On the Road to Empowerment

It's Wednesday, July 16th, just four days before the Speech Empowerment at Shambhala Mountain Center. It's amazing that we've reached this point.

Audio Recovery, the digitization of the audio recordings of Chogyam Trungpa's dharma talks, was conceived by Chogyam Trungpa himself. Around 1983, he told his Board of Directors: "Please save the tapes of my teachings." Now, in 2008, twenty-five years later, we will be able to say, "Mission accomplished, Sir."

The project actually began almost thirty years ago when Vajradhatu Editorial -- there was no Shambhala Archive then -- began putting digital audio information on VHS video tapes. The first donor to this project gave Editorial $1,000 and we thought that was all we'd need! Now, several systems later, having burned out several generations of equipment and technicians, and having raised more than a quarter of a million dollars, we are just about to complete digitizing 3,000 "events" and placing the digital data on a number of carriers, including gold CDs destined for the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya.

We have also sent digital libraries containing 1,500 CDs each to more than 25 dharma centers who are contributing to the Audio Recovery Project. And within five years, we hope to have a digital library online that will provide worldwide access to the teachings of Chogyam Trungpa, as well as other teachers.

But not to get ahead of ourselves....

In the next four days, four of us from the Shambhala Archives will make our way by plane, bus and car to Shambhala Mountain Center. The CDs already are there, having travelled with sangha trucker and yogi Steve Ellenberg from Halifax to SMC. Archival cabinets to house the CDs in the special Stupa room are lost in transit, sort of, and my assignment today when I finish this blog is to get on the phone to freight companies in Colorado to be sure our cabinets arrive by Friday.

At SMC Lindy and Bob King, guardians of the Stupa, without whom we would have no Great Stupa, are already working with a crew to ready the space for the CDs. They have also been working on the details on the ceremony on Sunday. Without them, we would have no Empowerment.

Gordon Kidd, Technical Director of the Shambhala Archives, and Chris Levy, the Audio Technician who has transferred those 3,000 tapes, are this moment on a plane, I hope, en route to Colorado. In their luggage they have Tibetan horns requested for the ceremonies on
Sunday, along with 50 packages of gold paper in which the boxes of CDs will be wrapped. They are also undoubtedly carrying various pieces of audio wiring needed at the last minute...They arrive at SMC tonight.

Tomorrow morning, I leave at 6 am. Sandra Kipis, Archival Assistant who has also worked diligently on ARP (the Audio Recovery Project) leaves later in the day. In my luggage, there will be red brocades to cover the tops of the cabinets in the Stupa space. Also travelling with me, a Power Point slide show on the life and teachings of Chogyam Trungpa, to show at SMC. I'm negotiating the purchase of 100 white Tibetan scarves, or katas, from a kata dealer in Boulder,
Colorado. I'll pick up the scarves along with a case of wine for celebrating on the weekend, and put them in my extra-compact rental car, heading up to SMC on Friday morning the 18th. (Anybody wondering who the kata dealer in Boulder is should contact Peter Volz.)

By the time I arrive at SMC, the gold boxes of gold Cds will be on a gold? shrine in the main shrine tent at Shambhala Mountain Center. There are a number of programs for advanced, or vajrayana students, going on at SMC right now, and people will be practicing in the shrineroom with the CDs for the next few days.

Sunday, after a marathon run to benefit the rebuilding of Chogyam Trungpa's monastery in Tibet, in which the Sakyong will be running, there will be a fundraising presentation for SMC, and then the Empowerment. We don't have the details of the ceremony confirmed yet, but we know it will include a procession from the shrine tent up the mountain to the Stupa.

The blog that cometh next will provide more on that. Right now, I have to find the truckers with the cabinets. On Sunday, July 20th, for those unable to attend the Empowerment, the Chronicles --working together with the Shambhala Archives -- will release a video from 1983 of the installation of the Kangur shrine in Boulder. All of the teachings of the Buddha were installed in a large cabinet, with sangha members carrying the texts, blessed by Chogyam Trungpa. His remarks are included. We'll play this at the slide show on Saturday night at SMC; you can watch it on Sunday via Chronicles TV!