For Trungpa Rinpoche

Once again, last evening,

you described to us

what you saw, who you met and what was said

in the cave at Taktsang

 

It is nearly forty years

since you were there, for several weeks,

high on that cliff

overlooking the Paro valley.

 

They say the Queen of Bhutan

arranged for you to do a retreat there,

in the place where Padmasambhava, Guru Rinpoche

manifest as Dorje Trollo.

 

The story goes that for days on end

nothing happened;

nothing but frustration,

nothing but Bhutanese gin and an unhappy companion.

Then, suddenly, in a few hours,

the entire sadhana came into your mind

and was written down.

 

Now we can pick it up,

as we did last night,

and join you in that sacred world

where ‘all thoughts vanish into emptiness

like the imprint of a bird in the sky’;

and where, ‘although we live in the

slime and muck of the dark age’,

we still aspire to see the face of sanity.

 

It seems this was always what you did for us;

invite us into the world of the lineage,

into the world of sanity,

into the world that waits, unconditionally,

just a shift in view away;

the world that is none other

than the one we live in every day.

 

For Trungpa Rinpoche on the occasion of participating in a Sadhana of Mahamudra feast, April 4, 2007, the twentieth anniversary of his parinirvana.

 

Mountain Drum (David Whitehorn)

5April 2007, Halifax