged by Jonathan Altman, and an old summer resort in upstate New York was donated to be the basis of a retreat center just before I arrived.
John had his own room in the house in New York and ate at the table with the Dudjom family. He set up an interview for me with Dudjom Rinpoche that was a turning point for me. His Holiness and his son Shenphen Dawa Rinpoche were doctors as well as high lamas. They were the final teachers I needed to become Doctor Life Vase.
His Holiness said that I had an old personal connection with him, and for the next 14 years I attended him and his family, especially his son Shenphen Rinpoche, who was his designated lineage heir. Shenphen Dawa Rinpoche is the reincarnation of Dudjom Rinpoche’s father, who was a direct descendent of the bloodline of the spiritual kings of Tibet. By some grace in my challenging life, Shenphen Rinpoche, aged 29, essentially free of responsibilities since other lamas attended his father, became my personal friend. Again I found Tibet in New York.
Shenphen Rinpoche and I would sometimes go alone up to the Dudjom retreat center in upstate New York. He liked it that I had been trained for 4 years in the Guirdjieff work and had studied with Trungpa Rinpoche for 10 years. Most of the Western students Shenphen Rinpoche’s father attracted didn’t have the background in study and practice I had. My many years with Trungpa Rinpoche made me qualified to work with Dudjom and Shenphen Rinpoche, and that starts the story of how this guy from Brooklyn became close to embodiments of the Tibetan bloodline of spiritual kings.
Then John resigned as the number one Westerner in the Dudjom center. He had a blow-out with the Board (he was chairman). Slowly after that I was given many responsibilities.
One time several years later I was having dinner with Shenphen Rinpoche and another disciple. Rinpoche was talking as he did sometimes about his spiritual royal bloodline, clearly indicating again that he wanted me to memorize the details for posterity. At a pause in his monologue I cleared my throat, like I was going to make an announcement. I said, mimicking him gently, “I come from a long line of garbage collectors and kings.” As I said that he was sipping tea and he spritzed it out laughing.
THE ESCAPE FROM TIBET
Once Shenphen Rinpoche told me the story of his escape from Tibet with Dudjom Rinpoche, his wife Sangyum Kushok, and his two daughters. It was 1958. One night, in their home in the Pema Ko Dudjom temple complex, Dudjom Rinpoche met privately with his family and said that they had to leave Tibet. They had to do it secretly. The state oracle had told the Dalai Lama that the only way a Chinese invasion could be prevented was if Dudjom Rinpoche could reconsecrate 4 major Tibetan stupas, protecting the four corners. But the Gelupa lineage forces around the Dalai lama refused to let a Nyingma lama do that task. It was then that Dudjom Rinpoche decided to leave, before the Dalai Lama was forced to leave.
The Dudjom family prepared for a long tour of Dudjom Tersar monasteries, taking only books as might be used on such a big tour, clothing, food provisions, and a few smaller precious things, like the terma phurbas from the treasury. They had two or three attendants. The family had to leave without giving any suspicion that they were leaving forever. They had to leave behind most of the sacred art treasures at the Dudjom home monastery in Pema Ko and spiritual treasure in all his monasteries and temples. Sangyum Kusho sewed jewelry and gem stones from the Dudjom royal line into the insides of their coats. And they left. The lamas in charge of the monastery were well-trained to run the Dudjom domain with nothing more being said.
There were only minor challenges to their secret exodus. They made it all the way through to the river that they had to cross to enter India. They made good arrangements, and crossed successfully. They settled in Northern India, with the help of James George and others. After a while the Dudjom Tersar lamas in Tibet realized that His Holiness had escaped, and most of them decided to try to leave Tibet too. At the Dudjom headquarters in Pemo Ko, 7 oxen-drawn carts were loaded with spiritual treasures. A group of Dudjom lamas and monks on horseback slowly headed into the Himalayas toward India.
Remarkably in a couple of months they made it though safely all the way to the river, with India on the other side. They decided to linger in Tibet just overnight, and then cross in the morning. So they set up camp, and Chinese soldiers found them. The Tibetans climbed on their horses and sent their cargo loads of treasure into the river with the oxen, every one swimming for their lives, and the Chinese soldiers had a field day with them, machine gunning the animals and the Tibetans and the treasures. The river was alive with mixed human blood, animal blood, and shattered rare treasures.
Two men and two oxen made it across with one of the seven carts. They continued into Northern India with the animals and the treasure, looking for Dudjom Rinpoche. At last they found him. His Holiness was told that two men from their Pemo Ko temple had escaped with a big cart of lineage treasures. His Holiness said that they should be taken care of, fed and given a place to rest, then he would greet them.
Shenphen Rinpoche was in the room when the two men met with His Holiness and described the escape and the massacre in the river. They were so happy that they had saved what they did. His Holiness told the two men to keep the cart of treasure they had risked their lives to save. He told them they would need it to help them start new lives.
So much was destroyed. The Nyingma lineage survived, at first in India. Dudjom Rinpoche was appointed by the Dalai Lama to be the first head of the Nyingma lineage, the original Vajrayana lineage in Tibet. All the eminent lamas of the Nyingma lineage agreed
Then the Dudjom Tersar lineage and all of the Nyingma lineage slowly became established in India and the West.
NEW YORK SOLAR CITY
New York seemed to be no place for solar business, but I quickly got a job as manager of the solar energy division at PANTEC, Inc. in Babylon, New York, out on Long Island. I had an impressive Solar resume, which got me the job. I worked with PANTEC and it’s solar manufacturer for 6 months, until it went bust. December, 1980. No job, no direction in the big dangerous world, but living with the Dudjom family and feeling blessed.
There was one solar company in Manhattan, Solar Energy Industries Corporation (SEIC). Its main distinction was that it had installed the solar energy system on the White House for President Carter, and had installed more solar thermal and solar electric systems than any other New York region solar business. I met with the president, Hector Gutierrez, and showed him my resume. On his office wall was a photo of President Carter with the solar system installation crew on the White House roof. Hector was standing next to the President.
Hector showed my resume to an officer of the Wall Street firm that was in the process of taking SEIC public. He told Hector to hire me. I became executive vice president and once again I was raising money for solar programs, but this time I had found my true spiritual family, and I was living in the Dudjom house, in my mind studying to be a new kind of doctor.
EM CEE SQUARED: RENEWABLE ENERGY POWER DEVELOPMENT
Then Ronald Regan was elected president and one of the first things he did was to remove the solar system from the White House and deny solar any more tax credit support. SEIC died within months of the election. Unlike Soltec, whose investors did make a profit, the SEIC investors lost money. The solar industry was challenged. The military industrial complex was gaining in power. What could possibly be done in the field of such vast forces?
Shenphen Rinpoche called upon his buddha father. By then I had been empowered and trained in various practices that Dudjom Rinpoche himself did, on another level. I knew he engaged the dangerous fields that threatened human life and I believe he did effective work maintaining balance, to give life a chance. Shenphen Rinpoche asked His Holiness to support my work in solar power development. I didn’t know what work that might be, but I had not come away from SEIC empty handed.
I had come to know and befriend a former senior engineer in the NASA space program, Jack Bitterly, who had developed and patented several technologies including a prismatic solar thermal collector and a flywheel electric power automotive system. I wrote a concise white paper on each to attract financing.
Soon there was a spectacular meeting in the architect Carl Kline’s penthouse atop the IBM building he had designed. The spaces were vast. There was a remarkable model of New York City looking like a future super-city. He met with me because I was with his brother, Fritz, and my close friend Mike Helfgott who Fritz admired.
Carl looked at his watch and said I had 20 minutes. I said fine and spoke about the importance of using the nongravity and vacuum technologies developed in the NASA space program, and the importance of solar technologies. I spoke of the Bitterly patents and the need for support. I stopped on the point. He started to look at his watch and I said, “16 minutes” (guessing). He looked at his watch and said, “16 minutes”. He called across the large room to his secretary in her office, “Get me Jack Goldman.” Carl told us that Dr. Goldman was Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and was looking for new solar technologies to develop in Israel.
Carl did send my white papers to Jack Goldman who liked them and arranged to meet with me in a conference room at the Xerox Corporation building in Manhattan, not too far from the IBM tower. Mike and Fritz came along. Dr. Goldman said he liked what I wrote about the Bitterly patents and he asked my permission to take my papers and Bitterly’s patents with him to Israel, to see if there was interest. I said I trusted him, sensing that was the way to go.
He did take the Bitterly patents to Israel for further study, which never led anywhere, but Mike Helfgott and Fritz Kline decided that I should create a company that could be invested in. The name for the new energy company came through to me: EM CEE SQUARED. Mike, who had developed and sold a successful Madison Avenue advertising agency, said, “Corporate name of the century!” And so after His Holiness did ritual to support me, a couple of times, I stirred my mantra vat in my bedroom. With no idea of how to effect the world I just set about trying to do it directly.
I was married to Nancy Nichols at that time. She was also close to Shenphen Rinpoche. She was very helpful getting EM CEE SQUARED set up and running, setting up an IBM computer system in our apartment. I kept working on it and developed two programs: a wind power plant using large vertical axis wind turbines, and a flywheel electric power automotive program. Like the Statue of Liberty torch project, they were big but practical undertakings. While I was earning a living as a legal proofreader, those two wonderful programs, wind power and flywheel/electric automotive power, took up much of my time in the next two years, and both of them almost succeeded.
Developing a renewable energy power plant, with an initial installation of electric wind turbines and a plan to integrate solar electric power production into it by using the space available between the turbines, is a project involving several big components.
First we established relations with a Canadian company, Walton Corporation, who had bought ALCOA’s patent to manufacture the large aluminum rotor blades for their 500 kilowatt 125 foot high ground-mounted wind turbines, called vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT). They agreed to manufacture, install, operate and maintain the turbines for the power production partnership, guaranteeing the turbine function.
Then we needed a site with wind power development potential, probably in California. We needed a power production contract with a utility, either Southern California Edison (SCE) or Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) in northern California.
Then we needed a contract with a Wall Street insurer to guarantee that if there isn’t enough wind, the insurer will pay the investors.
When we secured a viable site, we then needed to run revenue stream scenarios for the site, and price out the expensive electrical grid installation specific to that site. Then we needed financing. Tall order?
I lucked out on a perfect wind power development site in the California desert near Palm Springs, about an hour east of L.A. It was called Garnet Hill. About a mile away, clearly visible across the flat desert, was SCE’s wind power test site. You could see the world’s only installed 500kw vertical axis wind turbine, a big, elegant machine with three shiny aluminum rotor blades, just like those EM CEE SQUARED hoped to install.
I was able to secure the Garnet Hill property on a wing and a prayer, hire Bob Odom, attorney for SERI, to negotiate our power production contract with SCE, set up a meeting at SCE headquarters in L.A., and discover a big blessing. Allow me to not divert to explain, but I was joined in the meeting by Jeff Hitchcock of Prudential, who announced that Prudential had decided to finance this project. It was $10 million for an initial 6 megawatt installation.
The SCE officers really liked the site and really liked the project. I mentioned that Bob Odom would work with them on the power purchase contract. They looked forward to it.
But it wasn’t meant to be. The world moves dynamically fast and sharp and I wasn’t able to move fast enough to secure the property ($250,000). It was sold to SCE for $500,000 a month later, shows you how much they did respect the site. We missed then but the project was still blessed.
