[OceanofDharma] Quotes of the Week: Dragon Thunder Available

[Carolyn Gimian]

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week

August 24, 2006

This is a special announcement about a book of interest to Ocean of Dharma 
readers:

Subscribers to Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week may want to know that 
DRAGON THUNDER: MY LIFE WITH CHOGYAM TRUNGPA by Diana J. Mukpo with Carolyn 
Rose Gimian is now available at Shambhala.com. If you order direct from the 
publisher, Shambhala Publications, you receive 20% off the list price. [See 
below for information on book signings and other book related events.]

In the monthly Shambhala Publications newsletter, the publisher writes:
Chogyam Trungpa is a figure of inestimable importance in the transmission 
of the Buddhist teachings from the mystic East to the rational West, and we 
are honored to be his principal publisher. But he was an unconventional 
lama, and controversial enough that, though his teaching lives on twenty 
years after his death, the man himself remains a puzzle to many. In an 
interview a few years back, Pema Chodron expressed a feeling that many 
share: "I felt everything he did was to help others," she said, "but I 
would also say now that maybe my understanding has gone even deeper, and it 
feels more to the point to say I don't know. I don't know what he was 
doing. I know he changed my life. I know I love him. But I don't know who 
he was. I learned something from him. But who was that masked man?"

One person uniquely qualified to answer that question would be the woman he 
was married to for the last seventeen years of his life, Diana Mukpo. This, 
Diana's memoir, provides the most intimate portrait of Chogyam Trungpa that 
we will likely have. It begins with her marriage to Trungpa -- as a 
sixteen-year-old girl from an upper-class English family -- and goes on to 
detail the couple's migration to America and the establishment of his 
teaching here, with her close participation. "It was not always easy to be 
the guru's wife," she writes, "but I must say it was seldom boring." Diana 
led an unusual life as the "first lady" of a burgeoning Buddhist community 
in the American 1970s and '80s. She conveys with insight and humor what it 
was like to be the first modern Western woman married to a Tibetan lama, as 
well as what it was like to be married to a man who was adored and sought 
out by thousands of eager students. Surprising events and colorful 
characters fill the narrative as Diana seeks to understand the dynamic, 
puzzling, and larger-than-life man she married -- and to find a place for 
herself in this extraordinary world.

But who, as Pema asked, was that masked man? Though this book provides 
intriguing clues, the question may not have a simple satisfying answer. As 
Diana says, "When the teacher dies, it is like breaking a vase; the air 
that was held in the container mixes with the whole of space. It is 
partially in this sense that the teacher's death is a blessing." The more 
we learn about the masked man, the more we are confronted with his 
teaching, and the more he seems, almost mischievously, to disappear beneath 
it. And this seems appropriate -- even though it remains fascinating to 
read about him.

David O'Neal, Senior Editor
Shambhala Publications

Book events:

September 8 to 10: Cleveland, Ohio,  Shambhala Center  Buddhist Program
October 12, Boston, Trident Booksellers Book Signing
October 13, Boston, Shambhala Meditation Center: Lecture
October 14: Providence, RI, Brown Bookstore: Book Signing

October 20: Boulder, Colorado, Naropa University, Keynote Address and 
Booksigning at the first Naropa Ocean of Dharma conference on the life and 
teachings of Chogyam Trungpa.
October 20 to 22: Diana Mukpo will attend the Ocean of Dharma conference on 
the life and teachings of Chogyam Trungpa at Naropa University, Boulder, 
Colorado.

November 2: Halifax, Nova Scotia: Reading and Book signing co-sponsored by 
Shambhala Centre of Halifax and Frog Hollow Books. Place to be announced. 
Tickets will be around $7 -- or buy your book from Frog Hollow and get a 
ticket for 2$.

Other events to be announced. For contact information for any of these 
events, you can write to carolyn at shambhala.com


OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE WEEK now has 4,638 subscribers.
Please send comments on and contributions to OCEAN OF DHARMA QUOTES OF THE 
WEEK to the list moderator, Carolyn Gimian at: carolyn at shambhala.com.

Carolyn Rose Gimian

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week: teachings by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Taken from works published by Shambhala Publications,  the Archive of his 
unpublished work in the Shambhala Archives, plus other published sources.
TO SUBSCRIBE visit the Chogyam Trungpa website by clicking on the following 
link: http://OceanofDharma.com