Vaj wrote: > He's been posting on another more pro-TM enlightenment > list on The Glory of Jim's Enlightenment while trying > to inspire and help struggling TMers and formers MUM > students attain the same plane of consciousness he's > enjoyed since "conquering CC"... > After Trungpa died, we had a big ceremony just before he was about to be cremated. All the senior students gathered inside the enormous, orange-pillared Dharmadhatu shrine hall, with its blue, red and gold trim.
It was standing room only with the Trungpa disciples sitting in rows, upon the soft pillows, in practiced posture, evoking the mantras and the visualizations just like the lama had instructed. There were rows and rows of solemn meditators sitting with eyes half closed. Everything was in accordance with Tibetan tradition, down to the clicking of the prayer beads and the empty throne where a photograph of the late Rinpoche had been placed. Up on the dais sat the Vajra Regent, appointed by the Trungpa Rinpoche, Osel Tendzin; and the visiting high lamas of the Tibetan Kagya sect; the monks and the VIPs and the laity. I got to sit down in front because I, among six others, had taken the Vajrayana vows and had been intitiated into Shambala training by the lama himself. In the back of the temple a special cadre of advanced students sat in a circle grinding the bones of the Trungpa Tulku, once the spiritual leader of the Surmang group of monesteries in Tibet. We recited a hundred thousand dharanis, performed a thousand bows in order to empowered the Rinpoche's bones. And to what avail? Years later, I learned that both the Trungpa and his Vajra Regent were gay alcoholics who had built, out of money donated by hapless students, a vast beauacratic organization in the form of a co-dependent support group, i.e. both the Trungpa and the Vajra Regent literally drank and screwed themselves to death right in front of the whole assembly! And they called it 'Tantra', blessed by none other than the great Kalu Rinpoche, himself a great philanderer. Say what? The example of the cargo cult guru who seduces his students had caused a great self-destruct to the very institution the lama had founded, setting back the cause of American Buddhism by more than 50 years. So much for 'Vajradhatu American Buddhism', Vaj! Read more: 'The Double Mirror' A Skeptical Journey into Buddhist Tantra by Stephen Butterfield http://tinyurl.com/cx8thv