We landed one of the best wind power sites in Northern California, in Altamont Pass, east of Oakland, with developers that already had the land under contract and had negotiated the best flat rate renewable power production contract ever negotiated, with PG&E, just needing us to install, operate, and maintain. Way more simple. I got to feeling blessed again.
But not for long. The neighboring wind farm offered our landlord a better land lease than we had and a legal battle arose. When Prudential heard that, the deal was dead.
And then the flywheel electric power program almost got done. I loved that program. Having been excited by that technology as presented by Jack Bitterly, I found that Brobeck Corporation in Berkeley had made a world class demonstration of flywheel electric power for automotive application.
They had done far more than Jack had. And they had two major credentials. They had built a one megawatt utility scale flywheel electric power generator for NASA, and they had produced several steam powered buses for the California Department of Transportation.
I developed a $5 million one year research and development program for flywheel/electric automotive power with Brobeck to present to Wall Street underwriters in 1982 and in 1983. The program came within a hair of being funded by International Harvester Corporation.
In the end EM CEE SQUARED raised enough money to present two fine programs which didn’t get funded. I started it with the energy of Dudjom Rinpoche behind me and it may be that it did good on invisible grounds.
THE MAGIC DAGGER AND THE ENERGY BODY
The following years I attended the Dudjom family in New York and in southern France. I was intensively involved with helping them preserve the treasures and practices of the lineage. I learned a new kind of Vipashyana, based on breathing energy into the energy body. It’s called vase breathing, the breathing of vital energy into the life vase in the energy body. There’s a big vase breathing (bum chen) and a small or gentle vase breathing (bum chung). I was given extensive training over many years and then asked to teach bum chung. It’s been central to my work in medicine and childbirth and is described in my books Childbirth Meditation and Empowered Care. It implies a new model of the human body.
I had a habit of being outrageous with Shenphen Rinpoche yet maintaining respect. Only on rare occasions did I spontaneously set people in the shrine room laughing aloud. One time Shenphen Rinpoche was distressed about something and he had a dark air. A relic had been lost and he saw that as a bad omen. I called a meeting of about 5 of us to consider it. Adam amazingly had two terma phurbas (I had one), and we arranged that we’d all chip in and buy one of Adam’s terma phurbas for Shenphen Rinpoche. A phurba is a magic dagger, especially if it’s terma, concealed treasure. A few survived from Tibet. They’re to be used for the benefit of all life. They can be used to work with great forces, especially when used by a blessed tulku like Shenphen Rinpoche. The use of the magic dagger implies a different model of the human body. We decided to present it to him formally in the shrine room at midnight, when we were about to begin an all-night practice.
At midnight, in the silence, just as Rinpoche was about to begin, before he could get a word out, I called out, “Rinpoche!” “Yes,” he answered, watching three of us rise up with white silk offering scarves, approaching him to make an offering at an auspicious moment. I declared, “In the past we have given you presents like TV sets and sophisticated electronics that you like, but never have we given you a gift precious enough, until now.” I could see Rinpoche getting slightly edgy, so I cut to the quick. “And so Rinpoche we’ve decided to give you a woman.” (He was unmarried.) There was hearty laughter. The boss cracked a smile. “Where is she?” he asked?” I said, “Actually we’re going to do something even better. Here’s a terma phurba. Here’s something precious enough to give you.” Adam and Patrick from France made the presentation with me.
And then we practiced energy body functions all night.
DUDJOM RINPOCHE’S OWN LIFE VASE
One day in 1983 Dudjom Rinpoche gave a “Long Life” empowerment at Barry Bryant’s big space in downtown Manhattan. The empowerment was Amytayus, “Buddha of Infinite Life”, the unobstructed life force. I arrived a little late from a business meeting. His Holiness was explaining the empowerment, with Tulku Pema Wangel translating.
At one point Dudjom Rinpoche said that in the field of this empowerment all your past life obstructions still caught in you and limiting your life force now will be freed. Your life force will be healed into unlimited life.”
Then he rang his bell several times and began the melodic chanting of the empowerment ritual. Over the throne His Holiness sat in was my Amytayus thanka. The central image is of a Buddha, man or woman, seated in meditation posture holding the life vase in his or her lap, the Vase of Immortality. I knew that Amytayus was an icon of the human potential to do what His Holiness was telling us to do. And I knew that the vase that the buddha was holding in his or her lap represented the internal life vase, tse bum, in the navel center.
In the field of Dudjom Rinpoche’s fully realized life vase I experienced what he indicated, so I believe. I know it happened, just like he said. You can call it my imagination if you want, but I had the distinct impression that something I had prayed for had come true, that something worth praying for had happened. Obstructions to my life force were dissolved. I believe the Dudjom long life empowerment increased my life force and life span.
After the empowerment was over, I was standing beside the throne to help His Holiness if I could. I could see he needed help getting out of the throne. He was 80 years old and somewhat frail, containing the fully realized life vase. He leaned toward me and started to rise, holding my arm for support. I lowered my arm so that he could put his full weight against it, and he did. I put my other arm behind his back and helped him up. For a few moments I was holding the weight of his precious, precious body. It felt like I was bringing his body and life vase into mine.
After I helped His Holiness into the car I went back inside to see if anything had been left behind. I saw one of my Tibetan rugs on the floor and the empowerment vase remaining on a table. Lama Rinchen took the empowerment vase and looked at me. I had come in late and had been the only one not to get a sip of the purification nectar upon entering the shrine room. Rinchen brought the empowerment vase to me and I cupped my hands, left over right, to receive a little bit of the nectar to sip. But Rinchen was bad and poured all the rest of the nectar into my hands, overflowing them onto my rug, as I seriously complained. He was chuckling as I drank every drop I could so not to waste it. My cup it ranneth over.
TEACHING THE MASTER TO TELL A JOKE
Trungpa Rinpoche had a great sense of humor. One night at Naropa, with 2000 people attending, after Rinpoche was seated he gracefully turned and picked up a stick of incense, as he usually did to start his evening teaching. He slowly inserted it to stand upright in a glass of rice, and then he gracefully lit the stick of incense with a lighter, before each of his evening lectures, a small ceremony. Then one time he lit the stick and it was a sparkler! It blazed with sparks, surprising and delighting us all. He extinguished it after a few seconds. Great theater, perfect timing. Shenphen Rinpoche had potentially good humor skills too. He just needed a little coaching and encouraging.
I noticed he liked any joke whatsoever that people told him, especially bad jokes. I think he liked the idea of making people happy by joking. He had a poor style of joke delivery. I decided to teach him one good short joke that he could perfect. The joke he said he’d like to learn was:
Question: How do you know when your girlfriend is getting too fat?
Answer: When she sits on your face and you can’t hear the stereo.
I asked him to say it several times with little success.
He went to southern France for the summer teaching program. I flew overseas and joined the retreat in time for the first day. A couple of hundred students were gathered outside the temple waiting for Shenphen Rinpoche to appear. I saw a cloud of dust and Rinpoche arrived driving a new BMW that someone had given him. [He’d only had old cars until then.] He was wearing dark glasses and his window was open. As he came to a stop I stepped up to him. With the whole sangha bowing forward gently with hands in prayer mudra toward Rinpoche, I said to him, loud enough for everyone to hear, “How do you know when your girlfriend is getting too fat?”
He answered, with good volume, “When she sits down upon your face and you can no longer hear that the stereo is playing.” He seemed a little proud of his delivery, which was not good enough. I let out a lip sound that clearly implied dissatisfaction with his attempt. I asked him, “Can’t I teach you anything?” Only a few new people were shocked. The others were used to my being the court jester and were mostly amused.
THE SOUND OF ONE HAND CLAPPING
My favorite exchange with Shenphen Rinpoche in a temple took place in Southern France, at the Dudjom center. Shenphen Rinpoche was teaching about healing practices. At a certain point he taught us a warm-up practice for healing with the hands. He fully extended both arms out sideways, with palms facing the front, held it for a moment, and then brought both hands together in a loud hot clap. It was powerful.
“Rinpoche!” I shouted out quickly.
“Yes,” he answered strongly.
“Please demonstrate the sound of one hand clapping!”, I called out.
The students and Rinpoche had a good laugh.
He announced loudly back to me, “No. You have that transmission!”
Hearty laughs again, whatever it all may have meant.
Dudjom Rinpoche once told the sangha, beware of any teacher that takes himself too seriously. Make sure he has a sense of humor.”
DRIVING THE DOCTOR LAMA
When I drove with Shenphen Rinpoche I almost always drove the car, with him beside me in the front passenger seat. On occasion he’d take the whole back seat. On rare occasions he’d drive. I drove him in some very bad weather, like once in a rainstorm on the Taconic Turnpike when traffic was moving fast but it was very difficult to see. It was dangerous and almost impossible to see how to get off the highway. The cars kept moving fast.
Shenphen Rinpoche was worried and checked his seat belt. Chho Je tulku, in the back seat, was very worried. Vision was almost blinded by torrential rain while the speed of traffic from the few cars we could see was about 40 miles an hour. We couldn’t stop and couldn’t pull off. I stayed superalert, looking for the road, red tail lights, head lights in the rear view mirror, anything. My instinct was to keep going as straight ahead as possible on the turnpike.
Rinpoche and Chho Je Tulku were expressing amazement that I was able to drive on through. Rinpoche said, “How can you see?! How can you do this?!” We were in mid-danger so I shut up and drove. It would have been a very dangerous, harrowing drive with anyone in the car. When you’ve got Dudjom Rinpoche’s lineage heir in the car and the reincarnation of a Tibetan oracle you hope you’ve got protection, and you drive with all the skill you can summon. We made it through the danger. Later in the year the reincarnation of Trungpa Rinpoche’s root lama was killed with 5 other lamas in a car crash in India.
Once Shenphen Rinpoche and I went to explore the region west of OCD, in the Catskill Mountains foot hills. I saw a town on the map named “Gay Head”. I said to Rinpoche, “Who knows what we’ll find. What if it’s an inbred town of gay red-necks?” And so we went off to find out, with the map in Rinpoche’s lap.
We followed road signs and turned up a hillside right into the center of the small town of Gay Head, maybe 20 buildings, including a little church and a courthouse, ALL boarded up. No one was in sight. It was a little eerie. We saw no reason to get out of the car. Nothing moved in the various wooden buildings. I drove very slowly down the main street, which then went out into hilly fields. Ahead of us there were about 50 sheep in a group near the road.
As I slowly drove ahead I said to Rinpoche, joking, “As we come to those sheep if they all turn their heads around at once and look at me they’ll be my disciples in my next life.” As we came to the sheep I experienced one of the darndest things I ever seen. Every single sheep turned its head and looked at us at the same moment. We both laughed a long time.
It was great to do practice in the car with Rinpoche, and it was a good time to ask him questions. Once he said to me, “If an animal runs out in front of the car and you’re driving a lama, you do not endanger the lama by hitting the brakes. You kill the animal. It will be taken care of. Just don’t endanger the lama by hitting the brakes.”
Within 10 seconds a very large rabbit tried to cut in front of the car. I threw my right arm across Rinpoche’s chest to brace him and I hit the brakes, with a screech but not a rabbit scream, since I just avoided it. I turned toward Rinpoche, who was looking at me sharply, and I said, “Thank you for letting me taste my fear of killing.” He nodded his head up and down twice.
