Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, February 28, 1939–April 4, 1987 – Photo by Karen Roper, courtesy of Crazy Wisdom
The Buddhist teachings at the Shambhala Centre on Heather St. and 17th Ave., don’t come from your typical monk in crimson coloured robes. Instead the Universal teachings of dignity, intelligence and diversity come from Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan meditation master who taught thousands, smoked cigarettes and created (and led) his own army; at times doing all three while wearing full military regalia, creating paradoxes wherever he set foot.
Since 1978 the Shambhala Meditation Centre in Vancouver has been guiding seekers on a path that explores the “wisdom, sanity and compassion that comes from mindfulness-awareness meditation.”
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, came to North America in the early 1970s. He was the first Tibetan monk to attract so many people and make Buddhist teachings mainstream.
“The likes of William Burroughs, Allan Ginsberg and Philip Glass were all over [Trungpa’s] teachings,” says head teacher and long time Shambhalian, Susan Chapman.
“I never, never encountered a mind like his…I didn’t know he was Buddhist, I just knew [that] who ever this person was, was amazing.”
Chapman has been on the Shambhalian path since 1974 when she discovered Trungpa and his teachings. She left Vancouver and followed Trungpa to Boulder Colorodo, where he set up a school, developed new disciplines, wrote over two dozen books, and was able to unite people of all backgrounds in a human and playful way.
“He was in this really rough cowboy bar in Northern Colorodo and he had a squirt gun and was squirting these really dangerous looking guys [with water],” recalls Chapman. “He used to do things like that to shake people up.”
Shambhala aims to not only enlighten people, but society as a whole; as well as unite cultures from all over the world so that, as Chapman suggests, we can learn and tech each other based on our upbringing, cultural customs and backgrounds.
“Shambhala brings the best of the world into one,” says Chapman. “What Trungpa did was go through all the societies of the world and pick the best in everything”
“He’d pick things like Persian poetry, Scottish bagpipes, and Japanese tea ceremonies….his thought was that every culture has tremendous gifts to offer when it comes to building the best of human society.”
Students meditate at the Shambhala Meditation Centre during a weekend set of classes – Photo by Jan Hilario
Shambhala Vancouver is one of over a hundred and fifty centres around the world. Shambhala recognizes the need for humans to come together and help create a more stable and dignified society.
“Human society is basically good,” says Chapman, “and as things seem to be falling apart economically and socio-politically…this is a tremendous opportunity for the goodness of human beings connecting with each other to come forward.”
Johanna Demetrakas, is a Los Angeles based film maker, as well as long time Shambhalian. She was in town for the Vancouver International Film Festival this month with her film Crazy Wisdom: The Life & Times of Chogyam Trumpa Rinpoche. Like Chapman, Demetrakas was attracted to the brilliance, intelligence and universality of his teachings.
“I wasn’t looking for religion,” says Demetrakas. “I was interested in philosophical questions I had just had a couple little boys and giving birth is such a powerful experience and it blows your mind in many ways that life comes out of no where and all of a sudden there it is, full-on and it made me keenly aware of death and those are the biggest questions after all, life and death.”
The driving force for Demetrakas to make this film was quite simple; eing a follower and student of Trungpa she is keenly aware of his insight that society with its economic and socio problems is headed in the wrong direction and young and old need to redirect themselves on a better path.
“I woke up and I said, ‘I’m going to make a film about his life and his presence,’ ” says Demetrakas. “I was aware that this was in the 90s and that things were headed in a rough place, just as he had predicted years ago.”
Chapman and Demetrakas hope that not only people from all over the world learn and practice the Shambhalian way, but that younger people come into the fold and begin to enlighten a society that desperately needs it.
Philippe Inacio-Goetsch is in his 20s. He grew up in the Halifax Shambhalian community. Even though he strayed from the path for a while, he’s now come back and restarted his journey in Vancouver.
“Two days after moving to Vancouver…Susan Chapman was leading a class and I was impressed by the different people that were there from all walks of life… a far cry from what the community is like in Halifax, so I found it very inspiring.”
Inacio-Goetsch says that Shambhala attracted mostly hippies who were middle class Caucasians, but now he sees a sort of rebirth where people from a new generation are attracted to the teachings and are becoming part of a more diverse community. Despite all of that, however, Inacio-Goetsch thinks Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s vision of a unified and dignified society is already at work.
“People aren’t trying to make a big deal out of it [ethnicity],” says Inacio-Goetsch, “people just say ok ‘you’re a human being and you’re at this place and so that seems to make a lot of sense to me.’”
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To lean more visit http://www.vancouver.shambhala.org/
For the movie Crazy Wisdom: Life & Times of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche visit http://crazywisdomthemovie.com/
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Please note that the article above is an extended version of that which is published in the The Source Newspaper*
