The Karmapa Arises in Boulder like a Garuda Leaping Out of Space
Approaching the outside perimeter of the University of Colorado's Macky auditorium was like seeing my life pass by my eyes. Arrayed in all directions, and in the main line into the auditorium where His Holiness the 17th Karmapa Ugyen Thinley Dorje would soon present his first teachings in Colorado, were friends I had not seen in years, a reunion of the students of Trungpa Rinpoche heralding back to the first days of the Vidyadhara in America. Everywhere there were hugs and the bridging of years with the re-ignition in an instant of close friendships among vajra brothers and sisters. His Holiness had magnetized a powerful environment even before arriving at the auditorium. In addition, the venue of Macky Auditorium was the exact place where the Vidyadhara Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche had sat alone in a chair in 1970 and expounded his unique and brilliant presentation of the dharma for the first time in Colorado, his first public talk in Boulder, 1970.
Inside, there was a palpable cohesion of excitement, warmth, and expectation which drew the full auditorium together like strands of a common spider web. The Karmapa's chair stood ready in simple yet majestic presence on the stage. It was like a great lotus flower about to be occupied by a Buddha.
At some point, a short film produced by the Karmapa Foundation summarized the entire history of Buddhism and the particular lineage of the Kagyu and Karmapa line. Excerpts from Lion's Roar, the seminal film about the 16th Karmapa made in the 1970's, from fottage by Mark Elliot, and excerpts from a later film tracing the discovery and enthronement of the 17th Karmapa, provided a foundation for the imminent entry by His Holiness. Dancers from the Colorado community of Tibetans, performing an offering in full costume, and a brief yet penetrating flute performance by the renowned Tibetan musician Ngawang Khechok, were presented as a prelude. Then Pema Chodron took the stage to introduce His Holiness. Unannounced, her unassuming yet immediately recognizable appearance brought everyone to their feet in applause. Pema, in characteristic heartfelt genuineness, provided the audience with a brief recounting of the 16th Karmapa's impact and significance during his visits, and her own longing to meet the Karmapa again in the form of the 17th incarnation. Then, with her introduction and welcome, His Holiness walked on stage, with a towering confident gait, the audience in one giant swoop standing up in hushed obeisance then thunderous welcoming applause. Tears rose like a flash flood.
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His Holiness began in humor, citing his evolutionary English language relationship with the salutations "Good Morning, Good Afternoon, and Good Evening". His Holiness noted the generous lighting in Macky Auditorium which enabled him to see each and every face, and his sense of familiarity with everyone. He said that sense of connection would change his prepared subject matter on Dharma and Environment because of his visceral communication with the audience. He then began his teaching, charting the intimate inter-relationship of mind and world/environment, and of the well-being of mind as the cause of the well-being of the environment. The crescendo for me was brilliant advice on working with difficulty and negative emotions, His Holiness suggesting the importance of where you place them when they occur, giving the vivid example of placing your hand on a piece of molten iron versus placing it on a warm-but-workable piece of iron sitting in the sun. It was one of those remarkable Dharma talks which both expounds ingeniously the relevance and meaning of Dharma and simultaneously seems to speak to the exact current personal circumstances and experience of each and every person present. Most certainly it was so for me and my own current experiences. His Holiness laced everything with his candid, playful humor and his monumental presence mixed with simultaneous relaxation. It took me right back to the initial experiences I had with the Vidyadhara Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, when despite the hesitation I first had with becoming his student, found he saw through me completely, up close and personal, just by speaking the basic Buddha Dharma from direct experience, and then realizing that indeed I was already his student! And today, I immediately I knew I was once again a child in the cosmic palm of the Karmapa, being both brilliantly exposed and sincerely loved. The Karmapa sealed each moment with his imposing size and presence, and his piercing eyes which seem like the gaze of a garuda which never misses a single detail of the landscape beneath its vast perspective.
At the afternoon teaching session, His Holiness was introduced by Lady Diana Mukpo, who presented a vivid view of the early hippie days into which Trungpa Rinpoche launched his Dharma activity in the West, and the subsequent maturing of formality, at the behest of the Vidyadhara, introduced most decidedly when the 16th Karmapa first visited America. Her presentation was eloquent, evocative, and devotional, particularly with her references to how deeply the Vidyadhara was devoted to Karmapa. His Holiness's afternoon talk was influenced by his stated difficulty health-wise with the sudden transition from New York humidity to bone-dry Colorado. He was less perky and pointed than during the morning session, but nonetheless vividly present and engaging. Toward the end of the talk, he entertained pre-selected questions, some of which were a bit strange, too lengthy and overly conceptual. . . . .perhaps in some ways typical of the American mind. But His Holiness handled them with finesse, identifying the main point of Dharma within each question. One of his answers, to a query concerning the grave concerns for the future and how to approach them, involved a fervid injunction to relate to now as the best and most efficacious approach, and not to spend so much time worrying about the future, which we cannot know for certain anyway. At the same time, he cited the need to leave a workable world for the next generation. And despite his apparent afternoon fatigue, his eyes never lost their razor sharpness.