THE DOCTOR AND THE LIFE IN THE DEER
One fine August day at OCD Shenphen Rinpoche said let’s go swimming.
He and Chho Je (oracle) Tulku got in the back seat of the big old green Cadillac. I was behind the wheel, and Maria, an assistant, was in the front passenger seat.
As we drove down the road I saw a deer killed by a car, lying on the roadside. Rinpoche said, “Quick. Let’s get the deer!” So I pulled over and stopped the car and we all got out. She was a large beautiful doe, seemingly fresh killed, with no sign of blood and no odor. Rinpoche said, “Quick!! Quick!! Get it into the car,” meaning I should lift the 185 pound animal dead weight, with my bad back, and haul the deer into the trunk of the car. Moreover not only was Rinpoche showing clearly that he wouldn’t help me, Chho Je Tulku kept loudly echoing Shenphen Rinpoche: “Do it quick!! Quick!!” as he also pointed sharply at the deer.
If a car had come down the road at that time they would have seen an unusual sight: one man either wrestling with a dead deer or falling on it trying to lift it, or trying to dance with it, and two intent oriental people, one older and bigger, watching Maria and me just manage to get the deer into the big empty trunk of the Caddy, receiving commands from the commanders.
I turned the car around, we drove back to OCD, and parked in our driveway. We got out. I opened the trunk. The deer was very beautiful. What a graceful body and head. In the remarkably clear Cadillac trunk light she looked asleep completely still. Then Shenphen Rinpoche did something wonderful. He did Powa for the deer, the Transference of Consciousness into the next incarnation, bringing blessing into the death. Chho Je Tulku, Maria, and I all experienced, through Rinpoche’s sensitivity, energy of consciousness still in the deer. We saw Rinpoche transfer the subtle consciousness with blessing. But that wasn’t all that Rinpoche wanted to do for the deer. He would consecrate the flesh so that the body of the deer would become blessed food. There was no odor of decay at all. And Rinpoche was a very special doctor.
Maria and I hauled the deer’s body into the big kitchen and put it down respectfully on a big butcher block table. I was tired, with an aching back, and I went to get a good night’s sleep.
I was aroused early by a knocking at my door. One of the other students was there saying, “Quick! Come to the kitchen!” I got some clothes on and ran after him to the kitchen building. Inside the room stank of death and a shocking scene confronted us. The deer’s body was laying with its neck extended out over the side of the table with the head cut off. The head was in a big plastic bag with the guts of the doe. Her insides had been cleaned out. Thick blood still dripped down slowly from the cut arteries in her neck. Large amounts of Indian incense was burning to try to hide the death smell, unsuccessfully.
Shenphen Rinpoche came veering into the kitchen. “Quick!!!” he said. “Take the deer out into the woods!!! Leave it there! Other animals will use it as food! The plumber is here and he’s trying to fix something in this building! We don’t want him to see the deer. We’ve distracted him to another building. Get the deer out into the woods!!!!”
So Tony and I tied the deer’s ankles together and slipped a pole through so that we could lift her body and carry her upside-down into the woods, with me behind the deer, carrying the pole on my right shoulder. Tony also had the plastic bag with the deer’s head and guts and he led the way.
As we walked I watched the feminine rear end of the deer sway gently from side to side. From my view you couldn’t tell she wasn’t alive. And she was a beautiful female animal. She had a sweet and sexy rear end. We laid her to rest in the woods.
But it wasn’t over. It turns out that Tony, who was even more tired than me, dropped the bag with the head and guts somewhere on the way. We let it be. Animals would claw through the plastic and open it anyway.
About three hours later I was talking with Rinpoche in his office when a very high-strung, emotional student came bursting in shouting that she had found the severed head of a deer in a bag full of intestines and she demanded to know what the horrible sign meant!
I left Rinpoche to calm her down and I returned to my room. I’ve never forgotten all the implications of that experience of the aftermath of one anonymous death.
A MONUMENTAL DEATH
Trungpa Rinpoche’s nervous system had been damaged in a drinking-related car accident in Scotland in his early twenties, yet he demonstrated great skills and clarity thereafter. He was destined to be a spiritual genius with a profound legacy, one who drank and smoked and had frequent sex. Rinpoche had been warned by doctors in 1971 that his liver was enlarged from drinking, but he never stopped. By 1986, when he was 46 years old, he had achieved remarkable accomplishments, including the founding of Naropa University and the publication of many important books, but his body was failing. He died in Nova Scotia in May, 1987, and was cremated at Tail of the Tiger in Vermont in the most spectacular event I had ever been part of.
His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche presided over the ceremony. Trungpa Rinpoche’s body, ku dung (relic body) had been preserved in salt in the traditional way by Kagyu lamas for 7 weeks while the extensive preparations for the funeral were completed. A cremation purkhang was built, a noble ceramic structure with circular openings on each side that you could see through. 7 grand thrones were constructed around the purkhang, each about 200 feet away, and decorated traditionally for important lamas who would attend. The cremation site was situated in a large green meadow. The array of colorful, ultimately profound structures was a unique theater of the highest quality. The weather was clear. The sky was blue. The sun was overhead. It was the realm of the Dharmakaya of death. I was there with Nancy and thousands of other people, coming from around the world. Trungpa Rinpoche’s achievements were profoundly respected.
The large and stately funeral procession, with a lone bagpiper slowly leading, carried the treasure coffin in which Rinpoche’s body, wrapped in a samadhi robe, was preserved in salt crystals and silence.
As the body was carried with ceremonial grace to the cremation purkhang, a group of lamas and monks began chanting Kagyu liturgy, and then the eminent lamas were slowly seated in their thrones. Nearer the purkhang were seated Rinpoche’s wife, Diana Mukpo, and Osel Tensin, Trungpa Rinpoche’s Vajra Regent, his dharma heir, who was to shock the world a year later, on the front page of the New York Times, with a horrifying admission.
The cremation purkhang was designed with openings so that you could see the head of the ku dung. The relic body had been removed from the salt with devotion, covered in blessed cloth, with constant chanting, and the precious body was balanced seated upright in meditation posture in the center of the purkhang.
Then everyone in attendance, thousands of people, filed one by one past the purkhang to offer a white offering scarf. That took about 2 hours, with chanting, in English and Tibetan. Kerosene was fed into the purkhang systematically. When all was ready, when everyone was finally seated, a monk touched a lighted candle to the Trungpa ku dung and it burst into flame.
It took many hours for the relic body to burn completely, needing many gallons of kerosene. Those were extraordinary hours. Death itself is a great spiritual teacher, and the cremation of an eminent Buddhist master is a powerful teaching for those connected to him. The New York Times reported that there were rainbows around the sun. Unusual clouds and other signs were reported. It may or may not have had to do with all the kerosene fumes sent into the sky with the body.
But my karma with Trungpa Rinpoche wasn’t finished. By the time the Disciples of the Buddha book was published in 2001 my relationship with him was pure blessing. In a letter he had written to me in 1980, when I had written to him that I’d become a direct student of Dudjom Rinpoche, his last words to me were, “You have my blessings.” That proved true.
THE LIFE OF A MASTER OF MASTERS
Dudjom Rinpoche was born in Tibet in 1904. He was the reincarnation of the legendary treasure revealer Dudjom Lingpa. At the time of the Chinese invasion of Tibet, Dudjom Rinpoche was revered as the foremost treasure revealer of the age.
He came to New York City for a brief visit in 1971. He gave a public talk in a church in the City Hall area. I attended with a group of Trungpa Rinpoche students. We had heard that Dudjom Rinpoche was the head of the Nyingma order of Tibetan Buddhism and that he was one of the grand masters. He was called “His Holiness,” the same as the Dalai Lama.
We were waiting inside the church, up near the stage where he would be speaking. I was anticipating a bold presence with beautiful robes. His Holiness entered through the front of the church, so that we were furthest from him as he came into the room. I saw him radiating into the space and I got a thrill. He was wearing a plain but fine brown-gold chuba coat. I saw him radiating energy as he was escorted up onto the stage.
He was seated in a soft chair. A Catholic bishop introduced him. Then Dudjom Rinpoche spoke. Sonam Kazi translated. His Holiness went right to the heart of the matter, awareness of awareness, realization and liberation. His directness and authority were remarkable. I could see why he was called a master of masters.
When I met him personally in 1980 he was 77 years old and in good health. He was small and slender. He was physically the finest and most beautiful man I’d ever seen. He had a quality of physical and spiritual aristocracy. He was an important teacher of the Dalai Lama. In his house on 16th Street in Manhattan, in his room up at the retreat center, in his house in the Dordogne, His Holiness oversaw the continuity of one of the greatest schools of human development in history.
I was fortunate enough to live near the Dudjom family for more than 10 years. Sometimes I slept in His Holiness’s sitting room, just outside of Shenphen Rinpoche’s bedroom.
Early in the morning Dudjom Rinpoche would walk in, chuckling when he would see me. I would get up and start to leave and he would gesture for me to stay. We were alone together many times over the years, in his sitting room, in the car, but we couldn’t speak. I never learned Tibetan and His Holiness never learned English. Once we earnestly tried to communicate verbally, and we became increasingly humored by the situation. I learned to be quiet and smile.
But by 1984 His Holiness had become frail. He had respiratory problems. His last public teachings and empowerments were in the Dordogne in August, 1984. The empowerments were his revelations of Green Tara and Medicine Buddha, and I received them.
At the last teaching he gave, August 14/84, on the Diamond Words of Padmasambhava, he spoke very softly. He was careful with his breathing. Then there was an intermission in which His Holiness was alone for a few minutes. I knew it might be the last time I saw him. I went to him and sat down. I had two small iron phurbas in a white offering scarf that I held toward him. He took the phurbas into his hand and proceeded to softly bless them with mantra, and he kept blessing them with audible mantra, and he kept blessing the phurbas, and I received his precious, precious breath with all my heart.
SACRED DANCE AND THE ORACLE’S ROBE
My dad did good tap, and I did and still do good rock dance, but I loved the nobility and meaning of Buddhist dance, sacred dance. When I returned to New York from Boulder and began to participate in the Dudjom center activities I was glad to learn that there was a ceremonial dance group, led by Lin Lerner. Lin was a PhD dance ethnologist from Columbia University who had gone to the East to study Buddhist dance. She heard about Nyingma terma dzogchen dances called Dances of King Gesar, Padmasambhava as warrior king. She heard that they were performed in Orissa, India, under the guidance of terton Namkha Drime Rinpoche, “the Gesar Terton”, and she set out for Orissa, in 1977. Terton Namkha Drimed had a dream that she was coming and that he and his teachers would transmit the lineage to her to bring to the West. And that happened.
Lin was a good teacher, and when I joined we had a lively group of 5 men and 5 women. The dance is designed for man-woman consort couples. The men are King Gesar and the women are Tara as they dance and sing the highest teachings. We performed the dances in the traditional Tibetan costumes, including fur hats and the Gesar hat, as an offering for Dudjom Rinpoche, and once for Khyentse Rinpoche, and for New Year celebrations. Once we danced in 104 degree summer heat at OCD for Dudjom Rinpoche, and I almost lost it in my heavy garb. (John Giorno said I got rubbery legged.) On almost all dance occasions it was traditional for the dancers to drink hearty amounts of alcoholic beverage to loosen up but not get rubbery legged.
