1 – Crazy Wisdom Movie: Introduction to the Movie

The documentary movie "Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Times of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche", by Johanna Demetrakas, distributed by Kino Lorber.

This movie is streaming free on-line at this url: (4634) Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Times of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche | Full Documentary Movie - YouTube

Blog 1: Introduction

One of the challenges of making a film about Chögyam Trungpa is the scope of his activities. One could make ten films about him and still feel like there was more to say. In his English-language teaching career, he gave well over 2000 talks to a variety of audiences, from devoted students to indifferent spiritual seekers, and during almost all of which he was mostly paralyzed over half of his body. There were (and are) artists, health professionals, political activists, people in business, people connected to other Buddhist lineages and other spiritual traditions – all sorts of people – who claim to be influenced by him, who take his teachings to heart in various ways and to different degrees. This does not include the many people who don’t approve of him but were also influenced by him and his work. It would be an error to talk about him purely in the past tense; he is a living force in many people’s lives.

One film can’t tell that whole story of how much he accomplished in the 47 years of his life.

Many of his students took everything he did as teaching, as exposing their confusion and also exposing their wisdom, either of which could be frightening. This type of teaching, the vajrayana Buddhist teachings that were practiced and sustained for centuries in Tibet, places great emphasis on the nature of the student-teacher relationship. Genuineness, devotion, and honesty in relationship are crucial to such a path, and are meant to exemplify one's other relationships as well. This often includes encountering much fear and requiring much courage. Being shown one’s own neurosis and deception, even when such showing is done with love and humor, and in the best interests of the student, is embarrassing, of course.

35:30 into film, Film clip with Christie Cashman: 
“Very early on, maybe in the first year, he invited the entire community that could fit in his living room up to visit him and he invited everyone to bring their bags of marijuana, their dope. And half the people thought, ‘Oh my god, this guru is so cool, he wants to smoke with us.’ So everybody came, and was in a very jolly mood and he asked everybody to put all their paraphernalia on a big tray in the center and there was a beautiful fire going in the fireplace, it was all very homey and wonderful, and he began to talk to everybody and welcome everybody, and then one little bag after the other got thrown into the fire creating all of this spark and popping, and he began to chant, ‘We are burning self deception, we are burning self deception, we are burning self deception,’ with each bag, and the fire would blaze up.”

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As well, being seen as intrinsically enlightened, in one’s very nature, and being asked to “help this world” based on that is also quite inconvenient and could be taken as an imposition. He implored us to not shrink away into the “perverted, comforted-seeking schemes” of our cocoons, that could suck up much of our lives. It is difficult to be of service to this world if one is subject to the sleepy desire to feel safe and protected, or the desire to be a big shot, or to paint oneself as pathetic or a victim, or to be (name your self-serving poison). Being encouraged to be of service to the world could be very inconvenient and disruptive to the rhythm of one’s life and to one's self-identity. Therefore, among all the positive and negative commentary that has been whispered about this individual, one might also hear that he could be a pain in the ass. I find the following film clips from the movie to be very representative of his teachings. The comments by Ato Rinpoche and Christie Cashman could be said by many students and teachers who respected Trungpa

from 10:10 in film, film clip of Trungpa Rinpoche asking people to help this world

“My work is dedicated to present a notion of enlightenment to the West. The world is not going to be saved purely by religion alone but the world can be saved also by secular enlightenment. This world does need your help so badly, very badly and so on behalf of this world…I would like to request you to come and to do something about it.”

about 5:40 into film, film clip of Ato Rinpoche,

“They say you must go to see him. I don’t dare it. I always run away. I can’t bear it go to see – he says go to do something, I terrified.”

at around 49:40 mark, another film clip of Christie Cashman,

“That kind of training demanded a teacher who was hard to be around a lot. Once I asked him, ‘Why don’t more students just, come see you? Knock on the door, call you on the phone, come over?’ and he said, ‘I felt that it is because there’s fear in students of becoming unmasked, exposed. This was a very important principle for him, people having the courage to work with their own self-deception.”

around 51:59 CTR:

“We don’t really want to be fully sane, that seems to be our problem, usually, that we can’t handle too much sanity and we would like to have a little corner of neurosis somewhere, even in our pockets, just a little puff here and there, so if you find too much sanity, you say, Boy, it was heavy.”

A great power of this film is the way it introduces or re-introduces Chögyam Trungpa as a human being, as a person in relationship with others, and how the heart of his teachings was transmitted not merely as information, but as an intimate gift of love that could be taken to heart and which could be transformative. The journey and experiences of the early students, many of whom had personal time with him, is so useful in showing this, and I am grateful that so many of them express themselves in this film. This film is largely about relationships, how those who were close to him learned and developed, not just from instructions and information, but how they were touched by him.

However, the notion that such a journey with his teachings is not available in the present, or became less available as the size of the community increased, and fewer people had the opportunity to spend much time with him personally, is an error, in my opinion. In my experience, it was possible to have “face time” with him and miss the point, and it was also possible to have little in-person contact but be deeply connected. He frequently said that we could meet his mind in practice.

Chögyam Trungpa also pretty much single-handedly remade the English language for the buddhadharma, a nontheistic tradition, redefining words and creating contexts for understanding Buddhism that did not have the weaknesses of earlier translations influenced by Christianity, Hinduism, or other theistic traditions. In turn, perhaps inspired by his training as a student of comparative religions and Western culture at Oxford University, he went on to create forums for Christian-Buddhist dialogue at The Naropa Institute conferences in the early 1980s. (See the book Speaking of Silence for this.) An important principle of those forums was that the various spiritual traditions could meet and connect with each other through meditation, contemplation, and prayer – not purely relying on intellectual discussions, but attempting to get to the heart of these traditions.

All sorts of teachers were invited by him, Asian and Western, to teach his students. He invited Kanjuro Shibata Sensei, Bowmaker to the Emperor of Japan, to teach Kyudo, the way of the bow, and manners. And, he invited his mother-in-law, Diana Mukpo’s mother, the late Elizabeth Pybus, to teach manners to the men-students of the Shambhala world.

This is the first of a series of blogs about the Crazy Wisdom film, addressing many themes, most of which are highlighted by the film. My bias is that all of these subjects can best be understood when seen through the lens of his teaching relationship with people, students and nonstudents alike, and his aspiration to benefit this world. In any case, these blog subjects could, and probably will, include craziness, wisdom, more about student teacher relationships, sexuality and intimacy in human relationships, spiritual materialism, meditation practice and boredom, different aspects of the dharma art teachings, language and elocution, the Shambhala military (kasung and kusung), other awareness practices, alcohol and the question of alcoholism, how he let the “sparks fly” and trained people intellectually, his appreciation for monasticism, his decision not to be a monastic, and probably other topics that have not come to mind yet.

Link to blog number 2: 2 - Crazy Wisdom Movie: The Crazy Wisdom Person - Dharma Study Group Kazoo (dsgroupkazoo.com)