The evening inter-sangha session began with a humor-filled tribute to the organizers and workers on His Holiness' journey to the West by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, who also observed how lucky we were to be hosting an enlightened being who is also "stunningly handsome"! His Holiness spent most of this session continuing to answer pre-submitted questions, and providing more pointed and specific Dharma advice and observation than during the general public sessions.
I first met the 17th Karmapa in Lhasa, Tibet, in November of 1999, just before he escaped Tibet, which I of course had no idea would take place imminently. I waited in an anteroom for my audience, bearing a letter of introduction from Thrangu Rinpoche. In the spartan room, I was surrounded by a decidedly creepy group of Chinese guards and overseers. I had been intentionally cultivating a mind of balanced critical "let's wait and see" attitude and openness/intense curiosity toward the then 14-year-old Karmapa. At some point, I mistakenly got up, thinking it was my turn, and went into the hall connecting the anteroom with His Holiness's audience room. Before being called back by the guards, I caught the Karmapa's eyes for a moment, from his throne down the hall and in the next room. On locking gazes for a mere instant with those eyes, my mind suddenly opened completely and spontaneously, and all thoughts vanished. The first thought that came to my consciousness a few moments later was a line from the Sadhana of Mahamudra, which crossed my mind like a Victorious Dharma Banner: "By a glimpse of his face the wisdom of the mind transmission is established in one's heart".
I also realized that this moment had completely collapsed into a moment from many years before when the 16th Karmapa, during an audience in the Karma Dzong shrineroom, suddenly took a very strong posture, gazed out to space silently, and instantaneously transformed the minds of everyone present into an utterly naked, spacious state. The moments, one many years before and one during this brief locking of gazes, my first encounter with Karmapa 17, were exactly the same moment! At that moment, and ever since, I had not the slightest speck of a doubt that this was indeed Karmapa!
Having subsequently again met Karmapa Ugyen Thinely Dorje twice in India, this event in Macky Auditorium brought my relationship with him, and my entire life it seems, full circle, all the way around to that seminal moment when a lone Chogyam Trungpa took the stage at Macky Auditorium in a simple wooden chair in 1970, and launched the Dharma into American waters, which then became a tidal wave. As Peter Volz commented to me on the phone two days ago, after being utterly, overwhelmingly impressed with His Holiness's brilliant presence and effortless magnetism during his initial interactions in Boulder, "I could die in my sleep tonight and be completely happy and fulfilled!" You and me both, Peter!
Pema Chodron introducing His Holiness Karmapa at Macky Auditorium in Boulder, May 25th, 2008. Photographer: James Gritz. Copyright 2008 by Karmapa Foundation.
Inside, there was a palpable cohesion of excitement, warmth, and expectation which drew the full auditorium together like strands of a common spider web. The Karmapa's chair stood ready in simple yet majestic presence on the stage. It was like a great lotus flower about to be occupied by a Buddha.
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche presents a mandala offering to His Holiness Karmapa, May 24, 2008. Photographer: James Gritz. Copyright 2008 by Karmapa Foundation.
At some point, a short film produced by the Karmapa Foundation summarized the entire history of Buddhism and the particular lineage of the Kagyu and Karmapa line. Excerpts from Lion's Roar, the seminal film about the 16th Karmapa made in the 1970's, from fottage by Mark Elliot, and excerpts from a later film tracing the discovery and enthronement of the 17th Karmapa, provided a foundation for the imminent entry by His Holiness. Dancers from the Colorado community of Tibetans, performing an offering in full costume, and a brief yet penetrating flute performance by the renowned Tibetan musician Ngawang Khechok, were presented as a prelude. Then Pema Chodron took the stage to introduce His Holiness. Unannounced, her unassuming yet immediately recognizable appearance brought everyone to their feet in applause. Pema, in characteristic heartfelt genuineness, provided the audience with a brief recounting of the 16th Karmapa's impact and significance during his visits, and her own longing to meet the Karmapa again in the form of the 17th incarnation. Then, with her introduction and welcome, His Holiness walked on stage, with a towering confident gait, the audience in one giant swoop standing up in hushed obeisance then thunderous welcoming applause. Tears rose like a flash flood.
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A Jemez Pueblo youth blesses His Holiness Karmapa with an eagle feather at a private reception, May 24, 2008. Photographer: James Gritz. Copyright 2008 by Karmapa Foundation.
