Arts and Education

Among his 2000+ talks and presentations in the English language, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche not only presented Buddhist teachings and Shambhala teachings, but taught broadly in the arts and humanities: visual arts, music, film-making, poetics, talks to business people. talks related to politics, talks and discussions with psychologists, social services, talks to interfaith gatherings, even a Shambhala-style military based on principles of nonaggression. We will not give an exhaustive review of these teaching streams and resources here, but rather a kind of general orientation and starting point. Also, sooner or later, one could check the resources section of this website. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me (Robert Walker, Dharma Study Group coordinator) through the contact part of this website or at the email address ngejungzoo@gmail.com

In the late 1970s, the organization Vajradhatu, the original name for the umbrella organization which included most of Trungpa Rinpoche's teachings and community structures, was conceived as consisting of 3 "pillars". These were the pillar of buddhadharma, the pillar of Shambhala Training, and the Nalanda pillar -- which was based on teachings related to arts, culture, and education. Originally, in 1977, Shambhala Training, co-founded by his principal student, the Vajra Regent Osel Tendzin, was considered to be a part of the Nalanda pillar, but it soon became obvious that the Shambhala teachings and related programs were substantial enough to require their own bureaucracy, so to speak.

This Nalanda pillar of arts, education, business, social services, and so on, included a college, The Naropa Institute (later renamed "Naropa University"), a preschool, a middle school, a high school, and teachings on dharma art, which featured art installations and various programs. Students were also encouraged to train independently in authentic traditions of various arts and martial arts according to their interests. Trungpa Rinpoche put a tremendous emphasis on the arts, especially the visual arts, as modes of communication of the dharma.

In working with this arts, it's not just the tools, methods and disciplines which constitute training, but especially training in a mind of nonaggression and trusting "first thought," which is a key to understanding both the importance and the execution of any of the arts. "First thought" was also an important expression in the teachings related to meditation practice and postmeditation awareness. Such arts training includes tracing the process of how a spacious, awake mind can manifest in the creation of beauty, harmony, artistry. Paraphrasing Trungpa Rinpoche, "Nonaggression is the source of all the artistic inspiration one could ever have."

For a person trained in enlightened principles and manifestation, an artistic production, whether painting, or theater, or poetry, or sculpture -- any of the arts -- bring some kind of presence that connects the receiver with an atmosphere of sacredness, of nonaggression, some kind of truth that can't be put into so many words. Words of poetry also may come from first thought, a pre-verbal space that's open and inspired, not tied to rigid forms -- even when poetry expresses itself through set forms and rules.

In the early days of his teaching in the United States, when the students were just beginning-level meditators (and mindfulness-awareness meditation practice was emphasized from the beginning), a great deal of attention was given to the color and forms and materials and decorations that made up the shrine rooms, the meditation cushions, the architecture of the buildings which housed the major meditation centers. Trungpa Rinpoche as an artist himself was very accomplished and always learning, having received the arts training that goes along with being an incarnate lama, but attaining extraordinary mastery in a number of other approaches and forms.

What Trungpa Rinpoche accomplished in the arts he also taught as dharma. He proclaimed to his vajrayana students that any vajrayana student was also necessarily an artist, and he encouraged all students to develop themselves in at least one artistic discipline as part of their training, in particular their training with respect to relating to the sacredness of reality and communicating that through their arts. He became an ikebana master in the Sogetsu school of flower arranging, going on to teach ikebana in the context of what he called "Kalapa Ikebana". He was a master of sacred dance forms related to the yidam Chakrasamvara as a youth. Mudra space awareness practice, which is derived from postures and instructions which come from the highest dzogchen Buddhist teachings, was basic training for theater students at The Naropa Institute, as well as anyone interested in such training.

Trungpa Rinpoche was an accomplished poet who knew and wrote poetry in the traditional Tibetan Buddhist context, relying on traditional forms, but went on to also compose and share poetry in the more free-form Western style, encouraged by students such as Allen Ginsberg, but also very much creating his own unique works, both in secular and religious contexts. With whatever he wrote, a brilliant mind of humor and non-fixation was evident.

The school which he founded, The Naropa Institute, included departments related to dance, poetry, theater -- as well as departments related to health, healing, and Buddhist Studies. All Naropa Institute students, as well as his students of Buddhism and the Shambhala teachings, of whatever disciplines, were encouraged to train themselves in such arts.

Some of the most sophisticated teachings by Trungpa Rinpoche were given in the form of seminars related to the visual arts, which included some discussion of the meaning of Buddhist iconography, but which on the whole were much more about expressing the essence of the teachings in the form of artistic works. Such teaching included an entire educational approach to how to view the world as a whole as well as particular works of art -- the "Heaven, Earth, Man (human) principles" -- and included ways of seeing, ways of working with mind, ways of developing artistic disciplines, and especially discovering how to do all of this in the context of cultivating a mind of openness, nonfixation, and nonaggression. Included in these seminars was the presentation of and appreciation of works of art, sacred and secular, from many different cultures and ages. Working with a group of students, "the explorers of the phenomenal world", they created environmental installations where they would transform a space such as a warehouse or other building into a complete world of artistry.

A Discipline of Inquisitiveness
(contemplative supervision of Health Professionals)

A discipline of inquisitiveness: The "body-speech-mind" approach to contemplative supervision. (apa.org)

(write Robert Walker at ngejungzoo@gmail.com for a .pdf of this article and other approaches to psychology and working with others in the teachings of Trungpa Rinpoche)

DSG Kazoo

Arts and Education