One time at a New Year’s celebration, with John Powell dancing the lead for the male dancers in a complex Gesar dance, loaded on sake John and I took off boldly in the wrong direction, which brought on a creative challenge. That pleased Dudjom Rinpoche greatly, but there was something it took me a long time to understand. The dance was anything but funny to the lamas. They saw something important still being transmitted.
Eventually I became the lead male dancer and had a proper Gesar hat, and I had a spectacular robe to wear for the dances.
I had been practicing and performing the Gesar dances for two years when Shenphen Rinpoche decided to give me a fine robe to dance in, a royal gold silk chuba (full robe with long sleeves), with turquoise and crimson silk interior. It had belonged to an oracle, a Nyingma lama who lived in Ladakh, bordering Tibet. It had been given to Shenphen Rinpoche as an offering by the reincarnation of that oracle lama, Chho Je Tulku, who became a good friend of mine.
Chho Je Tulku came to stay with me once. Never one to hesitate to challenge a young tulku (he was 25 at the time) when he came to my apartment after a while I showed him the robe and told him it had been given to me by Shenphen Rinpoche for the Geasar dances. I tried it on for Chho Je Tulku to show him a few dance moves. I have to say he took it well.
DUDJOM RINPOCHE PREVENTS A IN MY FAMILY
One day when I was living in the Dudjom house in New York City, my sister called, needing to talk to me. She was a little disturbed that within one month’s time an astrologer at a party and a fortune teller in Greenwich Village both said that there was a danger to Pat’s daughter Elizabeth in the month of November. Pat said it was eerie that they both said almost the same thing. She said, “I hate to bother Dudjom Rinpoche about anything, but can you find out what he has to say about this?”
I told the story to Shenphen Rinpoche who went in and spoke to his father. A few minutes later Shenphen Rinpoche returned and told me, unforgettably, “What those people said is true. “There’s a serious threat to your niece’s life in a car accident in November, but His Holiness can prevent the accident. Her car will skid on ice but she won’t be hurt. Afterwards some small incident will remind her that he prevented the car crash. He hasn’t done that yet. Your sister should make a simple offering to His Holiness that is appropriate, perhaps 5 pieces of colored silk, like 5 bands of a flag, blue, red, gold, green, and white.”
I told my sister. She was alarmed and grateful at once. I said she also should get a little offering for Shenphen Rinpoche, since he’s been so helpful.” “Sure,” said Pat. “What do you think I should get?” I said, “I suggest a portion of sesame Mongolian beef from Chinatown. He’d just love that. He’d think you knew his soft spot.” And so the offerings were properly made.
Just before Thanksgiving weekend Elizabeth was driving from Albany, New York, where she was going to law school, to her family home in Baldwin, New York, on Long Island, for Thanksgiving weekend. Her car took a frightening skid on black ice and spun out of control among other cars, but then stopped on the roadside with no damage. She righted the car, extremely afraid, but then drove downstate without incident.
After Thanksgiving, as I recall, Elizabeth returned to law school and her roommate became ill and was vomiting. Elizabeth drove her to the nearest emergency room, parked the car, took her roommate into the ER, turned around and went back to the car which she’d left open with her pocketbook in it. She got her purse, locked the car, and on her way back to the ER she slipped on oil in the parking lot and smacked her head on a metal sign. As she did she saw Dudjom Rinpoche’s face and she knew it was him. I believe she said she was reminded of the near-accident, but it’s long ago for all involved. It is clear that it was the beginning of a connection Elizabeth formed with Shenphen Rinpoche.
Albany, the New York state capitol, where Elizabeth was going to school, was about 45 minutes north of Orgyen Cho Dzong (OCD) in Greenville, New York, the Dudjom retreat center. Months after the near accident, the following spring, Elizabeth drove down to OCD to meet Shenphen Rinpoche. I think she expected an old Chinese wise man dressed oriental with a long gray beard.
When her car drove in Rinpoche was out in the middle of the lawn, casually dressed, flying a kite. He liked flying kites. He was embarrassed a little to be caught playing and was trying to hand the flying kite off to me but I walked away, so that they could say hello that way. Elizabeth was nervous and I thought that would relax her. Then I took the kite down, and Elizabeth followed Rinpoche into his office where she had an interview with him, which made her happy.
Then Elizabeth got married, to Andres, an architect, and soon she became pregnant. She was a nervous person basically and she worried about the pregnancy. She asked me to speak to Shenphen Rinpoche. He blessed a red knotted cord for her as protection and blessing for the baby. He said to tell her that he guaranteed the child a good birth and four healthy years to get started in life.
Elizabeth took to the protection cord like it was magic. She wore it around her neck, and after Lara was born, with a good birth, Elizabeth kept the protection cord on the crib.
About 7 years later Elizabeth became pregnant again, and intensely wanted Shenphen Rinpoche to protect and bless her womb child with another red protection cord. She was really concerned when she thought I might not be able to get it. But she did get the second protection cord from Shenphen Rinpoche. She was really relieved, and had a second good birth.
A year later she was pregnant again and immediately asked for a protection cord from Shenphen Rinpoche. But he was in the Far East and scheduled to be gone for a year with His Holiness. At that time I was close to Chagdud Tulku, the Red Tara lama, and I arranged for Elizabeth to come and see him, for protection and blessing for her childbirth. She arrived nervous, uncomfortable about seeing any lama except Shenphen Rinpoche.
I had told Chagdud Tulku about Elizabeth, her pregnancy fears, her trust in Shenphen Rinpoche’s blessings. He said nothing. He just radiated blessings and almost silently recited mantra, slowly moving his mantra beads with his fingers. I brought Elizabeth into the room. He radiated into her and everything, continuing to quietly reverberate mantra. With his long grey beard, his gray hair tied up on the top of his head, wearing beautiful robes, to me he looked like the oriental wise man she initially thought Shenphen Rinpoche would be. She tried to say something a couple of times. She knew he spoke English but he said nothing. Rinpoche was continuously blessing her quietly. She thought he was ignoring her because he didn’t speak to her. He just radiated blessing and protection into her and her child. She left disappointed.
That night she had a dream that Chagdud tulku was in her womb, blessing her child.
And so because my sister once asked Dudjom Rinpoche for help it is likely that he saved Elizabeth’s life and in doing so allowed my sister to eventually have 4 grandchildren from Elizabeth, children who are like the gift of new life to grandma Pat.
DUDJOM RINPOCHE AND THE PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR WAR
In being physically near to Dudjom Rinpoche, probably the foremost Vajrakilaya master of our age, I often had the distinct sense that in his phurba practice, facing the killer technology threats to all sentient beings, he acted specifically to neutralize threats, to prevent disaster. There is no doubt in my mind that he made a difference in the fields of the Earth, he and other masters. I feel that we’re probably alive by their grace and so still have the chance to realize the human potential.
One day Shenphen Rinpoche told me to get myself a beautiful locket and he would fill it with relics, to wear on my body. His Holiness had just told him that these were unprecedented and dangerous times, and that Shenphen Rinpoche should open their treasury of relics and place many things in lockets to be worn as protection and blessing by the disciples.
Nancy bought a fine gold locket for me and gave it to Shenphen Rinpoche with a sun disc locket for herself. When Shenphen Rinpoche had carefully filled and consecrated the lockets he called me in to see him. He said that it was filled with “Seventeen relics, enough to found many temples.” He gave me an official letter of certification, on Dudjom letterhead, and he listed the seventeen relics.
The first one was a bone relic of the Third Buddha, the one who preceded the Buddha of our age, Shakyamuni. Then there was a bone relic of Shakyamuni Buddha. There was a relic from Padmasambhava, founder of the Nyingma lineage, and relics from treasure revealers along the line, up to and including Dudjom Rinpoche. Shenphen Rinpoche sealed the locket with superglue.
As he handed it to me to wear, he said, “And if there is something like nuclear war, break the seal, open the locket, and feed the relics to those closest to you. Eat them. Bless your bodies.”
DRIVING DUDJOM RINPOCHE
In the first year of my service to Dudjom Rinpoche and his family I became the family driver, among all the other hats I wore.
The set up for all Dudjom Rinpoche drives, either short ones, like trips to Chinatown, or long ones, like back and forth to OCD, was that Dudjom Rinpoche sat in the back of the car, with Sangum Kusho, his power consort wife, to his left. In the front seat with me were the fox princesses of Tibet, Shenphen Rinpoche’s two sisters, the Dudjom daughters, Chimay and Tsering. They made themselves up as mod woman and dressed hip. They were also sincere practitioners of the Dudjom Tersar and they were my friends. They were in their thirties and they loved New York.
On almost all drives with Dudjom Rinpoche they were to my right in the front seat, speaking perfect English. Dudjom Rinpoche rarely spoke in the car. And so off we went, wherever we were going, carrying the most precious possible passengers, Dudjom Rinpoche and his family life support system, with two lively ones at my side.
I would drive carefully never forgetting the preciousness of the rare terton within. Sometimes we’d stop for lunch or dinner. If Dudjom Rinpoche needed to use the restroom I went with him.
Once we were at a large interstate highway rest stop. The doors to the men’s room were large, and inside was a line of 20 urinals and 20 toilets, full of men, mostly big. Beside me was the five foot five inch tall grandmaster in simple but elegant clothes, and he was chuckling as we entered the mass of men, who were taking their penises out and in.
I smiled at Rinpoche and indicated an open toilet stall. He chuckled. When he came out he was smiling, and at that moment two very large men came out of the stalls on either side of him. He chuckled. I put my arm around him and walked him out to the car.
One time at OCD I was the all-time tired I’d ever been. I had way too many responsibilities and we had long practice and study sessions. I lay down on my bed with serious need of sleep. I had just about conked out when someone was knocking at my door. I was told that the car was ready, and Dudjom Rinpoche, the Sangyum, and the daughters were all in the car waiting for me to drive them to New York.
I literally staggered to my feet and headed for Shenphen Rinpoche. “Sorry,” he said, “You’re the only one they trust to drive on the long trips.” “But I’m so tired it could be dangerous,” I said. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll all have you covered.”
To start with it was very hard on me. I was digging my fingernails into my arms to make myself more awake. We’re talking about driving 70 miles an hour with roaring trucks. Can’t blink for a second. Just stretch your eyes wide open. I knew that a revered Tibetan tulku had died in a violent car crash a few months before.
No I had never gone to war but I knew it was time to be battlefield alert. I tried to do protector prayers but the only thing that worked was spontaneous union with the precious Dudjom Buddha. I counted on some liveliness from the daughters, at the least, but they were so at ease with my driving they both fell right to sleep. Then in the rear-view mirror I saw His Holiness fall asleep.
It was Sangyum Kusho and me. It was night. There was an accident. There were police cars and ambulances, whirling lights, and I drove through with the Sangyum sitting upright behind me like a noble Tibetan protector. She was the reincarnation of Dudjom Rinpoche’s wife from his previous incarnation. She sat as the wrathful protectress of the present Dudjom tulku.
With the Sangyum at my back I drove on through the dangerous night, good for practicing panoramic awareness. Such an aging master is so, so precious. Breathing with him in the car I was breathing the meaning of the word rinpoche: precious one; treasure of the nation.
THE DEATH OF A RAINBOW BODY BUDDHA
I had the privilege of private teachings and blessings and public empowerments from Dudjom Rinpoche for years, mostly with Shenphen Rinpoche as translator. But by 1984 His Holiness had become frail. He had respiratory problems. His last public teachings and empowerments were in the Dordogne in August, 1984. The empowerments were his revelations of Tara and Medicine Buddha, and I received them with about one hundred students and lamas.