His Holiness began in humor, citing his evolutionary English language relationship with the salutations "Good Morning, Good Afternoon, and Good Evening". His Holiness noted the generous lighting in Macky Auditorium which enabled him to see each and every face, and his sense of familiarity with everyone. He said that sense of connection would change his prepared subject matter on Dharma and Environment because of his visceral communication with the audience. He then began his teaching, charting the intimate inter-relationship of mind and world/environment, and of the well-being of mind as the cause of the well-being of the environment. The crescendo for me was brilliant advice on working with difficulty and negative emotions, His Holiness suggesting the importance of where you place them when they occur, giving the vivid example of placing your hand on a piece of molten iron versus placing it on a warm-but-workable piece of iron sitting in the sun. It was one of those remarkable Dharma talks which both expounds ingeniously the relevance and meaning of Dharma and simultaneously seems to speak to the exact current personal circumstances and experience of each and every person present. Most certainly it was so for me and my own current experiences. His Holiness laced everything with his candid, playful humor and his monumental presence mixed with simultaneous relaxation. It took me right back to the initial experiences I had with the Vidyadhara Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, when despite the hesitation I first had with becoming his student, found he saw through me completely, up close and personal, just by speaking the basic Buddha Dharma from direct experience, and then realizing that indeed I was already his student! And today, I immediately I knew I was once again a child in the cosmic palm of the Karmapa, being both brilliantly exposed and sincerely loved. The Karmapa sealed each moment with his imposing size and presence, and his piercing eyes which seem like the gaze of a garuda which never misses a single detail of the landscape beneath its vast perspective.
At the afternoon teaching session, His Holiness was introduced by Lady Diana Mukpo, who presented a vivid view of the early hippie days into which Trungpa Rinpoche launched his Dharma activity in the West, and the subsequent maturing of formality, at the behest of the Vidyadhara, introduced most decidedly when the 16th Karmapa first visited America. Her presentation was eloquent, evocative, and devotional, particularly with her references to how deeply the Vidyadhara was devoted to Karmapa. His Holiness's afternoon talk was influenced by his stated difficulty health-wise with the sudden transition from New York humidity to bone-dry Colorado. He was less perky and pointed than during the morning session, but nonetheless vividly present and engaging. Toward the end of the talk, he entertained pre-selected questions, some of which were a bit strange, too lengthy and overly conceptual. . . . .perhaps in some ways typical of the American mind. But His Holiness handled them with finesse, identifying the main point of Dharma within each question. One of his answers, to a query concerning the grave concerns for the future and how to approach them, involved a fervid injunction to relate to now as the best and most efficacious approach, and not to spend so much time worrying about the future, which we cannot know for certain anyway. At the same time, he cited the need to leave a workable world for the next generation. And despite his apparent afternoon fatigue, his eyes never lost their razor sharpness.
The evening inter-sangha session began with a humor-filled tribute to the organizers and workers on His Holiness' journey to the West by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, who also observed how lucky we were to be hosting an enlightened being who is also "stunningly handsome"! His Holiness spent most of this session continuing to answer pre-submitted questions, and providing more pointed and specific Dharma advice and observation than during the general public sessions.
I first met the 17th Karmapa in Lhasa, Tibet, in November of 1999, just before he escaped Tibet, which I of course had no idea would take place imminently. I waited in an anteroom for my audience, bearing a letter of introduction from Thrangu Rinpoche. In the spartan room, I was surrounded by a decidedly creepy group of Chinese guards and overseers. I had been intentionally cultivating a mind of balanced critical "let's wait and see" attitude and openness/intense curiosity toward the then 14-year-old Karmapa. At some point, I mistakenly got up, thinking it was my turn, and went into the hall connecting the anteroom with His Holiness's audience room. Before being called back by the guards, I caught the Karmapa's eyes for a moment, from his throne down the hall and in the next room. On locking gazes for a mere instant with those eyes, my mind suddenly opened completely and spontaneously, and all thoughts vanished. The first thought that came to my consciousness a few moments later was a line from the Sadhana of Mahamudra, which crossed my mind like a Victorious Dharma Banner: "By a glimpse of his face the wisdom of the mind transmission is established in one's heart".
I also realized that this moment had completely collapsed into a moment from many years before when the 16th Karmapa, during an audience in the Karma Dzong shrineroom, suddenly took a very strong posture, gazed out to space silently, and instantaneously transformed the minds of everyone present into an utterly naked, spacious state. The moments, one many years before and one during this brief locking of gazes, my first encounter with Karmapa 17, were exactly the same moment! At that moment, and ever since, I had not the slightest speck of a doubt that this was indeed Karmapa!
Having subsequently again met Karmapa Ugyen Thinely Dorje twice in India, this event in Macky Auditorium brought my relationship with him, and my entire life it seems, full circle, all the way around to that seminal moment when a lone Chogyam Trungpa took the stage at Macky Auditorium in a simple wooden chair in 1970, and launched the Dharma into American waters, which then became a tidal wave. As Peter Volz commented to me on the phone two days ago, after being utterly, overwhelmingly impressed with His Holiness's brilliant presence and effortless magnetism during his initial interactions in Boulder, "I could die in my sleep tonight and be completely happy and fulfilled!" You and me both, Peter!
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