Please send your . . .

It's 4:00 Am and I find Mother's Milk an engaging topic for discussion.

The first dream I ever had about the Vidyadhara was about Mother's Milk. In this vivid dream circa early 1980's while I was still a student at Naropa, I had a dream that I was at a fancy party with many people milling about in a Great Room. I was in the kitchen looking into this room of elegantly dressed people but feeling somewhat intimidated, out of place and impoverished. Then, the Vidyadhara entered the kitchen where I was standing alone only he was young, very young like a schoolboy in shorts. He went right to the refrigerator where he grabbed a bottle of milk drinking from it directly. When he finished, he turned to me and handed me the bottle of milk saying, "Here, this is for you."

That was really my experience of the mandala at that time in my life--one of Mother's milk--very nurturing, generous and kind. Later when I worked at Naropa for years with very little pay, it didn't really matter because there was so much richness. To be introduced to a culture where wealth is a kind of transcendent state of mind is remarkable. It transformed my life. I greatly admired Trungpa Rinpoche's organizational acumen and his insistence on elbow grease as the basis for true wealth--the idea that green was not only money itself but the effort one brought to projects. To me there was some kind of magic in making things happenout of nothing. To this day, everything I do administratively is infused with his inspiration.

Jacqueline Gens Brattleboro, VT