At the last teaching he gave, August 14/84, on the Diamond Words of Padmasambhava, he spoke very softly. He was careful with his breath. Then there was an intermission in which His Holiness was sitting alone for a few minutes. I knew it might be the last time I saw him. I went to him and sat at his feet. I had two small iron phurbas in a white offering scarf that I held toward him. He took the phurbas into his hand as if they were alive and proceeded to bless them with mantra, and he kept blessing them with audible mantra, and he kept blessing the phurbas, and I received his precious, precious breath with all my heart.
After the 1984 August program in France, I never saw Dudjom Rinpoche again. He almost died the winter of 1985, but through the care and prayers of Sangyum Kushok and Shenphen Rinpoche, and his daughters, Tsering and Chimay, he continued to live, quietly, within the family, still overseeing the continuity of the Nyingma lineage and acting in the subtle balances of world dynamics.
But in January, 1987, he couldn’t go on any more. He stopped eating and sat in samadhi for two weeks. Then, on January 17th, his heart stopped beating. Shenphen Rinpoche had to bring in French doctors to declare that death had occurred, but without heartbeat and other central functions the Dudjom relic body stayed hot and continued sitting upright in meditative absorption for 10 days.
On 1/27/87 I wrote:
Ten days ago your immediate family of incarnations
and your doctor had to say that your heartbeat was gone.
Your heart and central functions had stopped
but your energy was high and your body was hot.
You had been sitting in meditation for two weeks
and after death you still are sitting in meditation.
Your body is entering extraordinary states,
acting in majestic transform.
You are shockingly alive.
You are all-knowing in death.
Your meditation after death now may be
the most important act on the planet.
I wish every human being could be aware.
You are bodies of hot light in your flesh remains.
You are living Buddha empowering us now.
He remained upright in samadhi day after day after death, accessible only to the family and Tulku Rangdrol. Around the world, among Tibetan lamas, there was much focus on how Dudjom Rinpoche would die. He was master of the practice of ja lu, rainbow body, with which a dying practitioner may turn the mass of his or her body, flesh and bone, into light, usually within two weeks of the time of death. It is said that more than 100 students of Dudjom Rinpoche had accomplished rainbow body. However, the body of Shakyamuni Buddha was cremated, and other Buddhist masters died in various ways. Sometimes, because of the prayers of disciples, a lama might only partly reduce his body into light, preserving his body in perfect proportion, leaving a small deathless buddha as miraculous remains.
After about 10 days Dudjom Rinpoche’s upright samadhi passed. Shenphen Rinpoche and Tulku Rangdrol washed and dried the relic body and then wrapped it in a samadhi robe of white gauze, lowered it into a bed of salt crystals in an upright coffin, seated the body in meditation posture, covered it carefully with salt crystals, and then closed the top. I was close to the process. Shenphen Rinpoche made it clear to me that the ku dung was shrinking, bone as well as flesh was shrinking, and the energy released was going into the crystals. (I have some on the table as I write.)
When Dudjom Rinpoche was young, one of his main lamas was Sangye Tulku, who later escaped Tibet and lived in India, in hot Orissa. When Sangye Tulku died people close to him prayed for the lama to leave a miracle, a diminutive self-preserved relic body. Sangye Tulku reduced his relic body to about 20 inches high, seated upright in meditation posture, demonstrating the potential of meditation. At the same time he reincarnated as Shenphen Rinpoche’s first son, when Shenphen Rinpoche was married to one of the two dragon princesses of the King and Queen of Bhutan.
Sangye Tulku’s relic body remained seated in his throne in Orissa, dressed in miniature robes, with the hair and fingernails still growing, for years after the time of death. At some point Indian health authorities heard that the Tibetans were keeping a corpse in their temple, and they went to investigate. The Sangye Tulku ku dung had been self-preserved through 120 degree summers for years. The authorities took a good look and left and never came back.
In 1984 Dudjom Rinpoche told Shenphen Rinpoche to go to India to cremate Sangye Tulku’s ku dung, and bring back the relics that remained.
The relics were to be used to make terma medicines. I was stunned by the news. The Sangye Tulku ku dung was a rare example of an extraordinary human capability. I couldn’t comprehend cremating it, but Dudjom Rinpoche saw precious uses for the cremated remains in our dangerous times. I have seen such relics, and they are out of the ordinary.
As Shenphen Rinpoche watched over the Dudjom ku dung in southern France, he let me know that it was ja lu, rainbow body. According to Rinpoche the relic body had stopped shrinking when it was about 14 inches high in the meditation posture. Meanwhile, in Nepal, near the great stupa in Bodhanath, a remarkable temple and sanctuary were being built to house the precious Dudjom ku dung. Chatral Rinpoche, who was to become one of my lamas, directed the artists, monks, and lay people who worked on the building, which would be the tallest in Bodhanath, with a golden roof.
A TIME FOR MIRACLES
The Dudjom ku dung remained in the samadhi coffin in his house in the Dordogne until February, 1989. Then at last the Dudjom temple in Bodhanath was complete, and with great ceremony the relic body was flown from France to Bhutan, and then to Nepal, where all the major Nyingma lamas and tulkus were gathered. Disciples had come from around the world. The ku dung was brought slowly from the Kathmandu airport to the Dudjom temple on the back of a ceremonial elephant, past more than 150,000 people waiting along the way, all offering white scarves as the samadhi coffin slowly and powerfully went by.
The Dudjom temple, just completed, was spectacular. The art was of such a quality that it would have been excellent in the best Nyingma temples in Tibet. The tradition was alive and well. A special two story chapel had been created to contain a 14 foot high jeweled stupa to house the ku dung, with a window in the stupa through which you could see into the ku dung’s face.
Those were powerful and magical times. I made what turned out to be life time connections to other Nyingma lamas, particularly Dilgo Khyentse, Chatral Rinpoche, and Orgyen Tulku, connections which would bring me back to Bodhanath again in 1991, in my need to further my work in the field of medicine.
A PRECIOUS WISH-FULFILLING BUDDHA
After a week of ceremonies in the Dudjom temple I ventured out. Some of the greatest of the living Nyingma lamas were nearby. I was staying in a small hotel near the temple of His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. I had received empowerments from him but had little personal connection. I walked across a field to the Khyentse temple, a large classical Nyingma building, probably built in the 1970s. The door was open. I didn’t see anyone. The shrine room was empty. I walked up a wide staircase to the second floor. In front of me was His Holiness’s receiving room and bedroom. The receiving room was large, with glass doors that were open. The extraordinary scene inside looked heavenly to me.
I stood in the open doors looking at a graceful living Buddha, six foot four, in traditional maroon robes, surrounded by tulkus and lamas he was training. Most of the tulkus were of renowned incarnations. His Holiness seemed to have eyes all around his head, effortlessly teaching everyone.
He saw me standing in the door and indicated that I should come to him. I offered him a white silk scarf, a katah, an offering to sacred nature. His Holiness received the scarf and then placed it around my neck, meaning everyone is sacred. He asked me what I wanted. The translator was the excellent Dr. Matthieu Ricard.
I said that I just wanted his blessing. He reached forward, placed his large graceful hand on my forehead, and poured energy into me with a short prayer. Then he asked, “What do you want?” I said just his blessing, and I left.
I went back to my room and realized what had happened. I planned to go back the next day. It seemed like a miracle of availability. But I still wasn’t clear about what to ask for. I went back the next day and he invited me in again. I had books and ritual objects for him to bless. He did, and then he asked what I wanted. Again I said, just this.
I went home and was frustrated with myself. I went back the next day, was invited in as before, and when asked what I wanted I said I wanted to be able to heal with my hands, but I didn’t want to learn any existing methods. I wanted to develop my own methods. It came to my mind to ask His Holiness if Garuda practice might be connected to what I wanted. He said that I should come back the next day at 3pm and he would give me what I wanted.
At 3pm the next day I came into the room as before. This time His Holiness and Matthieu had prepared an empowerment table in an open part of the room. His Holiness arose, moved over to that table, and sat down on a cushion. I sat across from him. Matthieu sat next to him. He said we need one more person. At that moment, I swear, Nancy walked quickly though the door, knelt down beside me, and asked, “Why am I here?”
Matthieu, Nancy, and I received a rare and precious Garuda empowerment,
in Tibetan, with no teaching. His Holiness gave me three pages of his own text for me to copy and have translated, to practice.
A tulku I knew who was excited that Khyentse Rinpoche had given me Garuda empowerment and a copy of his own text, sat with me to translate it. As he read through it with me we could see that it was concerned with reversing physical and psychological epidemics and it involved making unique medicines in retreat conditions. It was an impossibly challenging practice to be left alone with. I knew that Shenphen Rinpoche would say
that any questions I had would have to be directed to Khyentse Rinpoche. He had answered my prayer but I still needed his help. I left Bodhanath and returned to New York not knowing if I’d be able to see Khyentse Rinpoche again.
MY NIGHT WITH A TIBETAN WOMAN OF MY DREAMS
One night there was a party at the Tara Goan hotel where I was staying, along with John Giorno, Nina Resnick, Mike Helfgott, David Frank, Anapurna, and others. It was some kind of Nepalese holiday. American music was rocking from the rec room. The whole atmosphere at the quiet hotel had changed like a change of scene in theater.
I was standing outside looking for stars in the sky over the pollution-ridden valley. The music was sounding nice to my ears. I was by myself, when up to me walks a magic threesome if I ever saw one: Gesar Rinpoche, one of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s sons, Rechung Rinpoche, a tulku friend of mine I met through Chho Je Tulku, and Rechung Rinpoche’s stunning sister, Pema, who hit me right in the heart.
Rechung Rinpoche introduced me to Gesar Rinpoche, who was Eurasian and big and beautiful. I had known him when he was young. We smiled. Then Rechung introduced me to his sister, Pema, and I really smiled. She was a beautiful woman in every way. How could I not spontaneously want her?
As if it was magic theater, Rechung Rinpoche asked if I would do him a favor. He asked me if I would look after his sister for the evening. I looked at her, we all smiled, and the two young Rinpoche’s went away.
Pema was about 30 years old, dressed in blue jeans and a nice top on a classically beautiful woman’s body and face, light olive Tibetan skin. Her black hair was cut nice.
I wanted to communicate effectively like never before, but there was no problem. Not only did she speak excellent English, there was easy communication rapport. She was clearly intelligent, like her tulku brother, from the same genes. The rock and roll played on. I was as ready to fall in love with her as with any woman I‘d ever met.
I asked her about herself. She told me a little but she really wanted me to tell her about Dudjom Rinpoche and about what I did in America. I told her I had done new kinds of art with new media. She was really interested. I wanted to talk about her but she was interested in my creative use of new means of communication.
Finally I said something I’d really wanted to say, “Please come into the rec room and dance with me.” She hesitated. She indicated that she’d rather continue getting acquainted outside where we were. And then I made a big mistake. I took her by the arm and said, “Come on, let’s dance,” and she came along with me into the rockin rec room.
I loved the music and wanted to burst into dance with her. I said, “Please dance with me.” She said, “Not yet.” And instead of waiting with her to help her get into it, I did something I regret.
