Read Online The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Seven by Chögyam Trungpa - Free Book Online
Authors: Chögyam Trungpa
Tags: Tibetan Buddhism
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London on Wednesday, then I’m flying to Boston. . . .”
At the end of the interview Rinpoche asks again: “Where are you going?” My crossed legs have fallen asleep. I can hardly get up. We both laugh.
Later I use this interview as the basis of the Call Girl’s interview with a guru in King of the United States . 38
In the early 1970s in America, Chögyam Trungpa started a theater group called Mudra Theater, which performed a number of his plays and worked with exercises that Rinpoche developed, based on the principles of what came to be called “Mudra Space Awareness.” Most of this work took place in Boulder. During the 1970s, Rinpoche gave several dozen talks on theater work and Mudra Space Awareness, which were transcribed and edited for the use of members of the Mudra Theater group but have never been published, except for a fragment from one talk that appeared in the Vajradhatu Sun magazine, reproduced in this volume. The exercises he developed seem to have been related, at least in part, to insights that Trungpa Rinpoche gained from his practice and study of both mahamudra and the dzogchen teachings, or maha ati, as well as his training in monastic dance in Tibet. He once described Mudra Space Awareness thus: “Having been born, so to speak, now we can try to stand, and then we’ll begin to walk, and then we’ll introduce the monastic dance which I studied in Tibet.” 39
The earliest exercises that Rinpoche developed worked with the interplay between sound and silence. They were called “Sound Cycles,” and David Rome included a number of them in the appendix to the poetry collection Timely Rain. Rinpoche described them as “a means of relating to the space in which your vocal projection takes place.” 40 David Rome reported to me that “there were other [early] exercises as well that are now unfortunately lost, especially some fascinating ones applying the five sense perceptions—but not literally—to working with objects.” 41
In 1973, a theater conference took place in Boulder. The conference was organized and attended by Rinpoche’s students, with much of the primary work being done by Jean-Claude van Itallie, who found funding for the conference and arranged for many prominent avant-garde theater people to attend. Because of Jean-Claude’s efforts, Robert Wilson and many actors from his theater company, the Byrd Hoffmann School of Byrds, attended the conference, as well as actors, playwrights, and directors from the Open Theater, the Manhattan Project, the Magic Theater, the Iowa Theater Lab, and the Provisional Open Theater.
The idea for the conference arose in a conversation over dinner between Trungpa Rinpoche, Jean-Claude van Itallie, and some other students. Jean-Claude writes:
I’m having dinner in a restaurant with Rinpoche, Tania [Leontov], and others near Barnet, Vermont, when the idea comes up to have a theater-and-meditators conference in Boulder. The idea emerges from the conversations that Rinpoche and I often have about the kind of theater I’m involved with and its relationship to meditation. Rinpoche is enthusiastic about the idea. I’m a vegetarian at the time, but Rinpoche puts steak on my plate from his plate, saying, “Eat this. You’ll need the strength to put the conference together.” Of course, because he asked me to, I eat the piece of steak. And I put together the conference.
At the time I’m on the Board of Theater Communications Group and I’m on the Theater Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts. Both these groups give me money to put together the conference, which costs a total of something a little over $10,000. It’s to their credit that they funded something which was purely for the benefit of the participants—not to include a public performance. It was to be an “Eastern meditation meets Western avant-garde theater” conference. I apply to the International Theater Institute too, and while they have no money to give me, they give
At the end of the interview Rinpoche asks again: “Where are you going?” My crossed legs have fallen asleep. I can hardly get up. We both laugh.
Later I use this interview as the basis of the Call Girl’s interview with a guru in King of the United States . 38
In the early 1970s in America, Chögyam Trungpa started a theater group called Mudra Theater, which performed a number of his plays and worked with exercises that Rinpoche developed, based on the principles of what came to be called “Mudra Space Awareness.” Most of this work took place in Boulder. During the 1970s, Rinpoche gave several dozen talks on theater work and Mudra Space Awareness, which were transcribed and edited for the use of members of the Mudra Theater group but have never been published, except for a fragment from one talk that appeared in the Vajradhatu Sun magazine, reproduced in this volume. The exercises he developed seem to have been related, at least in part, to insights that Trungpa Rinpoche gained from his practice and study of both mahamudra and the dzogchen teachings, or maha ati, as well as his training in monastic dance in Tibet. He once described Mudra Space Awareness thus: “Having been born, so to speak, now we can try to stand, and then we’ll begin to walk, and then we’ll introduce the monastic dance which I studied in Tibet.” 39
The earliest exercises that Rinpoche developed worked with the interplay between sound and silence. They were called “Sound Cycles,” and David Rome included a number of them in the appendix to the poetry collection Timely Rain. Rinpoche described them as “a means of relating to the space in which your vocal projection takes place.” 40 David Rome reported to me that “there were other [early] exercises as well that are now unfortunately lost, especially some fascinating ones applying the five sense perceptions—but not literally—to working with objects.” 41
In 1973, a theater conference took place in Boulder. The conference was organized and attended by Rinpoche’s students, with much of the primary work being done by Jean-Claude van Itallie, who found funding for the conference and arranged for many prominent avant-garde theater people to attend. Because of Jean-Claude’s efforts, Robert Wilson and many actors from his theater company, the Byrd Hoffmann School of Byrds, attended the conference, as well as actors, playwrights, and directors from the Open Theater, the Manhattan Project, the Magic Theater, the Iowa Theater Lab, and the Provisional Open Theater.
The idea for the conference arose in a conversation over dinner between Trungpa Rinpoche, Jean-Claude van Itallie, and some other students. Jean-Claude writes:
I’m having dinner in a restaurant with Rinpoche, Tania [Leontov], and others near Barnet, Vermont, when the idea comes up to have a theater-and-meditators conference in Boulder. The idea emerges from the conversations that Rinpoche and I often have about the kind of theater I’m involved with and its relationship to meditation. Rinpoche is enthusiastic about the idea. I’m a vegetarian at the time, but Rinpoche puts steak on my plate from his plate, saying, “Eat this. You’ll need the strength to put the conference together.” Of course, because he asked me to, I eat the piece of steak. And I put together the conference.
At the time I’m on the Board of Theater Communications Group and I’m on the Theater Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts. Both these groups give me money to put together the conference, which costs a total of something a little over $10,000. It’s to their credit that they funded something which was purely for the benefit of the participants—not to include a public performance. It was to be an “Eastern meditation meets Western avant-garde theater” conference. I apply to the International Theater Institute too, and while they have no money to give me, they give
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