The Day Arrives

Sunday, July 20, it is around 9 a.m. and I am blogging from paradise. That is to say, the home of Carl and Cassell Gross, about 25 minutes from Shambhala Mountain Center. They have kindly given me a room here. My daughter Jenny and I are sleeping in the shrine room. The house faces the continental divide with a view that is so compelling, you cannot turn away from it. Anytime you are in this house, you are aware of MOUNTAIN.

I'm late already to go to SMC for the morning work meeting at the Stupa, to put the final touches on the Speech Empowerment ceremony. In part I"m late because I stayed up well past midnight talking with everyone who is staying at the house. Reminiscing and also looking forward to plans for the Chogyam Trungpa Legacy Project. But now to the point: the empowerment.

When I arrived on Friday, almost everyone on the land was attending Sakyong Mipham's first vajrayana talk. The place was empty. It was dusk. Jenny and I drove up to the Stupa and encountered Vajra Deutsch, a "stupa worker" who has been very helpful to getting the CD project rolling here. She showed us the room where the CDs will live. Four black archival cabinets were snugly fitted into the small room, a perfect fit. I learned later that Gordon Kidd, Chris Levy, Sandra Kipis and Lindy King had spent the afternoon in what Gordon described as a "Keystone Cops" escapade chasing down the delivery truck with the cabinets on it and finally putting a car across the road so that he couldn't leave without unloading the cabinets.

Jenny and I went up to the top of the stupa and meditated there for a little while. So powerful to be in the mind if the Vidyadhara.

Then down to the dining tent, where we encountered the Archives crew, who had done all the heavy lifting before I arrived. Many thanks to them! When the shrineroom emptied from the talk, I walked down to see 118 boxes wrapped in gold paper on the main shrine in the tent. I learned later that the Sakyong had done prostrations to this amazing mountain of dharma when he entered the tent. See the Vidyadhara's dharma teachings assembled on the shrine is quite moving, I found. And so much of it to be moved by!

Now fast forwarding as time is short: yesterday afternoon I worked on the list of the 118 plus people to carry the boxes, with input from Seminary staff, and archives crew and miscellaneous persons walking through the office we were working in. Elizabeth Hefflefinger is here helping us and she and I worked on finding a refrigerator for wine we hoped to share with people last night. Had to cancel our cocktail party due to how late the events went in the shrine tent .So raise your own glass for us.

Last night: slideshow on life and teachings of Vidyadhara which I had put together and narrated. For an hour before it started, by little laptop was crashing power point right and left and the only word coming out of my mouth started with f or Mother f. However, with help from techie friends, succeeded in loading and showing the slides. I think people liked the "show."

Today, at the end of the big SMC fundraiser in the main tent, from there we load 118 people with their boxes and process up to the stupa where we will lhasang the boxes and place them on a shrine in the main buddha hall in the stupa. Then sadhana of mahamudra, remarks by SMR and others, feasting, singing , dancing. Etc.

Oh yes, Gordon Kidd had made a wonderful edit of the installation of the Kanjur shrine in Boulder, 1983, which should be on the Chronicles for you all to watch and which we showed last night also.

well, today's a day to march, cry, and laugh. Again, raise a toast. Tomorrow I will blog again but now I had promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. OK. kind of hackneyed. Anyway, onward. and i'm not proofing this or rereading. Here goes the gonzo blog of the speech empowerment....