I had to dance. I asked Annapurna and she jumped to the occasion. We rocked. I turned around and Pema had gone. I felt pain all through my body and mind. I went after her but couldn’t find her, and Rechung Rinpoche had asked me to take care of her. There were many people milling around outside and there was so much noise. Pain on pain. She was gone. I had had such bad luck in love, but for a moment I had a taste of perfect rapport with a Tibetan woman of my dreams and it’s with me to the present day. I call that a gift. Clearly I haven’t let it go.
CLOSENESS WITH A REVERED NEPALESE DOCTOR
During my first visit to Kathmandu Mike and Nina invited me to come with them out of the Buddhist enclave and into the Hindu depths, in a town near the airport, on a river that flowed into the Ganges and was considered holy. A Nepalese man told Mike about a “very intelligent guru” that lived there. The man said he would take Mike to meet the Guru. They made a date to go. Mike invited Nina and me to join in and we did.
The taxi dropped us off right near the river, where they were burning bodies. Mike and Nina were going around looking for the guy that Mike was supposed to meet and I was edging closer to the funeral pyres. After a few minutes Mike and Nina came back nervous and wanted to get away from the black smoke and smell of roasting flesh and guts. They headed across a bridge over the river into a Hindu graveyard live with monkeys.
I turned to a guy in the street and said, “Where’s the guru?” He said, “Guru? You want Guru? I take you to Guru.” With Mike and Nina looking back at me from across the river I followed the guy right down to the riverside where two bodies were being burnt on beds of pieces of wood and brush. Another body was lying on the ground awaiting its turn, a tall, handsome Nepali guy of about 40 with a big cock. Big change coming up for him. Appearance and disappearance.
My guide led me into a room just off the river where a guy in a loincloth was lying on his side smoking a cigarette. Against one wall was a shrine with a framed photograph of a radiant man sitting like a buddha.
My guide spoke to the slowly rising yogi who managed to put his cigarette out, saving the butt, and rose to stand up, adjusting his loin cloth. My guide said, “Guru will now demonstrate yogic postures.” The yogi was starting to raise a leg. “Stop,” I said firmly. “I want to meet the guy in the photo on the shrine.” My guide spoke in Nepali to the yogi. Both shrugged. I left.
I found Mike and Nina with the guy we were supposed to meet. He led us out of the town along the river, where people were bathing and saying mantra, and quietly washing clothes. We came to a small cabin. The guide lowered his voice respectfully and told us to wait while he asked if the Guru was available. He came back and said, “Guru is having massage. Please wait.” And we did, easily, by the river.
After a while the guide came and said, “Okay. Come.” We entered a dimly lit room featuring a stunning man, sharply dressed, with an unforgettably massive head of silvered hair up in a fro, and with a long braided grey beard. He wore a fine white gown. He was lying on his side like a reclining Buddha. He was 90 years old and lively. Several people were sitting near his feet, making devotional gestures and sounds. I sat down near his head. His name was Basudeb. He spoke perfect English.
He immediately hit on us as if he could see us and tell. He nailed Mike hard to start with. Mike, a graceful man, was uncomfortable. Basudeb was kinder to Nina. I saw he had a notebook beside him. Before he hit me I asked him what was in the notebook. “Here,” he said, and he gave me the book.
I opened it and found that it was full of English language, written in clear all capital letters. About every other page had a drawing. There were two major themes: stopping the spread of AIDS internationally, and preventing an earthquake of historic proportions. I read some aloud to Mike and Nina.
I asked him why his English was so good. He said he spent a year at Albert Einstein Medical Center in New York studying Western medicine. He said that since he didn’t need much sleep he was able to learn a great deal in one year and that was enough. Now he was concerned with problems of epidemics and natural disaster.
He said, “I need help. Will you people work with me?” Mike and Nina didn’t respond. I said I’d need to talk to him about that, but I was going into retreat for 7 days in Bodhanath, under the guidance of my Tibetan teachers. He wrote me a poem with a black calligraphic marker on white paper asking me to return and work with him “in the vajra”.
I noticed an electronic keyboard instrument in the room. I asked Basudeb about it. He said that he played music into the fields of the universe to practice healing and disaster prevention. He volunteered to play for us, and he did. I’m not that smart about music but I could hear that he was reaching for higher domain.
We left. I went on retreat in my room in my hotel in Boudha for seven days.
After retreat and after I visited Chatral Rinpoche and Chokyi Nyima again, I went to see Basudeb before returning to America. I was impressed enough with him to have gained the interest of my close friends Adam, who was to be recognized as a tulku, and Anapurna, my Dudjom sister.
When we got to Basudeb’s cabin by the river he wasn’t there. There was a nicely printed poster on the door in what I thought was Sanskrit. Somehow someone saw us standing in front of the sign and came to help. He was able to read the sign. “Oh,” he said. “Guru is in Kathmandu city. My brother-in-law has taxi and we can take you.”
We were taken to a complex of walled structures in Kathmandu, and led down into one building, then up a wide stairwell. I stopped. The music of Basudeb filled the space above. I told Adam and A.P. that Basudeb may have picked up that we were coming.
At the top of the second flight of steps there was an open door with music vibrating out. Inside the large white room was the elegantly dressed sister of the Queen of Nepal, and an equally well-dressed man of state. There was also a group of calm devotees. Basudeb was up on a stage with the keyboard instrument. The main part of the floor of the room was occupied by bowls of medicines, arranged in a large rectangle.
Basudeb ceased his musical celebration and turned to welcome us. He seated A.P. and Adam near the royalty and led me to a small divan in the rectangle of medicines. I asked about them and he told me that there were several herbs he was working with to counter respiratory disease in Nepal, from the bad pollution. He mentioned blood in the streets.
He took out a cigarette and started to smoke it. I asked him for one. He gave me the pack and then he lit the one I took. Our every move was being watched carefully by the Nepalese and Americans, to all of whom I must have seemed outrageous. I said that I was leaving in two days and had very little time. He addressed A.P., Adam, and me concerning a catastrophic earthquake. He asked if we’d help him. Adam and I said yes.
Then I said we have to act right now. I said let’s set up working against AIDS now. He reached to his right and brought out a chart that seemed astrological in form, but was unique. He concentrated on the chart, then said, “We need a vajra.” I reached into my jacket pocket which held several bronze ritual objects and brought out a small fine vajra. “Good,” he said, and then worked with the vajra on the chart a minute.
Then he noticed something in a corner of the room, got up, and sat down where two men had a loaded smoking pipe ready for him. He took a puff, and I said loud and clear, “Is that hashish you’re smoking?” No answer. Since I’m used to my outrageousness I asked again, “Are you smoking hashish there or what are you smoking in that pipe?” I was really curious.
Anapurna said, “Oh Robert, let go of it.” And I did. Basudeb returned. He slept very little and was obviously a highly respected doctor and an ingenious being. He looked at the chart and moved the vajra. “We need another vajra,” he said. I reached into my pocket and found another small vajra.” I thought it was amusing that I really happened to have two vajras he asked for. He might have known, but I doubt it. It was some kind of serendipity. We made a private plan to work against AIDS.
He asked for someone to take photos. Adam did. We parted. In the photos you can see that he’s vibrantly alive.
Basudeb wrote to me several times over the next year. He sincerely believed if he could speak to major Western scientists he could change the world for the better. But his language was a poetic jumble of words that could only be considered personal poetry. He prayed for me to bring him to America to meet the powers. I told him more than once that I could not help him that way. But I’m sure he’s done some greater good.
He’d be 115 years old now if he’s still alive. I think he is. Anyhow he’s alive in my life.
A HORRIBLE EVENT IN TRUNGPA RINPOCHE’S SANGHA
In December, 1988, a disturbing story was printed on the front page of the New York Times concerning Trungpa Rinpoche’s Vajra Regent, Osel Tensin. In an interview he admitted to having AIDS and having probably infected others. It was clear that he knew he was HIV positive and yet believed that he was special and would not infect others. He had homosexual sex with many men and had sex with some women without telling them he was HIV positive after he was told that he was infected. There was no telling how many people in the Trungpa sangha had contracted the virus through him. It was clear that he had made a terrible abuse of power in using his position to have sex with many others and risk their lives.
Before Trungpa Rinpoche died he strongly told his wife that Osel Tensin was “terrible”. “He’s a disaster. We have to dismantle him!” But Rinpoche was too ill by the time he knew what was going on and Osel Tensin was too powerful. After Trungpa Rinpoche died the Osel Tensin revelations caused great agony and deep division in the Trungpa sangha. Khyentse Rinpoche advised that the students had met many teachers and could choose whoever they wanted to work with.
Osel Tensin died of AIDS in 1990. But Trungpa Rinpoche’s blessings are powerful and his various organizations and Shambhala lineage are alive and well throughout the world, promoting a vision of sacred world and a practice of sanity.
A TRAGIC DEATH IN THE DUDJOM SANGHA
Nancy Nichols and I divorced in 1987. In July, 1989, at the Dudjom center in southern France, I was standing with Shenphen Rinpoche and two other students when Nancy walked by. Rinpoche looked at her and commented to us quietly, “Crazy person.” Later I asked him why he said that. He said he wanted to prepare the sangha.
In September, 1989, the Dudjom family was living mainly in the house in New York City, with occasional visits to the retreat center, about 3 hours north of the city. Nancy bought a car, a black Saab van, to live in and go back and forth between New York and OCD. She was a gifted bodywork professional and had many good clients in New York. She was able to work when she wanted to and make money quickly. She had been erratic for years, and she increasingly pressured Shenphen Rinpoche, pushed his blood pressure up. He was overweight and we’d been concerned about his health for years.
The night before Nancy bought the black van, Sangyum Kusho, Dudjom Rinpoche’s wife, dreamed that Nancy had been slaughtered in a car. The next day I was talking to Shenphen Rinpoche in the Dudjom center on 16th Street when Nancy drove up in her new black van and parked right outside the shrine room. Shenphen Rinpoche was cold to Nancy. She left and then came back in and said that someone had just smashed in the rear window of her van and broken glass was all over. She asked Shenphen Rinpoche what it meant. I will never forget his words. He said, “Listen to me! It’s a sign of your death! That car is your coffin! Get rid of it!!” Nancy smiled with a smirk and left.
The next day she called me on her cell phone and said that she had been driving fast on a New Jersey highway and lost control of the van which jumped over into the other side of the highway, driving head on into oncoming traffic. She said, “It was amazing that I didn’t have an accident.”
That day I was working in my real estate office in New Jersey and Nancy hung around the Dudjom center in the city. That night Shenphen Rinpoche was kind to her but made her swear to not sleep in the van in the streets of New York, which she wanted to do. She promised him she would stay over with her parents in Edison, New Jersey.
The next morning about 5:30am the phone rang near my bed in Livingston, New Jersey. It was Shenphen Rinpoche. “Robert! This is very important! Nancy’s been shot! or stabbed! and she’d dead!!! Call her parents! Get here fast!!”
I called Frank and Ruth Nichols. Frank picked up. I said, “Frank, I have the worst possible news.” I told him what Shenphen Rinpoche had just said.
I dressed in a dark blue suit with tears in my eyes. About 7am I drove up to the Dudjom center. There were police, yellow tape crime scene barriers, there were TV news crews, and blood was being washed from the Dudjom center steps.
I immediately asked the police detectives what happened. One made a gesture of cutting across his throat, a knife or a screwdriver he said. I winced.
Shenphen Rinpoche came directly to me and quietly and firmly told me to handle it. The police came at me first – I was the ex-husband suspect – and then came WNBC-TV and WPIX-TV. By the end of the day Nancy’s murder made the front page in three of New York’s newspapers plus page three of the New York Times, and was on most of the TV networks. It was the murder of the day in New York, and they were trying to write a twisted story about Buddhism. For me it was like having to be super alert in a war zone. I managed to credit and celebrate Nancy as a sincere student of meditation and good person. I spoke of her as the health care professional she was. Rinpoche was happy with my management of the media.
I looked into the black van. There were blankets and books and clothes all drenched in blood, and her new laptop computer was still in the car. That neighborhood, near Union Square park, was live with junkies, many of them Viet Nam veterans who knew how to kill. You could sometimes see one going up or down the street quickly trying every car door on the way.
In a flash I saw what really happened. Nancy was sleeping in her van near the Dudjom center as she was told not to do and she probably left a window or door open, plus the rear window was partly smashed in. A street junky found the car door or window open and quickly got in, Nancy jumped up and shouted. He was probably surprised, and then attacked her. She was big and strong and he would have to attack her in full assault to take her and he did, overpowering and silencing her by cutting her throat. Since she had shouted he probably thought that people had heard and he ran, leaving the computer and other valuables.
Nancy was alive when he ran and she tried to drive the car to find help. The New York Times said that a man passed her in his car and she was trying to say something to him but couldn’t speak. He didn’t help her. She must have been getting weak from massive loss of blood. She managed to drive the car to the Dudjom center and she tried to get into the building. She got into the alcove inside the front door, rang the buzzer, and fell, bleeding out. No one answered the buzzer. She managed to pick herself up and get back into the blood drenched car and try to drive, maybe to go to St. Vincent’s hospital, but she died at the wheel. Several people reported seeing her in the process.
Frank and Ruth Nichols arrived. We drove with Rinpoche to the city morgue to identify Nancy’s body. We were sent to a certain area. Her body was lifted up to us slowly from the floor below on an elevator platform. She was covered with a light blue sheet up to her neck. Her throat was cut. Her head and face were so swollen that it was at first hard to recognize her. Rinpoche said, “That’s her.”
What followed was a remarkable 10 days in which Shenphen Rinpoche, assisted by the Dalai Lama and Chatral Rinpoche, worked together to pull Nancy out of a hellish bardo experience into the clear light of freedom. We stayed mostly at OCD. I had some wrenching emotions. We did some ceremonies in the temple. There were phone calls from around the world. I was still quaking from the horror. I felt the knife cut my throat at least once a day. About the fourth night while I was sleeping Nancy reached out and grabbed my arm hard, pleading with me, “Please come with me Robbie!! Please come with me!!” I woke up shocked.
About the 7th night I drove back from OCD to the to the Dudjom center in New York with Shenphen Rinpoche. As we drove slowly down 16th Street toward the house, which was in the middle of the block, we saw that a black van was parked in front of our building. Indeed it was a black Saab van, but I knew with certainty it wasn’t Nancy’s van, which I assumed the police still had. “It’s her van!!” Shenphen Rinpoche shouted, with his eyes wide open. “It is not her van!!” I answered. I stopped my car behind the black van, which was clearly not the murder van. It was time for deep silence.
The next day the police released her bloody van to Frank Nichols. It stank of decomposed blood. Nothing had been touched, the bloody blankets and clothes and books, the broken back window. Shenphen Rinpoche told Frank and Ruth to burn all they could of what was in the car.
They did what Rinpoche told them. They made a fire in the fireplace in their living room and then slowly and painfully burned everything that was in the car that could be burned. But two small aerosol cans they didn’t see in the pockets of a jacket got put into the fire. And the fireplace exploded, filling the living room with the dark ash of Nancy’s blood, her pain.
On the 10th day after Nancy’s death I came by the Dudjom house and Shenphen Rinpoche was in a state of joy. “We did it!!” he said.
“We worked together and pulled her out of the bardo and into the clear light!!” I was still quaking a little from the horror. It sounded a bit like she died and went to heaven. I said, “Then she got what she prayed for.” He said that because of what the great lamas were able to do, Nancy had the greatest death a Westerner could have.
THE FAMOUS SHARK FIN SOUP
It took more than a year for me to stop feeling the knife cut my throat, but I was never closer with Shenphen Rinpoche. I had the best of Tibet in America. Rinpoche was also an extremely good cook, though he rarely used those skills. Three weeks after Nancy’s death he realized that my birthday was just a few days away and he announced that he would cook the famous shark fin healing soup. He had mentioned it several times over the years. Shenphen Rinpoche was a terma doctor and a gifted cook for extra measure, and when he said it was time for a great soup that was very good news.
We drove from OCD to Chinatown in Manhattan to shop for the soup ingrediants. Some of my most enjoyable moments in my many years of studying Buddhist meditation and medicine have been with Shenphen Rinpoche in New York Chinatown. He knew the depths of what the herb medicine shops and pharmacies had to offer, very sensitive to the qualities, very sophisticated, always teaching me. Then as always we had a major dinner, and Rinpoche just loved to eat. That gave me extra pleasure in eating with him.
When we had gathered all the ingredients for the shark fin soup and with a big dinner in our bellies we drove back to OCD. Rinpoche started working on the soup preparations that night. It had more than 60 ingredients, plus the lama’s energy and blessings.
That was a great birthday, with Rinpoche, Adam, Lin, and a few of our friends, in the Dudjom family residence at OCD. Rinpoche slept in Dudjom Rinpoche’s bedroom and gave me his bedroom. He played albums of calypso songs and Linda Rhondstat as he worked on the soup. He had an uncommonly good ear for music and memorized songs quickly and charmingly. He would sing me songs when I was blue. And he was often teaching me meditation and medicine.
After we had our fill of the great soup and the rest of the dinner, as a birthday wish I requested that everyone at the table sing a song of their choice. When it was my turn I sang Old Blue.
Well my wife died and left me a farm.
Yessir my wife died and left me a farm.
I say my wife died and left me a farm
that’s why I’m going back to Charlestown.
Got me a dog. His name is Blue.
Yes I got me a dog and named him Blue.
We’ll I got me a dog name of Blue
And I betcha five dollar he’s a good one too.
Singing, Herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre Bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue
You good doggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg youuuuuu..
Well I got my gun and I got my horn
gonna fetch a possum in the new mown corn.
Blue chased a possum up a tree.
Blue growl at him, possum snarl at Blue.
I say, “Come onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn Bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue.
Ya can have sommmmmme tooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Well when Old Blue died he died so hard
he shook the ground in my back yard.
I dug his grave with a silver spade
And lowered him down with a golden chain.
At every link I did call his name.
I called, “Herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre Bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue
You good dog youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Well I’ll tell you all just so you know,
Yes I’ll tell you all just so you know,
I’ll tell you all just so you know
Old Blue is gone where the good dogs go.
Singing, Herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre Bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
You good doggggggggggggggggggg youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Somehow the song rang through Nancy’s death.
DEATH IN A SILENT AND SCREAMING HOSPICE
In 1989 my father lived with my mother in Deerfield Beach, Florida. He was 87 years old and in good health other than he was troubled by rashes and insomnia and who knows what states of mind. All his close friends had died young. Twenty days after Nancy died Jack took off his wedding ring and put it down on a piece of yellow note paper with the words, “I can’t take it any more.” He swallowed a lot of sleeping pills and went to sleep.
But he didn’t take enough pills to die, only enough to mess up his nervous system and impair almost all function. He was put into a hospice. My mother went there but it made her very nervous and depressed. The next day my sister and I flew to Florida. Before we took my mother to the hospice again we had to calm her down. Her blood pressure had gone through the roof and wasn’t responding to medication.
I took her into the bedroom and sat her down. It looked like Dad was dying and she was going with him. “Mom”, I said. “If you want to live you have to calm yourself down. I’m going to teach you how to do it. This is meditation, okay?” She said okay.
I made sure she was seated comfortably upright. I said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re just going to sit here relaxed, with your hands in your lap, and pay attention to your breath. Relax your belly, breathe deep and easy. Follow your breath in and then out. Feel your breath go in, and then out, slowing down. And then your mind comes in like crazy and takes you away. Your mind goes on and on fast, but you catch it, and then you just come back to your breath, your awareness…. You relax and breathe, then your voice comes up in your mind, worrying. Stop. Remember your breathing. Keep coming back to it. Keep calming yourself down. Your mind takes you out. Your awareness brings you back. Calm down into your breathing. You understand?” “Yeah, I get it. Let’s do it already.”
And so we did. It got very quiet. Time slowed down. My mother didn’t speak, which was amazing for her nervous nature. She was silent for two minutes. Three. It was powerful. We sat there breathing. We did 5 powerful minutes. Then I said, “Okay. How was that for you Mom? Did you get the difference between your mind and your awareness?” “I did,” she said. “That was really good.”
Her blood pressure was normal. We drove to the hospice. She got nervous again. As we walked down the hall I noticed an infant lying on a little bed. “Don’t look,” said my mother. “It’s a two week old baby dying of brain cancer.” I immediately went over and touched the child caringly. My mother was stunned. I breathed with the child, practicing Giving and Receiving.
Then we passed a man who looked 200 years old, his mouth gaped open, barely breathing. We were expecting my father to be in a coma, as he was when my mother saw him the day before. But we were shocked to find him sitting upright in his bed, eyes open. “Is…that…Robert?” he spoke softly. I went up to him, put my arms around him, and I felt a current of white light run through us. He was asleep. Across the way a woman dying of AIDS was in a violent rage. She had bit one of the nurses saying she wanted her to die with her. The staff was strapping her down and sedating her when we left. The hospice was hard on my mother and sister.
But Mom called me after I returned to New York to tell me that she had been meditating and really liked it. She said, “I know I’m not a master or anything but I want to teach my girlfriends. My blood pressure is good.”
My father died a couple of days later and was flown to New York, to the Newman burial plot. My mother was frightened of the cemetery.
BURIAL IN A DEEP LONG ISLAND CEMETARY
We had a small family gathering the night before in a room with the coffin,
just my mother, my sister, her daughter and son, and their marriage partners. It was very quiet. A maintenance person asked my sister if she wanted the coffin opened so she could take a last look at her father. She said okay. She looked and let out a blood curdling scream. In a flash I went over and closed the coffin, grabbed my sister around the waist with one arm and my mother with the other, walked them across to the other side of the room, with the other family, all of whom had been close to my father.
“Let me tell you about Jack Newman,” I said.
I reminded them that Jack loved to entertain. He loved to tap dance and sing old songs. One time I was visiting Mom and Dad after not having seen them for years. After a simple dinner Mom turned on the TV. I had come to be with them so I watched with them. A violent cop show, commercials, then a corny comedy, and I was getting more and more depressed. When suddenly, as if by magic, my father turned the dial and on came a two hour special on the Ziegfeld Follies! My father came to life. For every minute of the two hours he was up entertaining us, tap dancing buck and wings and singing each and every song. I told the family that I was sure my father would want us to remember him that way.
The next day at 1pm we drove into the cemetery. Again I held my mother to me with one arm and my sister with the other. My mother was so scared she was near shock. I tried a little levity. “Did you know that Shakespeare and Mozart are buried here?” I asked. Mom didn’t understand.
At the burial site it was just the quiet close family. A few prayers were read. Almost nothing personal. We were about to leave. I stopped and said, really meaning it, “Oh yes. Jack Newman, thank you.” And everyone said “Thank you.”
Inside I thanked him profoundly for his support of me, helping give me a chance.
A NEW MODEL OF THE HUMAN BODY
I celebrated New Years Eve quietly with Shenphen Rinpoche and family. Rinpoche put on hot dance songs to get a few of us to dance, and I did. I had always loved to dance, from rock and roll to sacred dance. And though I didn’t bust any new moves that night, Rinpoche busted out the only dance moves I’ve ever seen him make, for about three seconds, very funny, like Trungpa Rinpoche lighting the sparkler we all thought was incense.
Within two weeks Shenphen Rinpoche and the Dudjom family left for the Orient. They would be gone from New York for many years. And I began my work in medicine, call it research and development in mind/body medicine, and a personal practice in deep tissue energy work using meditation.
I began to study the medicine meditation programs of the Harvard University Medical School and the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. I was interested in developing a clinical meditation program based on a new model of the human body. I had found my work in the world.
A STUNNING REAPPEARANCE
Inwardly I was developing my own medicine, somewhat concerned that I hadn’t been able to use the Garuda practice that Khyentse Rinpoche gave me with that important empowerment. It felt incomplete and Rinpoche had been in failing health. I didn’t know when or if I might see him again.
In August 1990 I was at the Dudjom center in Southern France, working on energy body practices, including yogic movements. And out of the blue it was announced that Khyentse Rinpoche was coming for a visit. He would be staying at the house neighboring the Dudjom center and he would be granting interviews. Boom.
Soon we heard he had arrived. Two hours later an interview list was posted and I signed up. Three hours later it was announced that His Holiness had “turned black” and they thought he might be dying. The field changed from having a marvelous opportunity to complete the Gardua transmission, for my healing practice development, or to be present at the death of a great master, one of my heart lamas. Boom.
The next morning it was announced that His Holiness had recovered and the interviews were on! Mine was in an hour! I was ready. It was a joy to see Matthieu Ricard, my partner in the Garuda empowerment. He remembered the text I had originally been given to practice, and he now saw that it was too complicated and hard for me to make use of. I asked if Mipam Rinpoche, who had revealed that Garuda practice, had revealed another such practice that could be more practical for me. Matthieu said maybe, went away for about 10 minutes, and came back with a concise Garuda revelation that was just what we needed. He made a photocopy of it for me. Boom.
We went in to meet with His Holiness. Again I was enlivened by coming into the presence of a living buddha, but this time it was inconceivably precious – my needing to see him again, his surprise visit, the miracle of his availability, then the announcement of his apparent death, then his availability again. Primal magic, appearance and disappearance, and reappearance.
His Holiness’s upper body was bare, with his robes down around his waist, his long grey hair tied in a bun at back of his head, his remarkable hands, so large and so fine. His skin was golden in color, a little darker than I recalled. Our eyes locked. Matthieu reminded His Holiness of my healing aspiration and of the Garuda empowerment he had given me in Nepal. Matthieu mentioned my problem in making practical use of it, and that we had found another Mipham Garuda revelation that would be easier for me to use.
Rinpoche took the new text from Matthieu, two pages, read it through silently, and then read the transmission aloud for me and Matthieu. He then wrote down a 4 line prayer for me to use the new text as a practice. He said I could still use the mantra transmitted in the ceremony we had done in Nepal.
I gave him an envelope with a modest offering, all I had left in my account at that time. He said he was going to use it to start to build a study facility that was needed. I thanked him with all my heart, knowing I would never see him again.
MEDIGRACE
In 1991, my 21st year of meditation practice and teaching, I was well-aware of the use of meditation as mind-body medicine at the Harvard Medical School and the University of Massachusetts Medical Center since
1979. Those programs primarily used Mindfulness meditation, Vipashyana, which I trained in with Trungpa Rinpoche from 1970 to 1980.Then I met Dudjom Rinpoche and was trained to teach energy body practice. By 1991 I was practicing and teaching a more complete kind of Vipashyana than had been available, Mindfulness meditation based on complete breathing, energy breathing. The practice implied a more complete model of the human body. The medical paradigm was shifting. Mind-body medicine and energy medicine were increasingly acknowledged and researched and the National Institutes of Health had created an Office of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, with meditation showing important biological benefits.
In December, 1991, together with my close associate Dr.Ted Wolff of New York University Medical Center Research. and with Drs. John Sutton and Craig Spaniol of NASA, we incorporated Medigrace, a nonprofit corporation, to research and develop a new model of medicine, integrating the mind/body and the energy body, and to advance the use of meditation in medicine and childbirth. I had devoted all those years to learn to be able to teach a more complete medical meditation than was available. The practice has important health implications. With the changes in the medical paradigm it was time to advance the use of meditation in medicine, and the use of meditation in childbirth could be vital. Medigrace was under way.
FRESH BUDDHA
At that time I had met and become close to Dudjom Rinpoche’s other son, Thinley Norbu Rinpoche, the magnificent famous outrageous buddha who sometimes lived quietly in New York City, not connected with the Dudjom center but profoundly devoted to his father and the Dudjom Tersar practices and teachings. I was soon to learn that the Dudjom Tersar lamas I knew called Thinley Norbu Rinpoche Dungse Rinpoche, implying as is the father so is the son, the same essence in the bone marrow and seed. The same is true of Shenphen Rinpoche. If you input the word dungse in a computer it will connect you to several references to Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche. There is a Wikipedia biography of him, speaking of his special relationship with Dudjom Rinpoche from his previous lifetime, when he was Dudjom Lingpa’s son. Shenphen Rinpoche previously was Dudjom Rinpoche’s father. Both Dudjom sons had a double bond with the great Dudjom Buddha.
Thinley Norbu lived in America, except for some trips to the East, and was considered private and hard to access. He had lived at the Dudjom center in the very beginning, when the house was bought, in 1976. He didn’t like John Giorno. He called John “the Buddhist mafia” and didn’t stay long at the center. He had serious health problems relating to a botched surgery in India when he was in his 30s and he had suffered from angina for many years. He took no medicine for the pain except red wine. He was considered one of the 4 or 5 most revered Nyingma tulkus.
I was introduced to Thinley Norbu by my friend Bhakha Tulku, who had been Dudjom Rinpoche’s secretary and had known Thinley Norbu in Tibet. Dungse Rinpoche and I got on well. He liked my directness. After my first visit I received a phone call inviting me to join Rinpoche and his small attendant family for practice. With Shenphen Rinpoche and the Dudjom family gone I had found another Dudjom Buddha, private but venerated throughout the world. His books, written in English, are considered a great achievement of the Dharma in the west.
MEDIGRACE AND MY RETURN TO THE ORIENT
I had met the Honorable James George through Nancy, and we became good friends. Jim was a senior teacher in the Gurdjieff work, so we shared that connection. He had been the Canadian ambassador to India at the time of the all-out Chinese invasion of Tibet. When the Dalai Lama and Dudjom Rinpoche and other revered teachers began to come into India as refugees, Jim was outstanding. He befriended and arranged protection for the Dalai Lama, Dudjom Rinpoche, Khyentse Rinpoche, Chatral Rinpoche, and other renowned Tibetan masters. He remained close to Dudjom Rinpoche, which is how he met and befriended Nancy.
Jim introduced me to Harold Genly, MD, who had developed a new electronic technology to apply acupuncture, and had the backing of a Swiss bank. Harold was very interested that I already had legally established a nonprofit organization for medical advances. He was interested in working with me.
Thinley Norbu Rinpoche said he was going to Nepal for a month, and in a flash I knew I wanted to go there again. I told him that. He said get your visa. I did, but I couldn’t leave as fast as he did. But I knew I wanted to go to Khatmandu anyway to ask Chatral Rinpoche and Orgyen Tulku about Medigrace.
Thinley Norbu Rinpoche had given no public empowerments, teachings, or transmissions for more than 17 years, so I imagined him quiet in his house outside Bodhanath, just as he stayed quietly in New York.
When I arrived in Bodhanath I found out that for the first time in 17 years Thinley Norbu Rinpoche was giving transmission. All the robed sangha had come out of the various Nyingma temples, Nyingma yogis had come down out of the Himalayan hills, and all had been gathering around Dungse Rinpoche’s house for a whole day by the time I got there. There were various Rinpoches, respected tulkus, monks and nuns, and some western students, all sitting on the hard dry ground around Thinley Norbu Rinpoche’s little house.
Rinpoche was inside, sitting in an old soft chair, with a microphone and a copy of a collection of the Dudjom dzogchen revelations, terma treasures of both Dudjom Lingpa and Dudjom Rinpoche, his fathers in his past and present life.
A few minutes after I sat and quieted with the others, Thinley Norbu’s beautiful voice began in full power, starting the 2nd day of an open transmission. His voice was exhalted. It was the energy of release, and at one or two points he broke into laughing bliss. Amazing. Transmitting the true nature of primordial wisdom.
I was told that I was considered family and was allowed to come inside the house through the kitchen door. After the next day’s transmission was finished I came inside carrying a wooden cage with two birds. They were for Rinpoche to bless so that we could release them with a prayer to extend his life. Many people were crowded into the house. I was in the kitchen; Rinpoche was in the main room, in the chair he gave the transmissions from. I couldn’t see him but the house was quiet and I could hear him.
I held up the bird cage. Everyone seemed to know what the birds were for. I passed the cage over into the room where Rinpoche was sitting. “What’s that coming to me?” Rinpoche asked. Patti said, “Robert has brought birds for you to bless so they can be released for long life blessing.” Rinpoche said, “He’d better watch out because the birds around here are like Hitler. They may kill his birds.” From the kitchen my voice replied loud and clear, “I released two other birds here yesterday and they’ve been teaching the Hitler birds to do mantra.”
After the transmission was complete, the third day, everyone filed through the house to get Rinpoche’s blessing. He accepted katah scarfs and touched some people on the head with the scriptures he had read. I waited until the last person was through. I kneeled at his feet and reminded him that I’d requested his dzogchen transmission personally before we went to Nepal.
He placed the scriptures on my head and proceeded to give a long blessing transmission. When it had gone on for about 20 seconds I knew it was a consummate moment in my life. It went on, instant after powerful instant, secretly sealed.
The next day there was an empowerment unlike any I’ve ever attended. The hundreds of people who had been outside were all inside the little house. I was among 50 people jammed into Rinpoche’s shrine room. It was to be a Guru Rinpoche empowerment. It was understood that Tinley Norbu was Guru Rinpoche. He did not move or make a sound while two other Rinpoches chanted the text and used the ritual instruments for him. It was the Samadhi of primordial wisdom.
After that Thinley Norbu Rinpoche needed substantial rest and I was on a mission to ask Chatral Rinpoche and Orgyen Tulku about Medigrace.
That night, out of the sky came a telephone call for me from Doctor Harold Genly in New York. He said he needed my help in that John Lennon and others were raising $10 million for his work and could we please make his program a Medigrace program. He needed nonprofit status. He would give Medigrace $1million and use $9 million for his program. It was easy for me to say yes, and I did, but I was in Nepal to see if Medigrace was a blind ego trip on my part or something potentially able to contribute to the field of medicine.